While respiratory viruses nearly always evolve towards lower virulence, essentially because the least sick people go to the most meetings and parties, this one was never very dangerous for most people in the first place. Its ability to kill 80-year-olds in care homes stands in sharp contrast with its inability to kill younger people.Matt Ridley writes in The Telegraph that the influential Imperial College modelers have unrealistically assumed that all the reduction in coronavirus transmission was due to interventions. But as an expert scourge of dubious models, Nic Lewis, has shown, with arguably more realistic assumptions, Imperial’s own model implies lockdowns did not make the largest contribution towards ending this wave of the pandemic. Will there be another wave in the autumn? Most medics think so. But if we learn the lessons of the first wave – mainly that shielding the old and vulnerable is key – and we manage at least some effective contact tracing, then the winter wave should be more like a series of small, local outbreaks. A second national lockdown would be a huge mistake, given the harm the first one has done to everything from cancer diagnosis to mental health, let alone employment.