I have thrown my mask away, it's time to stop cowering - ANN WIDDECOMBE

It is quite statistically impossible that they are all vulnerable or all made ultra-cautious by bereavement. They are simply unwilling to trust the vaccines they have doubtless had and which are visibly keeping hospitalisation rates and deaths low. Covid is real and vicious but it is in retreat and we have to learn to live with it. It has killed 0.2 percent of the population in 18 months. Before the advent of the vaccines more than 90 percent of deaths occurred in people who were very old or medically vulnerable. Most people are at very minimal risk.

Millions of people have Covid and do not even know it. If masks prevented Covid then millions (and remember the official figures cover only those who have been tested so there will probably be a few million more) would not have caught it.

I was the only member of the congregation in church last Sunday not wearing a mask. "You don't have to wear a mask but then you must not sing the hymns," said a steward.

As I am tone deaf, that is no great hardship. I have asked lots of people wearing masks why they are not rejoicing in freedom and the answer is always the same: "I feel safer". In short they are scared, which is what Javid was, unwisely, pointing out.

Meanwhile the NHS app is telling perfectly healthy, double-jabbed, symptomless people to stay at home just in case a fleeting exposure to someone else may have caused them to catch the virus.

So on the one hand the minister says "don't cower" and on the other tells people to do just that. Mixed messages yet again.

Fury has greeted the BBC's appointment two virulent anti- Brexiteers to senior news but what else would we from the BBC? It is only what has become the of the beast. The real question is why on earth should be expected to pay for it.