Why is the Health Secretary giving this update, asked the Speaker, and not the Prime Minister? Well, Boris Johnson did pop up at a vaccine centre earlier that day, looking like death – the hair, particularly stressed, resembled a Polynesian thatched hut after a hurricane – where he was cornered by Sky’s Beth Rigby 9,000, who plugged him with automatically generated questions (I lost count at 12). Will there be a rebellion? Did you host a quiz party? Why didn’t you act in autumn?

Give the man a break, Beth! As the Prime Minister was keen to stress, this variant is jolly serious, so it would be trivial to ask why the country is woefully underprepared to deal with it.

Back to the Commons, where Dr Julian Lewis (Conservative) noted that “the Prime Minister stated this morning that one person in the UK had died with omicron but the shadow health secretary” – Wes Streeting – “said they died as a result” of the variant. Which was it? That is a very important distinction, replied Saj, but his answer wasn’t clear. Hopefully the Government will look into this at some point, but we all know – MPs more than anyone – that detail will get lost in the tidal wave of sickness and panic to come, making it harder to speak of civil liberties, and braver for those who try.

The ambitious Mr Streeting, who not only applauded the Government’s key actions in the round but attempted to deliver his own television address from the dispatch box (“I’d like to conclude if I can with some words directed towards the public”), asked if it was fair to limit the number of visitors to those in care homes. The venerable Sir Edward Leigh (Conservative), hearing his song, rose arthritically from the benches to report that he knew of “a family member, aged 90, completely bed-bound”, who was yet to receive a booster jab. The rumour around the lobby is that it’s his son.

The Speaker might resent the Prime Minister announcing policy on television rather than to the House, but those broadcasts are seen by infinitely more voters than these debates ever are – and MPs, one suspects, have already stuck their finger in the air and detected a shift in public opinion towards the authoritarian.

As for Boris, he was just doing his bit to keep infections down, and staying socially distanced from democracy.