This was troubling Boris Johnson during his initial Covid self-confinement. He’d started to discuss this with colleagues. Had they overdone the message? The stay-at-home exhortations were issued with such vigour because it was assumed - wrongly - that Brits would not really listen. Instead, we’ve become as obedient as Swedes while the Swedes - in their collective refusal to lock down - are behaving like Brits. But it’s hard to soften the lockdown message with the Prime Minister, the main messenger, out of intensive care - but, until he fully recovers, out of action.

Other options are, now, being discussed. Perhaps adverts, politely telling us that our country needs us to work. (As one minister puts it: “somebody has to pay for the NHS”). Parents, too, might be urged to send their children to school after Easter – if they qualify. But it’s easy to see how employers, workers and parents have gone to ground. “Stay at home, Protect the NHS, Save lives” – a message honed by Isaac Levido, the Tory election campaign chief – has worked. All too well.

Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, had been working with the Prime Minister on the next step: how to stop the end of lockdown being seen as a question of “lives vs money”. As a former economic adviser, Hancock is certainly mindful of the money: a £200 billion deficit could mean another decade of austerity. But other figures – infections, mortality rates and deaths – are rightly holding the national attention. Phasing out the lockdown needs to be spoken about in terms of lives vs lives. Or, crudely, whether lockdown might end up costing more lives than the virus.