China must be nearing the point where the social and economic costs of trying to stamp out the coronavirus by totalitarian methods are greater than the trauma of letting it run. A normal country would eventually conclude that the more rational course is to accept that the disease can no longer be contained (given the three lost weeks of the Wuhan cover-up), treat it as a form of turbo-charged winter flu, and direct all efforts instead at managing care more coherently. The focus would then shift to a different objective: trying to lower the death rate from apparent 1918 Spanish flu levels of 2pc to plausible levels below 1pc – still 10 times influenza flu – through anti-virals, IV drips, oxygen, and all kinds of small frictions (yes, even face masks) to lower dose thresholds and potentially virulence....