This is a very British story. Because we Brits are often warlike but never militaristic, we often make a balls-up of the first phase of any campaign. The Peninsular War, the Crimean War, the Zulu War in 1879, the Boer War, the second world war; defeats and humiliations sap national morale, until we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves down, and fight back all the way to victory. This process is often abetted by improvisation and eccentricity. That has been true of the battle against Covid.
I once heard Peter Carrington say that he had been at school before science was invented. Although a generation younger, I know what he meant. In my ignorance, I made one assumption: that science was an exact science. As with the chemistry sets of my small-boyhood, if you followed the instructions, you could predict the outcome.
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