We are all playing Covid roulette. Without clean air, the next infection could permanently disable you

‘Three years after the pandemic began, the government still does almost nothing to make schools safe.’ Photograph: Anthony Devlin/Getty Images

You could see Covid-19 as an empathy test. Who was prepared to suffer disruption and inconvenience for the sake of others, and who was not? The answer was often surprising. I can think, for instance, of five prominent environmentalists who denounced lockdowns, vaccines and even masks as intolerable intrusions on our liberties, while proposing no meaningful measures to prevent transmission of the virus. Four of them became active spreaders of disinformation.

If environmentalism means anything, it’s that our damaging gratifications should take second place to the interests of others. Yet these people immediately failed the test, placing their own convenience above the health and lives of others.