Let's not talk past each other here. The lockdowns we have had were massively more severe and lengthy than they needed to have been purely because of government incompetence and refusal to listen to the science. Given prompt (key word, Boris) and, OK, maybe short, sharp action, as we saw in some other countries, this country could have been running at near-normal for most of the last twelve months. I think everyone would have understood that, and subsequent behaviour, informed by proper advice and accurate information, would have been at least as good as in any lockdown or ridiculous and ineffective tier system. Instead, we are heading for a crippling recession, austerity like we've never seen, mass unemployment, increasing child poverty and physical and mental ill-health on a scale that could even rival or dwarf the pandemic. As for "overwhelming the NHS", you presumably mean the NHS that these Tories have run into the ground for a decade? That one? The same Tories who did nothing when they were starkly warned, four years ago, that the NHS in its then state was in no position to handle a major epidemic?

As for this:

"Without the first lockdown there would have been no second peak. The first one would have just rolled on, overwhelming the NHS and (possibly) increasing the death toll."

You can't know that numbers wouldn't have fallen anyway during the summer. There were still low levels of disease around all summer, but the country had a free-for-all apropos of staycationing (sorry) and we got away with it for two or three months. But the September warning signs? Ignored. Cornwall was still heaving during the late-October half-term.

As for us Cornish not following the science, we can't. We wear these dodgy masks that keep the controllers happy. But we can't socially distance. There's no room. No room in Sainsbury's, no room in Morrisons, no room in Boots, no room in the co-op. No room on the pavements.

And here's the next crackpot scheme. Vaccine passports, or whatever Boris wants to call them (a poll tax is a poll tax however you try to dress it up...) won't be needed in the most dangerous places of all, bus stations, railway stations, tube stations, on buses and on trains. Do me a bloody favour...