The war on breathing

‘We all have to be responsible for the fact that our health touches upon those who we sit next to and who we share air with. And this is a public health truism that is self-evident,’ said health minister Lord Bethell, answering a question about mandating vaccine passports in nightclubs in the House of Lords. Yet according to Brunel University Physicist Dr Colin Axon, medics (and presumably Lords) have a ‘cartoonish’ understanding of how tiny particles travel through the air.

There is a political war on breathing — the very thing that keeps us all alive. And Bethell is not alone. Dr Sarah Jarvis recently told Jeremy Vine, ‘Breathing is an offensive weapon if you are infected with Covid.’ Even allowing for a bit of dramatic licence on TV, it is impossible to imagine someone saying that pre-Covid. Of course, breath is life itself. Meditational and spiritual practices involve breath-work, famously the Vipassana.