We need a dose of vaccine realism

One of my geniuses as both a commentator and a character is to confront what for most normal people amounts to unqualified good news and immediately spot the downside. I’m a professional party-pooper.

Hence, as promising early results from three major Covid vaccine trials inspire a flurry of jubilant metaphors about tunnels and cavalry, your downer columnist glowers — for the New York Times didn’t tag Shriver ‘the Cassandra of American letters’ for nothing. Beware, warns this killjoy crank, allowing your minders to keep you in confinement ‘just a little bit longer’ and then you’ll be let out to play. Like the classic carrot dangling before a donkey’s nose, an indeterminate short time is still out of reach, and in this sense doesn’t effectively vary from a long time from now.

With an end to this farce ostensibly in sight, effective vaccines might seem to redeem lockdowns and their euphemistic ‘tier’ equivalents. See? We needn’t learn to ‘live with’ Covid-19.