Who would want to be a politician today?

Shut the pubs and restaurants again and the economy tanks further down, whilst large sections of a despairing hospitality trade face bankruptcy. The Argyll Bar in Helensburgh has already closed.

Keep things as they are, and risk all the dire prophecies of a second winter spike of the coronavirus being fulfilled, and thus becoming accessories before the fact of more Covid-19 deaths. Not so much a no brainer as a no winner.

The only way we can avoid the former course is to get our heads round the fact that the risks we faced in the early spring are just as ever present now.

After such a long haul, it’s only human nature that we give in to the temptation to let our collective guard down.

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And it’s easy to be judgemental about folk racing to parks and beaches during rare sunny days when you’ve got a garden and a decent view.

But as the cluster in Aberdeen demonstrates, this nasty little virus doesn’t need a second invitation to home in on public complacency.

This year is the year more people will die of ignorance.

I note that the blessed Ann Widdecombe has been arguing for a no-mask hour in shops and supermarkets for those who don’t wish to wear them. What is that woman smoking?

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How about the staff? Don’t they deserve protection? And how about your fellow cretins? Do you really want to risk their lives and lungs to make a particularly stupid point?

It’s the kind of idiocy too common in parts of America, where not wearing a protective mask is being heralded as a victory for personal freedoms.

Aye, right – freedom to increase your and everyone else’s chance of becoming infected in a country where 150,000-plus of your fellow citizens have already died.

There was one particularly arresting image online of an American state where the seat of government was besieged by gun-toting citizens – and we’re not talking small arms here – demanding that the governor open up all the businesses.

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They were all white, apart from their partially covered red faces. Just imagine what might have happened to an armed black protest.

And how ironic to cover your face when you’re threatening people and breaking the law, but somehow find it too much trouble when you pop out for the shopping.

People in this country demanding the freedom to ignore public health warnings like to describe themselves as “libertarians”, which has a sort of freedom-friendly ring about it.

Except they’re the same folk who once thought it absolutely fine to drive without a seat belt. For libertarian, read idiot.

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