SPB, speed limits, legal alcohol limits, driving on the left and the like are permanent fixtures that are there by general consensus. Until 2020 I hadn't even looked at a mask, let alone worn one. Yet before 2020 it was not regarded as "libertarian" to swan around without a mask on. If anyone ever gave it a second thought at all, not wearing a mask was the default, the norm. In fact, if I'd gone into Morrisons two Christmases ago with a mask on I'd have got some funny looks. Two years later, the morality police are defining not wearing a mask as "a lifestyle choice" (an irresponsible one at that) or as "libertarian." Well how did that change and who's in charge of making those judgements, let alone definitions?

The general consensus, even among the reluctant, has been to accept the restriction of the freedom to go around with our faces uncovered. I'd like to know now at what point it stops being "libertarian" to go back to the halcyon days of pre-2020. Who gets to decide the turning point? Whether you like it or not, there has to be a time when we have to go from compulsory to voluntary. Neither you, I, BWM nor Boris can finger that moment with any certainty. Of course we never know what's round the corner, a perfectly reasonable point to make. But we can't go on like this. As for millions of us being irresponsible, etc., 'twas ever thus, long before the pandemic, and we have to live with that and try to improve things. Long before this pandemic I was sanitising my hands every time I'd touched a supermarket trolley after I'd read a survey that said that 60% of Morrisons trolley handles sampled had actual traces of shit on them (other supermarkets are available...), but there's no policeman watching people coming out of the jacks to make sure their hands were washed. Quite right too. We live in an imperfect world, and coronavirus, like everything else that befalls us, can't be exempt forever from imperfect decisions.