Between the asymptomatic cases and those in intensive care, there are hundreds of thousands suffering with covid-19. They have a constant painful cough, which prevents sleep. They cannot breathe properly and are intensely anxious. They lie totally exhausted, with myalgia and fever.

Many are cut off from human comfort. You rarely read about these things in the academic literature which spills out by the ton every day.

There is some NICE guidance giving generalised advice: but is there a forum of GP tips for COVID-19 symptom relief that has escaped my notice?

Perhaps in retaliation for these reviews, the GMC has restored my licence to practise medicine. Even before that, I spent a lot of my would-be sleeping time thinking of how GPs could function during an epidemic of serious respiratory disease, when they can’t even examine the patient.

Most of the pneumonia is likely to be viral, either due to SARS-CoV-2 or a combination, mostly with influenza viruses, present in about a fifth of patients. But what about bacteria? Ordinary or atypical bacterial pneumonia will still occur sporadically, independent of covid-19, and it seems incredible that bacteria won’t take advantage of lungs congested with covid-19: yet it is very hard to find anything in the literature about bacterial co-infection.

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