One of Winston Churchill’s best figures of speech was that of the three-inch pipe. Discussing public supineness in the face of a surfeit of wartime horrors, he observed that human beings, like a water pipe in a culvert, can absorb only just so much. When a thunderstorm brings a torrent, the surplus flows over the top. Yet we are so obsessed with the pandemic, and with its impact upon our own lives, that few of us think further. I write this in no spirit of priggish superiority because I am as thoroughly institutionalised as

Source: The Times March 03, 2021 17:02 UTC