It was bound to happen. The health authorities seem to have come round to the idea that banning everyone from doing anything was not necessarily the best way of dealing with COVID-19. Now, the drift appears to be a cautious coexistence in which life goes on as long as the right precautions are followed.

As the measures are eased, there’s a parallel shift away from all the patriotic and patronising rhetoric, towards a model in which people are treated as responsible adults who have every interest to protect themselves and others. Soon, the flags will be furled, Viva Malta will be played mostly by Maltese nostalgics living in Brussels, and Brian Hansford will have to give up his vocation as a beach vigilante. Dry eyes all round.

For some, however, it’s still all tunnel no light. As life returns to normal for the rest of us, there is no such relief for the many thousands who are over 65. I get the sense that many of them are disobeying orders. If they didn’t, they’d probably be stuck indoors with desperation for company, for pretty much ever.

It could be argued that the whole point of the lockdown was to protect older people, or at least to protect the health system from being overwhelmed by older patients. The statistics show that the risk of ending up in hospital and perhaps dying was and is low for the young.

The health authorities could have done nothing and let the old die like flies. Certainly from a purely biological point of view, the death of the old does not weaken a population.

That preventive measures were taken suggests that we live in a sane society where the old are valued. It also shows that public health is not just about the purely biological.

There is, however, a point at which value and protection turn into something else. That point has been reached, and probably passed. Unless the measures are eased also for people who have been classified as vulnerable, we will end up with the very opposite of value.

Perhaps unexpectedly, the one dissenting whisper was that of Lino Farrugia, the CEO of the hunters’ federation. On the first day of the season, he declared he would be abstaining from hunting as a gesture of solidarity with those hunters who had been banned from going to the field because of their age.

I read the other day that some shops were turning away older customers, despite the fact that there is no law that imposes such restrictions

Farrugia stopped just short of questioning the ban. He’d have been right. The government’s argument for opening the hunting season was that roaming the countryside in the early hours with a gun and a dog posed no risk whatsoever of either contracting or passing on infection.

The day the hunting season was announced (amazing coincidence there), the prime minister told us that being out in the open was actually healthy. Exactly why that same countryside was such a miasma of risk for older hunters was never explained.

And yet it was easy to understand, because the logic was the one that has been used throughout: the vulnerable are vulnerable are vulnerable.

The much-missed Joseph Troisi (he died in 2018, aged 74) was a professor of social gerontology. A good chunk of his later career was spent trying to convince the people who mattered that there was more to ageing than sitting around feeling all vulnerable and sorry for yourself. The ‘university of the third age’ and the various other things he set up were all modelled on the principle of active ageing.

It was his contribution to a good idea that caught on. Very many people nowadays enjoy good health and are active, professionally and in other ways, well into their 70s.

Until COVID-19 showed up and they were told, between the lines and less so, that it had all been a bit of a joke. Whatever the state of their health, they found themselves medicalised, classified as vulnerable, and sectioned accordingly. Far from active ageing, it was now their lot to stay indoors at all times and avoid all manner of social interaction.

Now some will argue that, from a purely biological point of view, the risks are objectively and statistically higher for people over 65. Maybe, but I thought we had established that public health isn’t, or shouldn’t be, about the purely biological.

It’s highly unreasonable (and cruel, good intentions and all) to expect people to rot away in isolation just because they have passed a certain age. The attitude is contagious, too.

I read the other day that some shops were turning away older customers, despite the fact that there is no law that imposes such restrictions.

So you can’t meet friends, or go for a walk, or go to Mass (because church is a high infection risk, while queueing at the supermarket to stock up on triple-choc muffins poses no risk at all). You can, however, age actively, and preferably out of sight.