But these policies also have another psychological effect that governments surely understand. They allow governments and experts to seemingly shift responsibility for the ongoing spread and restrictions to the people. Politicians can show you the studies demonstrating that in controlled environments, Zooming in to school and working from a sarcophagus in your basement should stop the spread of the disease, so clearly you’re just not complying hard enough. Only the stupidest government authorities say this out loud themselves. It’s far better for them when they get the public arguing amongst themselves and blaming each other.

But it is so depressing, at this late stage of the pandemic, that governments are acting as if the vast majority of their populations are still immunologically naive to Covid. In Europe and America, we have seen the fastest-ever uptake of a vaccine. We are perhaps days or weeks away from the approval of extremely effective therapeutics. And all the initial evidence coming out of South Africa is that the latest variant, though spreading quickly, is afflicting people with mild illnesses, or none at all.

There is nothing really all that surprising. We know viruses evolve to become more infective, and generally they get less deadly over time. We know that coronaviruses evolve in a way that makes them difficult to halt altogether with a vaccine.