The lesson I’ve learned from my meeting with jab genius

Up in the Cairngorms — where i am at a summit in Braemar so stratospherically rarefied we should be issued with oxygen masks not tartan water-bottles — you have to wear a mask indoors all the time unless eating or drinking.

i find this hard enough as i stop breathing when i cover my nose (my tip: wander round with a glass in your hand at all times).

i’ve been panting during the stimulating sessions at The new Enlightenment Summit — ‘McDavos’ for short — such as Revelations Of The Cosmos with the Astronomer Royal Lord Rees, or Can We Defeat Death? with a nobel laureate.

But during a morning session on the vaccine — which included Dame Sarah Gilbert, co-creator of the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab — there was an alert on my phone that really made me gasp. i almost screamed through my mask.

noooo! The dreaded hashtag #OctoberLockdown was already trending. not another one!

Mandate mask-wearing again in England if you must, but the last thing we need is a half-term firebreak a full 18 months after we were told by you-know-who to stay at home and flatten the curve.

parents with children at school will be panicking most, but even those of us whose offspring have long left the classroom are shuddering at the prospect of going back to square one.

After all, three weeks to ‘squash the sombrero’ in March 2020 turned into well over a year. We all know how long a ‘fortnight firebreak’ could last — past the winter flu season and into 2022.

Ministers have since denied the claims, but admitted there are ‘contingency plans’ ready as a ‘last resort to prevent unsustainable pressure on our NHS’.

Well, we all know from bitter experience what that means.

When i saw the newsflash, i wanted to stick my hand up to ask the distinguished panel why on earth we would close shops, schools and stop travel again, now well over 90 per cent of the population has either had Covid or been vaccinated.

What, pray, had been the point of their world-beating day at the office if we did?

As well as Dame Sarah, the panel featured the chair of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and immunisation, professor Andrew pollard, and the co-developer of the AstraZeneca jab, professor Teresa Lambe — so you can understand my eagerness to settle the question.

Dame Sarah warned us: ‘As things stand our immunity from flu has been lowered by lockdowns.’

Right. So lockdowns have actually increased our vulnerability to flu, and yet we might have to endure more restrictions in order to protect the NHS from a virus for which we have rolled out an effective vaccine, thanks to Dame Sarah, Kate Bingham (former chair of the UK Vaccine Taskforce) et al — and which has killed very few children in the UK.

For on teens and the jab, prof pollard was clear. The benefits of the vaccine to 12-to-15-year-olds is ‘marginal’ and ‘much more valuable in a 65-year-old in Ghana. To use doses most effectively, give them to those most at risk.’ When it comes to lockdowns, the focus should be on ‘preventing deaths in older and vulnerable adults’.

LEADERS, please follow the science and these scientists. politicians have got to break the cycle of addiction to lockdowns. Just look at Australia. Melbourne is in the midst of its sixth lockdown, while Sydney has been in lockdown since June. Their actions — with helicopters shouting at people on the beach — are starting to look slightly unhinged.

My main takeaway from my Highland fling? Get flu jabs. Dame Sarah is working on a vaccine that’s more broadly effective against all of the sub-types of flu.

i would also beg the Government to stop publishing only the daily death rates and infections of coronavirus and reveal the death rates from everything else: missed cancers, heart disease and despair.

Only then can you compare the numbers of people dying with Covid and the numbers dying because of Covid.

We have to pivot from a Covidfirst mindset to a live-with-Covid culture. Yes, even if that puts us at the back of the class for the end–of-pandemic report card.