When Thomas Jefferson went for a sojourn in Paris in the late 1700s, he wrote a letter to his nephew, with this advice: “Whenever you are to do a thing tho’ it can never be known but to yourself, ask yourself how you would act were all the world looking at you, and act accordingly.”Yes, Jefferson, all very well: act as if the world is watching. Or, as other moralists put it, integrity is doing the right thing when no one sees. But Jefferson was never tested — morally not microbially — as we are. He never left Paris for London, sailing through the border with no one asking where he had been, let alone enforcing the ultra-strict quarantine all those returning holidaymakers are

Source: The Times September 02, 2020 23:06 UTC