GETTING ready to celebrate Liberation Day on the 19th? Restrictions lifted: no need for masks any more, meet up with any number of people you like, no need for social distancing… The only thing Boris failed to mention is that there would be unicorns prancing over the Downs.

No, nor me. Solely because he has failed to inform the virus as well as us.

In answer to the headline question you attached to R P Lambeth’s letter (July 8), “No more face masks: Is it freedom or is it madness?”, it is the latter.

Look at the facts. We can please ourselves whether or not we wear face coverings which, it should be noted, protect others rather than ourselves.

So should we be infected, we are exposing shop assistants, bus drivers and anyone we are in close contact with. “Pull up the gang plank, guys, I’m on board” comes to mind.

There have been surges in infection rates after mass gatherings. Remember the local increase in numbers in Gloucestershire after the Cheltenham

Festival last March? And in Merseyside after the football game between Atlético Madrid and Liverpool that same month?

With mainly younger folk (many of them not yet vaccinated) filled with justifiable enthusiasm to share the excitement of the Euros with friends and fellow England supporters in pubs and in public places where massive TV screens have been erected, we can expect yet another surge in infection statistics – probably just in time for the 19th.

For a Prime Minister to hand responsibility over to us as individuals is, of course, to absolve himself and the government of that same responsibility, so any increase in infections can be blamed on us.

Interesting that from a man who barely knows the meaning of “personal responsibility”. He also invites us to make our own decisions – again, from a man who over the last 18 months has made only the wrong ones. This is yet another.

The number of daily Covid infections currently stands at 25,000 and it doubles every eight days – hardly an ideal set of circumstances for abandoning precautionary measures.

We are on our own now. When each of us goes shopping, catches a bus, takes a train, we are dependent on others being responsible towards us. Will they be? Will they think of us or just of themselves? Will the thought that the person they are sitting behind in the bus or standing next to in the queue at a supermarket checkout might be classified as “vulnerable” cross their minds? Will they simply exercise common sense (which is infinitely less common than most imagine)?

How we respond to Covid is not about ME but about US – and the best source of advice so that all of us benefit and stay as safe as possible should come from a responsible government. Personal decision making which relies on our individual interpretation of social responsibility or our unique vision of common sense is a miserable substitute.

EasyJet and Ryanair have already announced that wearing a mask will be a condition of carriage, as the technical expression goes. I imagine cruise lines will adopt this too. What support from the law would be available if retail outlets, bus and rail companies were to introduce similar conditions of entry? And what rights would a security officer have to prevent a stroppy (and selfish) customer gaining access to a supermarket?

James Williams in his article “Making sense of it”, also on July 8, is of course right that “we will need to come to terms with living with Covid in the long term” but we should all work to ensure that the number of infections remains as small as possible. In his address to the nation on July 5, the PM promised us the opposite.

Sorry, folks, there won’t be any unicorns.

Dr Michael Johnson

Kevin Gardens

Woodingdean