As Alexander Pope put it, “To err is human …” It is obvious that serious errors were made by various governments in the weeks before the coronavirus became a rampant pandemic, but efforts to point the finger of blame at specific targets are a waste of energy unless they lead to lessons being learnt. The Labour party’s new leader, Sir Keir Starmer, has been right to say that the point of critical scrutiny should not be to score political points but to encourage better decision-making in the future.

One such lesson, for instance, would be not to trust either the United States or China – or indeed other countries – to act in anyone’s interests but their own. Those two countries have become entangled in a crude blame game over coronavirus. Donald Trump, fearful of losing the forthcoming presidential election unless he can switch the narrative away from his failure to respond earlier to the threat of the pandemic, is claiming that China is criminally culpable for allowing the coronavirus to spread as it did, first in China and then to the rest of the world.