The world has panicked, and the British government has panicked worse than most. We scared ourselves and our fellow citizens out of rational thought. Matthew Parris writes in The Times that by losing our sense of proportion I submit we have crashed our economy, crashed our education system, our performing arts, our tourist and travel industry, and blighted the life chances of a whole generation. Before too long, commentators, politicians and scientists may be blushing at the mess we made of our national response to the coronavirus pandemic. Commentators will duck. Politicians will be blamed for everything, and who can doubt that political leadership has been a shambles? But how about “the science”, those men and women, academics, doctors and mathematical modelers, in whose expertise ministers once placed their trust?