I completely agree, as always, with Dr John Lee in the Spectator

'While there’s plenty we don’t know about Covid, the big-picture science has been settled for some time already. As epidemics go it’s not that bad. It kills mainly the very old and infirm; children and fit people under 60ish often get away with mild or asymptomatic infection. Those who become ill do not, in fact, die like flies. About 99 per cent of them get better quite quickly.

'....That we have now fully embarked on a phase of politics masquerading as science may be harder to spot. Nothing demonstrates it better than the Dominic Cummings story. I’m not really interested here in the rights or wrongs of what he did with respect to the 'rules'. The point is that if lockdown and social distancing actually have any effect at all on the virus, it is difficult to see how driving to a different, empty house could realistically spread it. Social distancing and lockdown are supposed to be the measures 'protecting' us from the virus. So if you move to another location in a socially distanced manner – in the bubble of your car for instance – and lock down once there, how can you have significantly contributed to viral spread?

'....Surely the relevant questions in this case, are not about the whys and wherefores of one individual, but about why on earth we are still continuing with measures that are massively harmful in their own right.

'....What we have been living through is not so much an epidemic, as a crisis of awareness. After 75 years of blessed peace and increasing prosperity, we were suddenly faced with something that took many out of their comfort zone. They were suddenly confronted with the potential of unavoidable death on a large scale, amplified dramatically in the echo-chamber of a largely uncritical media. The reality, fortunately, was different this time. But how did we respond? With fortitude and common sense? Unfortunately not. We responded with perhaps the biggest own goal in our recent history. And when our over-reaction had been clear for several weeks, what did we do then? Did we change course in a reasoned and timely manner? No. We devoted several days to hounding someone who tried to look after his family, at a time when each day longer on this path costs billions in economic loss and directly increases the lockdown-related morbidity and death toll.'

It all goes back to Douglas Murray's point about the West, but not Eastern Europe, having lost 'the tragic sense of life'. Instead of the tragic sense of life we have a pathetic and sentimental sense of life.