Germany has just recorded its highest ever rise in daily infections. The country feels as worried now as at any point during the first wave. So why would I rather catch Covid there than here?

The short answer is that everything is comparative. Britain, otherwise known as clown-country (my term, the Germans use the slightly less pejorative ‘the island’), has never had a grip on the crisis. It has lurched from one decision to another, each announcement carrying the trademark bluster of Boris Johnson.

In Germany, the statistics are different; the atmospherics even more so. The country’s response has been characterised by competence on the ground and the quiet calm of Angela Merkel, who has not sought to intervene with the decisions taken by the regions and the municipalities. The Chancellor and her government have been fastidious about planning ahead, sticking to the science, being frank with citizens and refraining from bombast.

A couple of weeks ago I found myself in Duisburg, in the Ruhr region to the west of the country. The town has for decades suffered from post-industrial blight – not unlike a large swathe of northern England. It has poor quality and crowded housing and other forms of deprivation. In other words, this should be a Covid hotspot. Except the methods of tackling the problem there are unrecognisable to anything seen in the UK.

As I was shown around the …