THE odds weren’t good. Looking around the gathered throng, raising glasses before heading into a three-course dinner, I thought it probable that at least two among us were carrying Covid. That was almost two weeks ago, when in Scotland it was estimated that one in 45 was infected. Despite this, that evening people were vigorously shaking hands and standing so closely you could identify their brand of toothpaste.

Shortly after a sticky handshake with a stranger I went into dinner, to find him sitting at the same table. No chance then to sanitise before tackling a much-needed bread roll which, as a result, went untouched. Four hours later, as the room linked hands for Auld Lang Syne it might have been possible, if suddenly afflicted with amnesia, to forget there was ever a time when such behaviour was medically unwise, not to mention illegal.

The following day I was at a three-hour an event with around 40 people. On the way home, the crush at the ticket barrier in Glasgow’s Queen Street Station was like a flashback to my commuting days: a crowd jostling shoulder to shoulder, desperately waiting for their platform to be announced. When the moment came, we surged for the gates like spawning salmon attempting the great leap.

Can you catch Covid in those circumstances? I have no idea. All I know is that at some point I managed to. With the result that, as I write, I’m in purdah, longing for the day when I test negative and can step out of the house to bring in the bins without feeling I should be carrying the clappers.

In England, rates have been steadily falling for the past two months. Not so here. As the latest figures show, the case rate increased last week, so that around 135,400 were infected, which roughly equates to 1 in 40. On hearing I’m laid low people respond with a list of their own relatives and relatives in the same situation, some poor souls felled for the second time.

It’s a comfort, of sorts, to know you’re not alone, but not as much as you’d think. Despite reassurances from public health experts like Professor Linda Bauld, who says “we do seem to be in a much more stable situation”, it is evident that while no longer causing waves of severe illness, the disease remains very much with us.

Earlier in the year, as soon as social distancing came to an end and masks were no longer mandatory, most of us probably accepted that at some point we would catch it. Thanks to Pfizer, Moderna, AZ or whichever brand of vaccine you’ve been given, the chances are it’ll make you feel no more unwell than a bad shivery cold.

Yet it’s not nothing. When Nicola Sturgeon caught it recently, she admitted to being “knocked for six”. Urging people to get their vaccinations if they had not already, she added, “Right now, I’m feeling extremely grateful for that.”

For myself, a week after first feeling unwell, and despite most of the symptoms having passed, I am fine one moment, and the next in need of a wall to lean on; better still, a long lie-down. Another friend has texted to say it took her three weeks to get back to normal.

I mention this not because I enjoy broadcasting details of my health, which, believe it or not, I find even more boring than you do. It’s just that, ahead of what looks set to be the most sociable long weekend in years, and the Scotland World Cup play-off at Hampden tonight, is it not sensible to be aware that, while we might want to party like it’s 1952, we’re in a completely different era epidemiologically speaking?

Across the UK there will be as many jubilee parties as hundreds and thousands on a cake. Those that take place outdoors will pose relatively little risk. With rain widely forecast in these parts, however, the doors of village halls and people’s houses will open, and the chance of contracting it greatly increase.

This, even though it’s summertime, when the danger of respiratory disease is at its lowest. Of course this doesn’t mean arrangements should be cancelled and corgi-shaped cupcakes tossed into the recycling. Simply that, rather than behaving as if the pandemic is a thing of the past, we should not take unnecessary risks.

It was the sense of cheerful abandon that struck me at the events I attended. There was such delight at being able to gather again, it was as if we could banish any lingering threat by a collective act of will power. Sadly, as I’ve discovered, that doesn’t seem to work.

Until Covid becomes as minor an aggravation as the common cold, we are in what you might think of as the Covid-war: under threat of attack at any moment. For several more years at least, as variants continue to throw us off course, this virus will snap at our heels. No wonder the First Minister expressed gratitude for those who came up with vaccines. One of her key advisors, Devi Sridhar, Professor of Public Health at Edinburgh University, has done likewise. On getting her first jab, as she wrote in Preventable, her excellent account of the pandemic, she felt “elation and appreciation”, knowing this was protecting her and others.

Yet she also reflects that now we have vaccines, “the question has really changed from “When does it end?” to “How do we manage and live alongside this virus?”. Her conclusions are more optimistic for us than for less affluent countries, where she fears “it could transform into a major childhood killer”. As she writes, “That is the story of global health: richer countries race ahead and solve the major challenges of infectious diseases, and poorer countries are left behind”.

It’s a sobering note on which to begin the Jubilee Bank Holiday, and far more troubling than the risk – for most of us – of falling unwell and spending a few days in bed binge-watching The Wire. Even so, there remains a frisson of anxiety as normal activities resume. As we snatch a sausage roll from the buffet in a packed marquee, or raise a toast in an airless pub, I suspect many will be keeping their fingers metaphorically crossed. This is what living with Covid looks like: knowing the risk and saying to hell with it.

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