A little fear may be a healthy thing

Nicola Sturgeon hardly needed to answer out loud when she was asked at her coronavirus briefing yesterday if she was nervous about the latest round of lockdown easing measures.

Having stood in front of the nation day after day, week after week, delivering often harrowing updates on the tragic toll of Covid-19, she knows better than anyone the potential consequences of putting a foot wrong now. She is, with the help of her ministerial colleagues and advisers, making what are quite literally life and death decisions.

That sort of territory doesn’t come without an enormous burden of responsibilty, or the expectation that any decisions taken by a first minister will be closely scrutinised and that they will be held accountable for them.

So, on what she described as Scotland’s biggest day on the road out of the pandemic, it’s understandable that Ms Sturgeon was nervous, anxious, and even privately a bit terrified as people started heading into pubs and restaurants for the first time in almost four months.

The truth is we should all feel a bit of that as we go out to socialise, and remember the virus is much more likely to spread from person to person indoors than it is outdoors.

We should have fun and enjoy our new freedoms – but make sure we stay safe too.

“Any decisions taken will be closely scrutinised and they will be held accountable”