Peter Rhodes on the EastEnders saga, a remedy for Trump and how an earlier pandemic vanished

Click and collect sounds like the ultimate virus-beating shopping method. You order your groceries by phone, pay in advance by card and collect your box of items from the supermarket. But what if you get home, open the box and some of the things you've paid for are missing? It has happened to us twice in 10 days and I bet we're not the only ones.

Now that Donald Trump's disinfectant injections have been denounced as useless, might he be interested in personally testing an idea of my own? The Harpic enema.

There is so much information available, and so much of it contradicts other sources, that it's impossible to know what to believe. How seriously, for example, should we treat reports of one hospital apparently saving lives by not using traditional ventilators? Or the claim that some patients have been saved simply by laying them face-down, not on their back?

And what about the suggestion by an Israeli academic, Prof Isaac Ben-Israel, that no matter how a nation fights Covid-19, it still produces the same results, with the contagion peaking after 40 days and disappearing after 70 days?

Time will prove or disprove Ben-Israel's theory. But, lest we forget, the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic did a curious vanishing trick. It killed 250,000 people in Britain in three waves and came with the cruel twist that the healthier you were, the more likely it was to kill you; it carried off fit, young soldiers of the First World War in their thousands. And then, possibly through mutation or better treatment or a combination of the two, the flu vanished as quickly as it came. One month hospitals were recording thousands of cases, the next, almost none. History rarely repeats itself exactly but who knows?

Politicians and health experts bite their lips and accept the most scathing criticism from the BBC about their reaction to the pandemic. But when it comes to planning, should any of us take lectures from the Beeb? In 2013 the BBC embarked on its new set for EastEnders. TV licence payers were told it would cost £59 million and be completed by August 2018. Today, the budget has rocketed to £87 million and the job drags on. Latest estimated completion date is some time in 2023. Aren't you glad Auntie Beeb isn't supplying surgical gowns?

Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon suggests that people could mix with small “bubbles of friends”during lockdown. Does she have any objection to Scotland trying this out first while the rest of the UK watches? How do seven million Scots feel about being enlisted in the Clan McGuineapig, sent out to brave the virus? Not too thrilled, I bet. Scotland has bitter memories of being used as Britain's guinea pig for the poll tax back in 1989. That was about as popular as a hornet up your sporran.