Don't make any more Covid promises, Boris

It's one thing to sound optimistic and positive about the post-Covid future but we have had so many promises in the past which haven't born fruit. The June 21 Freedom Day slipped into the shadows and now it's July 19. Boris sounds very confident that we will all be walking, eating, drinking, living free from that date. After such a long time in the lockdown masked doldrums it's hard to believe being able to walk into a shop or board a bus without being covered up. And we've had so many variants of this wretched virus, it's hard to share Boris's confidence. But let's say he's right and July 19 becomes Covid freedom day, will we really feel free? Free like before Covid became the bane of our lives? I suspect that in a lot of people, probably of the slightly middle-to-older generation, will still feel a certain reluctance to go whoopee and drop all the restrictions that have changed our lives for so long. Already health experts are saying that the flu this winter will be as bad as Covid. You see? It's that kind of world now. Soon there will be new rules to cover flu, whereas before. flu was flu, something we all put up with. There is no such thing as a risk-free life but that's ok. Yet now, after the Covid pandemic we have got used to the government telling us what we can and can't do and we have become lesser human beings as a result. Free will has gone. For example, travelling to an amber-listed country and returning is a nightmare of testing and form-filling, and then self-isolating and more testing. It's life by government control. All for the right reasons I'm sure but I don't want governments in general to start thinking that in case there is another Covid-style pandemic in the future we all need to be regulated permanently from now on so as to be ready for the next drama. If July 19 is freedom day then let's hope everyone can embrace it and feel a huge weight lifting from our lives. But somehow I doubt that will be the case. A lot of people, perhaps most people, will now always feel more cautious about life.