I do not use Twitter or Facebook myself so I only get to see the posts that catch the headlines on other forms of media.

Back in March and April, a columnist on a leading Dutch newspaper wrote about the high average age of corona victims: “The emotion should go from the corona debate. Dead wood is being felled, perhaps a few months earlier than without the virus. Should everyone still in the bloom of their lives sacrifice everything for that?”

Yesterday, an epidemiologist wrote in a letter a different national paper: “Do we want to continue to protect the weak until a vaccine is available, or are we willing to accept that weaker, older people die earlier?”

Not unsurprisingly, reactions have started coming in from people who take affront at being labelled ‘dead wood.’ After all, it is not just the elderly we are talking about, but also younger people with chronic health conditions, and even previously healthy people that react badly to Covid-19.

To be fair, the epidemiologist was posing the question, not stating an opinion. His point was that the official line on social distancing had little point if too many people just ignored it. The government needed to be clear on what is expected.

In my opinion, the government has been crystal clear. I understood the message, and the people I know personally understood the message too. Of course it relies on individual compliance. None of us really wants such a directive enshrined in law. The government has looked down that road but is hesitating – rightly – at the crossroads.

The problem is not the message. The problem is the large number of people that mistrust authority and experts. Healthy criticism and scrutiny is always good. The exact implementation of social distancing rules varies from country to country, but when you look at reports on the science from around the world, there is overwhelming evidence of the need to maintain a safe distance from each other and avoid unnecessary physical contact.

To use project-speak, the next Deliverable will be a vaccine, the next Milestone, a second wave. Increases in infections at the moment are well below the levels at the height of the crisis in the spring, and do not constitute a second wave. My guess is that we will see a new wave clearly in the autumn and winter, while the Deliverable will not become a fact until the spring.

That is quite a length of time we have to bridge, with the only real defence measures being social distancing. Will our respective societies be able to put the health of those who would suffer a bad outcome to Covid-19 ahead of the desire to be free to do what they want for the next six months or so at least?

One more point. In an age when western governments have encouraged more people into higher education, this hasn’t led to a corresponding increase in enlightenment. The arrogance of youth seems to have increased, along with the mistrust of science. Higher education at its best should lead to evidence-based opinions – which is what science is all about. Have we turned universities into diploma factories, focussing on the piece of paper (or parchment) at the end rather than the quest for new knowledge? This is so not my area of expertise since I never went to university myself and only have second-hand experience of academia. However, I am well able to absorb facts and data and draw conclusions.

Recent polls in different countries have revealed a latent mistrust of vaccination programmes. Whilst I do not want to get into that debate here, this doesn’t bode well for the moment a vaccine is made available to us. Such a vaccine may provide sufficient personal protection – that remains to be seen – but the corona virus will only really be driven back when sufficient numbers of people agree to be vaccinated.

I fear that will leave some parts of the world still unprotected since a world vaccination programme would not only be unprecedented, but almost certainly impossible. There are national leaders still unconvinced of the dangers of the pandemic, even after all these months, some of whom may not even be sorry that Covid-19 will dent their population figures.

We have a way to go yet. I fear the coming Milestone, and yearn for the next Deliverable.