Avoid this post if you require solid science, free of whimsy. Evidence-innocent, this is what I think of current developments.

In the UK, the worst prime minister we've ever had by a country mile has "decided" to take no further action on restrictions at least until after New Year.

Well first, he hasn't decided it at all. His "decision" is predicated on two factors. First, his credibility is completely shot because of the exposing of all the parties that he and his lackeys enjoyed last year while the rest of us were locked down. Indeed, over 500 people died on the very day that he and his mates were having an illegal jolly in Number Ten. So there's no way he can "instruct" us to do anything at all. Second, his right-wing backwoodsmen, at least 100 Tory MPs at the last count, are threatening to undermine not just him but also anyone with aspirations to replace him should they back further restrictions.

Well what I think of that is that the right decision has been reached for all the thoroughly wrong reasons. I can't think that telling us not to mix with our families, or to desist from going to pubs, etc., is now going to make the slightest difference any more. This variant is sweeping through us like mad. One in twenty in London have got it. But it's mild, and most of us have been vaccinated. The only problem that's worse than previous problems (and I don't seek to minimise it) is that many workers in the health service and care sector are off work sick. This isn't the time to bash the Tories for their severe neglect of the NHS, but I heard an NHS manager say that a hospital department that lost just two nurses to coronavirus is in serious trouble. Well why is that? Surely our health service should have far more built-in resilience than that. And that is the direct result of the lack of Tory investment in the NHS, the self-same NHS that the Tories opposed the formation of in the 1940s.

To be totally unscientific, I think that the fact that the variant is so catching and so mild will mean that there's a good chance that it will burn out. So many people will catch it and become immune to it (and the vaccines will help) that, within weeks, the virus will have nowhere to go. It may linger for ever in all our communities, but we will, one day, if we're sensible, not exactly laugh it off but at least learn to live, maskless, with it...

End of whimsy. Feel free to shoot.