Denmark’s greatest philosopher, Søren Kirkegaard, experienced only one epidemic in his lifetime, the cholera outbreak of 1853, which occurred after Denmark foolishly lifted the coastal quarantine that had saved the country from Europe’s miserable 19th century cholera pandemics. Yet he aptly sensed our response to indeterminate lockdowns: ‘the most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you’ll never have’.