Let’s put aside for the moment the immediate furore over Boris Johnson’s future and the further flood of Downing Street festivity stories which may not be finished yet. We need to ask the question that must, given what has prevailed in our lives for the past two years, be most serious. How on earth did we get to a point where events and decisions which would once have been regarded as commonplace, even virtuous – an employer expressing good wishes to staff at a party, a child embracing elderly grandparents, a relative making regular visits to a dying hospital patient – became illegal?