Any enlightened society supports a diversity of opinion on political matters, but we all tend to agree, generally, on a set of ethical principles and, even more closely, on the logical arguments upon which these are founded. This means that when a proposition can be dismissed on the basis of logic, there need be no further discussion of the ethics (where we may differ somewhat) or the political implications (where we may differ quite widely).

The argument for masking children, or obliging them to be vaccinated against a pathogen that is less likely to kill them than many others in normal circulation, should have stopped at the level of logic rather than continuing into a debate over its ethical and political implications. Neither masks nor vaccines can reliably prevent children from passing Sars-CoV-2 onto others, and I worry for the unvaccinated grandparent in a multi-generational household who believes themselves to be protected because their grandchild is attending school with an unpleasant (and environmentally unfriendly) piece of material on their face. I remain convinced that many people (including my cousins in India) have lost their lives labouring under this misapprehension.

There is now ample observational data to suggest that mask mandates do not work, and the few formal trials that have been conducted show no credible effect. The failure of the modelling exercises conducted by Sage and their satellites in predicting cases and deaths allows us to reject the role of such non-pharmaceutical interventions in driving the dynamics of spread.

But rather than reviling and ridiculing these modellers, we should ask them to accept the alternative scenario (based on sound well-established principles of epidemiology) where the waxing and waning of herd immunity plays a central role in how the virus spreads. This would not only resolve a long-standing (but polite) argument between myself and Neil Ferguson, but clarify that the last thing we should be doing is subjecting children to these grotesque measures. Indeed, our only way out of the epidemic is by permitting herd immunity levels to be constantly topped up through the infection of those who are not vulnerable to severe disease and death.

But what if it had been the case that vaccinating children under the threat of keeping them out of school, slapping masks on them, forcing them to shiver in “ventilated” classrooms and eating lunch in the cold, depriving them of extra-curricular activities and the like, actually worked to protect the vulnerable rather than potentially increasing their risk and prolonging their exposure?

This is where we move into the ethical mantle from the logical core, and may expect some disagreement between those who (like myself) prioritise the well-being of children and young adults ahead of those of us who have already had a large portion of our allotted cake (as the scientist Paul Dolan would call it). The idea that I might not be able to tolerate a small risk of dying from a respiratory illness in order to teach my students – or indeed cause any disruption at this tricky time in their lives – is morally repugnant to me. But I understand why others feel differently.

Opinions become even more diverse as we move from the mantle of ethics into the outer crust of politics in this planetary cross-section of human attitudes. Not everyone may care that restrictions which disrupt school attendance have devastating consequences for children from poorer backgrounds, compromising both their current safety and future prospects. In many regions of the world, the closure of schools has spelled the end of freedom from a brutal existence and I was saddened to read that many Indian states are going down this route now that cases are inevitably rising again.

Ultimately, the argument for imposing restrictions upon children should die within the logical core we all share as international participants in the culture of enlightenment (lest anyone see it as a European construct): there is no rational case for them. Banning singing lessons on the basis of the simplistic notion that singing causes the virus to spread further is as much a failure of critical thinking as it is of the moral and socio-political imagination.=

Sunetra Gupta is professor of theoretical epidemiology at the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford