What people need to get into their heads is that it simply doesn’t matter how much omicron spreads now because everyone is going to get it. Think of the protective bubble they threw around the Queen. It didn’t prevent her eventually catching the virus. According to some studies, Covid-19 is believed to have similar infection fatality rate to seasonal flu for the under-75s (actually, some studies suggest Covid is less lethal than flu for children). Take heart, dear reader, this is no longer that “lethal virus” of two years ago. We must exercise our muscle memory and recover the use of “personal responsibility”.
Naturally, millions still feel anxious because they were never allowed to acquire a sense of proportion. Many tactical fibs were told to get us to comply with measures which made little or no sense. “Some people will keep wearing masks,” said Sir John Bell, Oxford professor of medicine and vaccine eminence grise, speaking earlier this week on Radio 4, “but wearing masks didn’t help us with omicron. Wear masks all you like, it doesn’t make any difference.”
Asked by presenter Sarah Montague how he viewed the lifting of Covid measures, Sir John laughed: “You shouldn’t have to talk to me much longer – which should be a relief.”
If only other scientists would emulate Sir John’s graceful, modest exit from the national stage. But they won’t. Backroom lab boys and mathematical modelling nerds have got a taste for the limelight. Predictably, it was just minutes before an open letter, signed by 1000 individuals including members of Independent SAGE, criticised the plan to “end testing, surveillance surveys and legal isolation” arguing it had “no solid scientific basis”.
Many of those same scientists, plenty of them politically motivated, have opposed every previous attempt to lift restrictions, issuing bloodcurdling predictions of thousands of dead if their warnings were ignored. Then had the nerve to insist they were merely “scenarios” when they proved to be out by a mile.
It’s not only the boffins who will need to be weaned off their addiction. John Keats wrote that he had been “half in love with easeful Death”. I’m afraid that Covid has cast that kind of hypnotic spell over the population. It changed all of us.
Previously, in wars, governments used propaganda to unite the British people against a common enemy. In this pandemic, propaganda was used to create a wedge between those who complied with the rules and those who broke them. Even when human frailty, or desperate need, compelled them to. Giving some of the population the feeling of being morally superior to others was a roaring success. Who knew virtue could be addictive?
On Thursday, all remaining Covid restrictions will be lifted. This strange and terrible and exciting time draws to a close. It’s a time for celebration, but there will be withdrawal symptoms. We must set aside our differences and help one another. Perhaps the hardest thing of all will be to remember who we were before. And then try and get them back. Your country needs them.
