Like many other Telegraph journalists, I have received a number of emails from well-informed doctors and medical staff working at the front of the NHS. They are in despair.

They are alarmed by the failure of the Government to take more drastic action to fight Covid-19. They are stunned that this country seems to have opted for capitulation at a time when best practice leaders in East Asia - and I don’t mean China - have managed to contain the virus through use of technology, and to do so without massive economic and social disruption.

These medics are not reflexive ideological enemies of the Tories or blow-hard Twitterati. They are Telegraph readers who fear that a terrible mistake is being made and that the country is heading for a catastrophe - using that loaded term correctly - unless policy is changed immediately.