I see the BBC have woken up and asking the question that I posed earlier, how many more people will die than would be normal due to coronavirus?

The figures for coronavirus are eye-watering. But what is not clear - because the modellers did not map this - is to what extent the deaths would have happened without coronavirus.

Of course, this will never truly be known until the pandemic is over, which is why modelling is very difficult and has to be heavily-caveated.

But given that the old and frail are the most vulnerable, would these people be dying anyway?

Every year more than 500,000 people die in England and Wales: factor in Scotland and Northern Ireland, and the figure tops 600,000.

The coronavirus deaths will not be on top of this. Many would be within this "normal" number of expected deaths. In short, they would have died anyway.

It was a point conceded by Sir Patrick at a press conference on Thursday when he said there would be "some overlap" between coronavirus deaths and expected deaths - he just did not know how much of an overlap.

A lot of unknowns, though presumably it would be easy to compare the current death rate against the known average? In which case if its slightly higher than normal coronavirus isdn't that big a killer.

Of course the current actions are based on preventing the NHS being swamped by cases and therefore unable to cope and unable to treat people with other serious illnesses.