Boris is right to talk about the coronavirus as a mugger

Is the SARS-CoV-2 virus comparable to a man who accosts you in the street and tries to steal your phone and wallet? Boris Johnson used the image of virus-as-mugger in his Downing Street statement today:

If this virus were a physical assailant, an unexpected and invisible mugger, which I can tell you from personal experience it is, then this is the moment when we have begun together to wrestle it to the floor.And so it follows that this is the moment of opportunity. This is the moment when we can press home our advantage.It is also the moment of maximum risk because I know there will be many people looking now at our apparent success and beginning to wonder whether now is the time to go easy on those social distancing measures.

You don’t have to gaze long into the abyss of political Twitter to see that a lot of people think this is a silly, inaccurate and possibly Trumpian metaphor.