Yet, lockdown means but one thing even if huge, disheartening numbers of people seem to imagine their obligations to society can be tweaked to allow them a particular latitude.

That West Cork gardaí this weekend issued a Westmeath man — 250km from Cork — with a fine for breaking the 5km limit underlines this. 

That 300 such fines have been issued in the last week shows the scale of indifference to pandemic-control regulations. 

That has inevitable consequences. 

One of those is that the number of Covid-19 patients in the State’s hospitals has exceeded 2,000 for the first time.

One of those is a worker who helped to transport a sick patient within the health service in recent weeks. 

The man, like many others, is very sick because someone somewhere may have been less responsible than they should have been.

Until everyone accepts that the rules apply to them as well as everyone else these utterly avoidable infections will continue. 

What’s hard to understand about that?