There is much that we have learnt about the character of modern Britain since Covid burst so disastrously on the scene almost two years ago. The only unambiguous positive is that our community spirit is alive and well, with millions ready to volunteer for the general good. We are more trusting of political and medical authorities than most other societies, and in return the British state has remained ever so slightly more liberal towards us; unfortunately, our second-rate machinery of government is still scandalously unprepared for modern-day pandemics, new variants or any kind of genuine crisis.

The 1940s-style bureaucracy-cum-national religion that is the NHS cannot cope, ever, regardless of how much money it is given. We are hardly the nation of freedom-lovers libertarian romantics naively assumed us to be, mostly preferring perceived security to liberty. Too many of our compatriots like to snitch on neighbours, and are pathologically incapable of rational, full-picture, long-term cost-benefit analyses. Another sorry truth: our society doesn’t properly value the education and development of children.

There are several upshots to this strange blancmange of attitudes. Our vaccination rates among those aged 12 and over – 88.6 per cent have had first doses, 80.6 per cent second and 31.7 per cent third – are higher than in many other countries. This has saved many lives, and there is little prospect of the horrors of compulsory jabs as in Austria and advocated by Germany and Ursula von der Leyen. Our lockdowns, while extreme, were fortunately not as severe as those in Australia, China or France. But our ideological obsession with state delivery of healthcare and staggeringly low-grade civil service has cost many thousands of unnecessary deaths.

We have also discovered something almost as damning over the past two years: it can suit many people for the country to be in a state of emergency, which also explains the politico-bureaucratic-medical establishment’s somewhat over-enthusiastic support for restrictions that will do little, if anything, to slow omicron.

To be clear: I despise idiotic internet conspiracy theories, and of course the Government would love the new variant to fizzle out quickly. The pandemic has been a nightmare: it almost cost the Prime Minister his own life, has directly killed some 145,000 in the UK (before indirect effects and lockdown are accounted for) and has derailed the Tory agenda and economy. Many in Whitehall will once again be suffering from sleepless nights.

Yet it is also an uncomfortable truth that, for some, there is a silver lining to the events of the past few days: delivering press conferences and being seen to act boldly is easier than politics as usual. It is helpful for the Government not to be grilled as much about MPs’ second jobs, or the fact that thousands are still crossing the Channel. The return of a sense of crisis should make the public more indulgent towards the Government’s failings. Voters may look more kindly upon the cost of living crisis and the broken promises on national insurance. The SNP and Welsh governments will also benefit.

It is not just for politicians that there is an upside from the omicron-induced shift in the national agenda. It suits big companies and incompetent managers who made the most of Covid to downgrade their customer service. They used to blame Brexit; now they blame omicron. It is convenient for disruptive trade unions and lazy employees on the look-out for an excuse to work less. It will embolden some to seek a hugely extended festive period working from home, regardless of the needs of employers or the extra burden imposed on colleagues. It suits the public sector, and its determination to put the interests of producers above those of consumers. Shut schools and cancelled nativity plays are a hideous, immoral blow to children, but are grist to militant unions’ mill.

The worst offender, as ever, is the NHS, whose overworked doctors and nurses keep being let down by an irredeemably flawed institution. Omicron gives it cover to fail to reinstate face-to-face GP appointments, even if that means more non-Covid deaths, and to ignore its enormous backlog. Cancelled Christmas parties and holidays will make its life easier: the NHS wants us to work for it, rather than for it to serve us.

Public health zealots thrive when restrictions are imposed: they like telling people what to do. Ditto some radical environmentalists. No wonder it is always easier to impose restrictions than to scrap them: plenty of vested interest groups benefit from them.

The Government wants to tackle the variant by accelerating boosters, implying a belief that the current vaccines will also prevent omicron deaths and hospitalisations. But why did it take a new variant to galvanise the health service into action? Why had it been content with giving 2.5 million third jabs a week, against 4 million at the height of its rollout? Why did it dismantle its infrastructure? The Government’s management by crisis and its decision to call in the army is an easy short-term tactic to patch over the NHS’s deficiencies, and camouflages the failure to force through real change.

The new scare is also helping the NHS avoid difficult questions about anti-virals. The Americans believe Covid will shortly be fully defeated thanks to apparent wonder drugs such as Pfizer’s Paxlovid. But not only do we need to purchase more doses, delivery is key: the pills need to be taken as soon as Covid becomes visible in the patient. What is the NHS’s plan to test and prescribe en masse?

To Johnson’s credit, he had managed to make us more Swedish (in Covid policy terms) prior to omicron. Starting with Freedom Day, he ushered in a new British model that was hugely more liberal than that pursued by most of the developed world. Thanks to vaccinations, we learnt to live with an elevated level of infections, especially among the young, and a tolerable flu-like death toll. We should have jabbed faster, but other than that the strategy was correct: we were treating the virus as if it were endemic.

Omicron is a major setback, but if it turns out to be manageable with the current vaccines, Johnson must promptly reverse all the restrictions imposed last week. Living in a permanent state of emergency makes life easier for bureaucrats and zero-risk killjoys, but it soon leads to the ruin of a nation.