Risky business

Risk is relative. When the COVID-19 virus has been prevalent in the community, the large numbers who require hospitalisation threaten to overwhelm the health service. That has been true without a working vaccine. Now that there is vaccines being delivered it is clear the threat to the health service will decline - the risk to the NHS declines. That changes the context for the restrictions on personal freedoms.

The NI Protocol may have seemed a good idea at the time (not on this Podcast) but it is clear something is dangerously wrong, and the claims of protecting the GFA seem seriously adrift if not fundamentally disingenuous. Risk is not an absolute and can only be understood relative to the prevailing circumstances.