If it is not permitted to shout “Fire!” in a crowded theatre (unless there actually is one), does the same principle apply to refusing to cover our face during a contagious epidemic? Should a person be free, in the name of individual liberty, to go barefaced, thereby disregarding the interests of the community? Or, to put it in terms of the current political debate in Westminster, does the state have the right to tell its citizens that they may not hug their grandmother? Or to prevent them from attending Mass on Sunday?

What has fired up the debate is the government’s decision to discriminate, region by region or county by county, over the severity of restrictions to be enforced by law according to the level of Covid-19 infections in that area. Many Tory MPs in constituencies with low rates of infection have reacted against their constituents being lumped in with the populations of neighbouring towns and cities where rates are higher, and subjected to the same draconian curtailments.