What happens next?

It is the measures that we would dismiss now that ought to concern us. They can be imposed in an astonishingly short period of time, accepted, and then applauded by the nation with the zeal of a convert.

An enormous challenge we have ahead is every respiratory virus season for the rest of our lives. Winter flu seasons in England often deliver thousands of excess deaths (28,330 in the winter of 2014-15 for instance). Yearly encouragement of wintry social austerity and mask theatrics to ‘save lives’ may yet follow.

The country is currently spooked by a new SARS-COV-2 variant that emerged in South Africa and appears to be present in the UK, B.1.1.529, the Omicron strain, which theoretically may have increased powers of transmissibility and could evade acquired immunity, though the jury is very much still out at the time of writing.

Masks and travel restrictions were lurched for immediately by the Government and who knows what else is to come. One hopes this is an aberration, much like the ‘Freedom Day’ postponement from June to July earlier this year, and the general trend of post-lockdown liberalisation will continue in England, but confidence here would be complacent.

Millions of appointments with the NHS have been missed during lockdowns and the backlog of health problems, unrelated to Covid-19, combined with the annual NHS crisis, will almost certainly see hospitals and frontline staff being overwhelmed in the future. It would not be a stretch to expect this to be blamed on the pandemic and more reason for compliance with authoritarian rule.

Prior to 2020 we accepted it as a fact of life that we may become ill due to an infection contracted from a fellow human. It was relegated to the background of our minds. As it has been promoted to the foreground and the deliberate policy of generating a national hyper-anxiety has been so successful, the toothpaste cannot be put back into the tube. Politicians and the public alike think first of viral spread and all other interests come next. Measures we would have laughed at quite recently are now welcomed. Others that would have terrified us are becoming de rigueur on the European continent.

It is the measures that we would dismiss now that ought to concern us. They can be imposed in an astonishingly short period of time, accepted, and then applauded by the nation with the zeal of a convert.