As Britain streaks ahead of its neighbours in rolling out its vaccine programme (with Somerset top of the vaccination leaderboard of every health authority in the entire country), the challenge here is turning to logistics rather than politics.

But elsewhere, things are still at a rather earlier stage, with high incidences of vaccine scepticism. In France, for instance, we’ve seen, as of December last year, only 40% of the population expressing a willingness to take a covid- 19 vaccine.
And even here in Britain (which, together with Denmark and Thailand has the highest rate of willingness in the world), there remains around 20% of the population who still view the prospect of receiving a vaccine with misgivings.

And given that the vaccine offers the only route out of the social restrictions under which we’re currently chafing, it’s worth asking why that is.
Some of that is down to an instinctive caution about the speed with which the vaccine has been developed.
And those qualms are the most easily calmed by the success we’re seeing unfold every day – with 14 million now having had at least one jab and the R-rate halving every two weeks or so.

But there is another type of mistrust which is more stubborn – an entrenched scepticism about the state and its motivations.
And for me, that’s a consequence of the increasing conflation of differing political viewpoints and individual, personal morality. When we have a political discourse that consists (often) of each side questioning not merely the other side’s competence but often impugning their motives, this will obviously have a corrosive effect on public trust – an acid rain that effaces the distinctive characteristics of our democratic institutions.

And not only does this corrode trust in the institutions upon which we’re now depending to save lives and hasten our return to the freedoms we take for granted, but threatens to compromise our resilience in the face of future crises.

The price of freedom is (as Jefferson apparently said) constant vigilance.
But it’s worth ensuring that cynicism isn’t mistaken for scrutiny and scepticism for intellectual sophistication.

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