CAPITALISM, lockdown lessons and the joy of shopping during the pandemic were the issues raised by columnists and contributors in the newspapers.

The Daily Mail

Stephen Glover said Boris Johnson reportedly declared during a Zoom meeting with colleagues that ‘the reason we have the vaccine success is because of capitalism, because of greed, my friends.’

“Boris the crowd-pleaser quickly realised he had gone too far,” he said. “He said he regretted the word ‘greed’, and urged colleagues to forget he had used it. But of course what he had said was leaked to the Press.

“The idea that Greed is Good has understandably sent his political opponents, and even a few members of his own party, into a fury. “

He said the truth was that without the drive and determination of several pharmaceutical companies the NHS wouldn’t have the vaccines to distribute.

“Whenever Boris Johnson lets slip something outrageous, it’s a fair bet that he doesn’t believe it, or at any rate only half believes it,” he said.

The Daily Express

Virginia Blackburn said we had learned many lessons in lockdown - not to wear lipstick under a mask, for example, and it is quite normal to wake up to a pile of parcels you bought from Amazon the night before and totally forgotten about.

“We live in a world of snitches,” she added. “Who on earth dobbed that grandmother in for having a socially distanced cup of tea with the neighbours? Have ever net curtains been more frequently twitched?

“What else has lockdown taught us?,” she asked. “That we need our freedom and crave normality. Let’s hope the Government really gets it right this time (and all credit to its amazing triumph with the vaccines).

“Because if they try another lockdown, for the second time in this nation’s history they’re going to have a revolution on their hands.”

The Guardian

Richard A Friedman, professor of clinical psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, said the pandemic has been a vast uncontrolled experiment – ‘not just in social isolation, which is bad enough, but in the deprivation of novelty’.

Overnight, we were stripped of our ability to roam around the world the way we normally did, he said.

“Early last fall, I was so bored being stuck at home that I went out to buy an air conditioner (it was still pretty hot), and spent an inordinate amount of time in a real store with real people talking about the mechanics of air conditioners,” he said. “When I returned home, I was nearly ecstatic.”

Being deprived of novelty doesn’t just make us bored; it is actually bad for our brain, he said.

“For most, the pandemic year has shown us that novelty is critical to our overall wellbeing, We can’t live without it.”