“…it is surely impossible to make meaningful evaluations of anything at all”

Yes, yet the media and politicians studiously ignore this glaring inconsistency. Why doesn’t Boris Johnston say “I have not made a mess of handling the virus, it’s just the way the statistics are compiled”? Instead we are led to believe that our supposedly high death rate is attributable to lax measures and we demand stricter ones, like Christmas turkeys demanding the abattoir lorry gets a move on.