I witnessed a really powerful moment today in court. A judge read the harrowing words of a junior doctor to a man who had been on a mass protest against lockdown.

The truly brilliant District Judge Lynne Matthews was addressing a 53-year-old man who had marched against lockdown with 400 other Covid sceptics in Bristol.

Judge Matthews started the hearing by reading out an article she’d seen in the Times during her lunch break. It was written by a doctor on a high dependency ward. Here is some of what the judge read:

“The patients don’t ask many questions, mostly because they need to spend all of their energy breathing.

“I try to work out if one of my patients isn’t answering my questions because she is delirious, because she doesn’t speak English, or because she is depressed. I work out that it is probably the latter; her notes say that her husband died just before new year, from Covid.