DAILY MAIL COMMENT: A royal lesson in how we can live with Covid 

As ever, the Queen sets an inspiring example to us all. Despite suffering from Covid, she’s up and about and, we’re told, performing ‘light duties’.

She watched her horse win at Newbury races on television yesterday and found time to send a congratulatory message to our curling gold medallists in Beijing.

As well as demonstrating her typical ‘keep calm and carry on’ approach, the mildness of her symptoms perfectly illustrates the evolving story of this pandemic.

Until a year ago contracting Covid could easily have been a death sentence for any 95-year-old. At the very least, it would have been a cause for grave concern.

That Her Majesty is now able to brush off the infection so lightly is testament to the miraculous effect of the vaccines, which this country pioneered and Boris Johnson ensured were properly funded.

The time has come for Britain to become a free society once more – learning to live with Covid, rather than being shackled by it. 

No more being told where we may go, whom we may meet and how we should live our lives. The state must move aside and let the individual take back control.

True, the pandemic isn’t over, and probably never will be. But it’s receding all the time and is manageable without any major risk of the NHS being overwhelmed.

Thanks to Mr Johnson’s hugely successful booster jab campaign and the relative weakness of the Omicron variant, the chances of the fully vaccinated becoming seriously ill are small to negligible.

So today, he lays out his blueprint for scrapping all remaining Covid rules, including mandatory isolation for five days after a positive test.

As a result of Boris Johnson’s hugely successful booster jab campaign and the relative weakness of the Omicron variant, the chances of the fully vaccinated becoming seriously ill are small to negligible

Inevitably, some say it’s too soon – Labour, the SNP, the gloomier members of Sage, risk-averse NHS managers, trade unions.

But if they had their way, we would be cocooned indefinitely, with all the hideous collateral damage that would inflict on hospital waiting lists, children’s education, mental health and, of course, the economy.

Free Covid testing costs up to £2billion a month. For a virus which has lost most of its sting, that is simply unsustainable.

Yes, we must remain cautious, but we must also snap out of this suspended animation. It’s time to trust the vaccines and get on with our lives.

Give students a refund

While their students languished at home or were locked down in halls of residence, receiving inadequate online teaching over flickering Zoom, universities were piling up a mountain of cash.

Between them, the 24 Russell Group institutions have amassed a surplus of £2.2billion during the pandemic, including £115million from furlough alone.

To avoid looking like base profiteers, they must now give a large part of that money back to their students, in refunds and reduced fees.

These young people have been paying through the nose for a service they have simply not received. They deserve to be compensated. The least universities can do is acknowledge that by sharing their own massive profits.

Putin’s new nemesis

We no longer need to worry about the impending conflict in Ukraine. The Welsh nationalists have arrived!

Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price has taken an anti-war delegation of ‘socialists, democrats and internationalists’ to Kiev, where they have been meeting workers, LGBTQ representatives, ethnic minorities and human rights groups.

He says the visit is a show of solidarity with the Ukrainian people, and that they will stand together ‘in defiance of Putin’s warmongering’. The Russian tyrant must be quaking in his boots.