HERE are a few facts to start. The chance of a child under 16 dying of the Covid-19 virus is around five million to one. In the latest research in Italy, 96 per cent of those dying from coronavirus had underlying health problems. Almost half the deaths in Scotland have occurred in or been connected to care homes. The cost of the lockdown in the UK is heading towards £200 billion.

Las month I argued that there was a danger of a “safe, safer, safest” approach being adopted by politicians and the media. If the virus was moralised and politicised around a one-dimensional myopic idea of “safe is good”, I argued, there was a danger of developing unscientific, irrational and potentially authoritarian responses to the virus. The problem, I would suggest, continues.

It is one of the bizarre and depressing aspects of events over the last few months that being super-safe is seen as progressive or radical. Some so-called left-wing commentators, for example, claim that “all” the deaths so far are the fault of Tory policies; some others argue that a herd immunity approach is a form of “eugenics”.

On the slightly less insane front, we find that unions want to keep the country closed because their sole role, apparently, is to keep their members safe (regardless of the actual risk). Meanwhile, in Scotland, an internal investigation has taken place into STV’s “North Korea-style" video showing children praising Nicola Sturgeon for “keeping them safe”: Given the evidence, safe from what is not clear.

Part of the super-safe approach has been based on a distrust that politicians and experts have of the public. This accounts for the simplicity of the messages given to us and indeed the numerous arrestable offences that harm no one.

These inane policies have been politicised and adopted as a new form of goodness, encouraging us all to boo at people who drive more than a few miles or to become outraged by those who get within five rather than six feet of us: Note that even the World Health Organisation advise a one, not two-metre distancing rule.

Science tells us we are not all equally at risk, in fact many of us are not at risk in any meaningful sense. Let’s stop playing politics with safety and start developing a balanced approach to this virus.

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