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Hello and welcome to a brand new series of more or less. We all weekly guide to the

numbers all around us in the news and in life, and I'm Tim Harford. This week we'll be

asking whether the UK's intriguing demographics have simultaneously given us a bumper crop

of school pupils and a shortage of new teachers. We'll answer questions from loyal listeners

about inflation and living standards and we'll chase down a mysterious algorithm that's

been running wild through the Eurovision judging process.

But first, which countries have been worst affected by the pandemic, has been a subject

of many media stories, Twitter based rouse, and even let's be honest, the occasional

episode of more or less, and the general idea has often been that the UK has fared quite

badly. So it was surprising when the World Health Organization, the WHO, released a piece

of research a couple of weeks ago which blew that assumption apart.

Britain has lower Covid excess death rate than Spain, Germany, and Italy, despite Doommungers

insisting UK fared worst in Europe.

The man who was UK health secretary at the time, Matt Hancock, took to Twitter to celebrate

his exoneration in the eyes of the WHO. Important new analysis by at WHO shows the UK's

excess death rate in the pandemic was lower than comparable countries such as the US, Italy,

Germany, and Spain.

The USA has famously struggled to deal with the epidemic, while the first wave hit Italy

and then Spain very hard. So perhaps it's not a shock to find the UK suffering fewer

deaths than any of them, but Germany? That is a surprise. More or less even researched

and broadcast an item exploring why Germany had done so much better than the UK in the

...