Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio.

I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

Among the unknowns early in the pandemic was just how fatal COVID-19 was.

The economist's excess death tracker was the first to parse mortality data,

distinguishing different causes of death,

and now it's got more and better numbers to work from.

And workers can return to the office in England this week, but few are rushing back.

We look at how the view of working from home has changed, both among bosses and worker bees,

and how compelling the draw of water cooler chat may end up being.

First up, though. First up, though.

In Beirut yesterday, countless people began the painful work of fixing homes devastated by a massive explosion on Tuesday.

One woman, Gouda Melki, posted a video of her mother-in-law playing the piano as others swept up broken glass.

The music is bittersweet. The city is reeling.

The moment of the blast, no one was quite sure what had happened.

There was a sort of deep bass sound for seven or eight seconds. There was a rumbling. And we thought it was a localized explosion, maybe a gas main that had blown up across the street or a car

bomb in the neighborhood. Greg Carlstrom is our Middle East correspondent.

I was at a cafe at the time.

Everyone, of course, left the cafe and started making their way home.

And it was only on the way back down towards the Mediterranean, towards the port, that I started

to realize the scale of the damage.

There was, of course, broken glass everywhere,

...