The problem is that "lockdowns work" and "masks work" have become received wisdoms. Statistics, which are all we've got, are actually extremely unconvincing for both those measures. We went through summer 2020 with no lockdowns and no masks, horrified by images of beaches stuffed with tens of thousands of people sitting cheek by jowl. And guess what. Cases plummeted to next to nothing. Not saying for one second that there's no truth therein at all. But we simply can't go on splitting up families and friends every time there's a surge. We can't keep having to endure the inhumanity of elderly people and people with dementia unable to see their loved ones. For the last eight months of her life, my mother, profoundly deaf, only ever saw me, wearing a mask and shield, through a Perspex screen, once every two weeks. I had to resort to communicating with her with a whiteboard and marker. Before that, I'd sit with her in her room for hours or take her out for rides at the seaside three times a week. Children cooped up in flats with no gardens for months, deprived of their friends and their schooling. It's all very well for us self-contained wrinklies to espouse lockdowns, but let's think instead about the way that lockdowns affect the mental and physical health of millions of human beings.

Actually, it's almost a dead cert that the transmission of the virus is overwhelming led by schoolchildren. Do you think we should close all the schools for a few months? Along with vaccination, the only other surefire way of knocking the disease on the head? Well I don't think so! But let's not kid ourselves that piffling around with masks and arbitrary restrictions on mixing with friends and family will have anything other than the slightest impact. We have managed for decades to live with the threat of flu every winter, without lockdown, masks or restrictions on social mixing. But with science keeping on top via constant vaccine updating. That's the only way forward in my opinion.