The sweeping new Covid restrictions are said to be needed because of urgent pressure on the NHS, yet are not coming in for nine days

We are told that it is being done because of the urgent pressures on the NHS. But the lockdown was announced on December 17,nine days before it comes in.

If the situation is urgent, presumably it will be all the more so on Boxing Day? After all, the various yo yo lockdowns to date have led to situations such as people queuing for shops and crowding into eateries, due to pent up demand.

The failure to act until December 26 is because there would be a uproar if Christmas was cancelled. But this wholly pragmatic approach means that the restrictions are decided politically, not scientifically, and so it undermines them.

And the wider pattern of lurching in and out of lockdowns itself undermines them. People are confused by the fluctuating rules, and also wary of the motivations of our leaders.

A six week closure of non essential retail and hospitality again inflicts great harm on some sections of society, while others, such as non frontline public sector, stay untouched, and can enjoy taxpayer-funded pay rises they got this year.

As Simon Hamilton writes opposite, the health minister Robin Swann said repeated lockdowns were “not feasible” and Arlene Foster, the first minister, said “we cannot keep closing the country down”. The DUP leader also gave an assurance about a November 13 re-opening which did not happen. Now we are moving to even more severe closures. Meanwhile, Michelle O’Neill has no credibility after her presence at the helm of a huge IRA funeral, which was accommodated by the PSNI, then Roselawn cemetery. It is beyond absurd that she now presides over something as harsh an 8pm curfew.

At least schools have not yet been forced into a longer holiday, which would worsen the damage from all the missed classroom time this year. But that too could soon be imposed.

We cannot get away from the stark fact that such colossal harm across society is being inflicted for a pandemic in which those who die have an average age of 82, and have mostly died with Covid, not from it.

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