How are we going to heal the human scars of lockdown? – David Behrens

But that doesn’t mean he was wrong to abandon his promise to be “led by the science” and to go against the advice of some of his medical advisors. They were beginning to sound like the little boy who cried wolf.

The storms and floods of the last week notwithstanding, we have seen little of the Tolkienesque winter they forecast back in November. NHS hospitals would be “beyond full stretch” in coping with the most difficult season in their history, they warned us as the third wave of Covid swept the country. Within days, the tally of infections had reached six figures, and we were again haunted by the spectre of a Christmas lockdown.

But the figures of fatalities told a different story. As heartbreaking as each one will have been, Omicron was not the indiscriminate killer we had been led to believe. With most of us triple vaccinated, the greater threat to society had become not the virus itself but our response to it.

Pupils need more help to survive perfect storm after Covid – Sue O’Brien

This was borne out on the very day Mr Johnson was declaring “a moment of pride for our nation and a source of hope for all that we can achieve in the years to come”, when it emerged that in York, worry fuelled by Covid had led more young people than ever to seek support for mental health problems.

Of particular concern, said a report by the council and the local NHS, was anxiety amongst the highest-achieving pupils about their school work and performance in the absence of face-to-face lessons.

This made interesting reading because high achievers are a neglected demographic in a world of social care which deems them capable of looking after themselves. Enforced lockdown proved otherwise, as our brightest brains – the very source of hope to which the PM referred – were taken away from their friends and mentors. A consequence of this, said the report, was that more of them than ever were suffering from eating disorders brought on by stress,

This, then, is the collateral damage of lockdown. The fallout will last for years – perhaps a lifetime – and will eventually consume more NHS resources than any single disease.

Why Prince Andrew must give up Duke of York title – Andrew Vine

Yet this important piece of context appears not to have been given house room on the back of the fag packet that constituted the Government’s strategy for responding to Covid. This was understandable two years ago when we were still firefighting a contagion we did not understand, but it ought to have entered the debate long before it did. Students who will sit their exams this summer – real ones, not simulated assessments by their teachers – could have been spared the anxiety of not knowing from week to week if they’d be allowed into their classrooms. And university students setting out in life with a debt the size of an MP’s expense account could have been reassured that they would be able at the very least to meet their lecturers in person.

I doubt if any of this was on the PM’s mind on Monday; his concern was to stem the flow of calls for his head from within his own party. This he managed spectacularly, to the point where David Davis, the Haltemprice and Howden MP and former leadership contender who had threatened a motion of no confidence over his boss’s behaviour, was moved to scribble something that read like a victory note. Never again, he said, should our civil liberties be handed over without parliamentary approval and oversight.

There are many who will agree with the sentiment, but his lofty language belies the human cost of what has gone on over the last two years. One man’s civil liberty is another’s private agony.

And when Mr Davis went on to say that Monday’s announcement was “the beginning of the end”, he was only half right. Actually, it is merely the end of the beginning in a health crisis that will fester long after the PM has thrown his last Downing Street party – even if it is another decade from now.

Partygate: How Boris Johnson became Donald Trump in disguise – Tom Richmond

Support The Yorkshire Post and become a subscriber today. Your subscription will help us to continue to bring quality news to the people of Yorkshire. In return, you’ll see fewer ads on site, get free access to our app and receive exclusive members-only offers. Click here to subscribe.