Theatres aren’t staging pantos this Christmas so we won’t get to see a fairy godmother on stage waving her wand and wishing all the ills of the world away. But we might see one in real life, if the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, turns out to be right.
He’s just predicted that a vaccine for coronavirus will work and be available for use soon. He says “the best-case scenario” is that one could come this year. It’s more likely, he adds, that it could arrive in the first few months of 2021.
This is a massive piece of good news. It’s also a tribute to the brilliant work of scientists from all over the world, many of them based in Britain, who have carried out their research and testing at a speed never before seen.
If a vaccine can be found that is safe, simple to use and has a real effect in limiting infection, then the world might be about to put the horror of this year behind it — and this country will take a lot of the credit.
It’s not the first time the Government has promised a solution to manage Covid is in sight — remember the app? — only for hopes to be dashed.
We haven’t heard from scientists yet. We don’t know how effective a vaccine might be. Would it last only for a short time? Would it stop some infection, or all of it? Would it work with people of all ages? Might some of us still be at risk?
Of course even a vaccine that was only partly effective could, along with new treatments for patients, reduce Covid to just another nasty disease that we have to live with — like flu. And that would allow normal life to begin again.
That makes the next steps even more important. What matters is not just that a vaccine works but that people trust it and use it when — or if — one comes. Vaccine-deniers do not need to be given excuses for resisting one.
Managing information and expectations is vital. That’s why we need to hear next from medical experts who are developing vaccines and will oversee their use.
A promise is one thing. We must wait and see if it can be made real.
Boris’s Brexit gamble
Apparently a man in France managed to blow up his house at the weekend, while attempting to swat a fly that was annoying him.
When he started he never expected to leave the place in ruins. Nor, of course, did the Prime Minister when he campaigned for Brexit four years ago, and won an election last December promising that a Brexit deal was “oven-ready”.
Now he’s got to make the gamble of his life. Does he load a no-deal Brexit on top of the Covid catastrophe? Or does he settle with the European Union on terms he’s made clear he doesn’t want?
That gamble is what lies behind today’s reports that the Government will rip up its own exit deal with the EU, by abandoning promises it made about Northern Ireland.
If things turn nasty this winter, it won’t just be the country which suffers. It will be Mr Johnson in the firing line.
If a second wave of coronavirus strains the country’s creaking civil contingencies capability to the limit, how will it cope if lorries get stuck at ports and shops run short of food?
When you are Prime Minister you have got to ask yourself one question. Do I feel lucky? Well, do you Mr Johnson?