LET’S cling to a little hope that the Omicron variant is going to turn out to be extremely infectious but comparatively mild, particularly when batted away by our immune systems bolstered by the vaccinations.

If that’s the case, with a little luck and a lot of jabs, Christmas can go ahead.

The Government is geeing up our battle-fatigued NHS for another winter campaign, and if it is to hit the new target of offering all adults boosters by the end of January, it will have to be performing four million jabs a week, which will be yet another remarkable effort.

The word that came out of yesterday’s briefing was “sensible” – people need to behave sensibly to minimise the spread of the virus. The difficulty here is that one person’s definition of good sense looks reckless to another – that’s why people will have very different views about how sensible it is to sit on tiny chairs in an ill ventilated school hall with a couple of hundred other people to watch a nativity play performed by children who are extremely efficient bug generators.

It is a very complex equation, because cancelling nativities will deprive children and parents of some of the most memorable, and magical, moments of school careers.

So let’s reverse the question and look at what is not sensible, and two things stand out. It makes no sense not to wear a mask when they deprive all but spectacle wearers of absolutely nothing, and it makes no sense at all not to be vaccinated.