Five Years Ago

Five years ago today – on the very day of Epiphany – I got up in the morning and found myself apparently unable to see with my left eye. I say 'apparently' because, when I covered my right eye, I found I could see perfectly well with my left; the problem, as I soon discovered, was with my brain. In fact, I had had a transient ischaemic attack (which my doctors have ever since referred to, unhelpfully, as a 'stroke'). It felt weird at the time, but only for an hour or two, and I was back in rude health by the next morning. 
As it happens, that day was also the day on which the third nationwide 'lockdown' of the Covid epidemic began. Our government, doggedly following 'The Science' (i.e. Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance, the Pet Shop Boys of public health), continued to propel the nation down the slippery slope to social and economic ruin – and if Starmer had had his way, there would have been yet more lockdowns. All of this was, as we now know, to no good effect whatsoever. How long ago it seems – or does it? I am pretty sure that if the right virus came along now, the whole grisly shebang would kick off again, with lockdowns, masks, social distancing and tiers (remember tiers?). We got a whiff of it earlier this winter, when various medical experts were barely able to contain their excitement as they declared that the new 'superflu' variant would crash the NHS unless drastic measures were taken. Oddly, this did not come to pass.