In Michigan, gun-toting men demand the reopening of businesses. In Florida, gym regulars do roadside push-ups to protest at the closure of their facilities. In California, Tesla starts its car plant again in the teeth of local restrictions. If impatience to resume normal life builds as spring becomes summer, the past few days will be remembered as the inflexion point.

Until such time, though, the dissent is more striking for its smallness and slowness in coming. All of the flash points above stand out in a wider context of general compliance.

For upwards of two months now, people in the US and other democracies have mostly gone along with mass confinement and economic torpor. They have done so on the guidance of a political class they are meant to despise and unelected experts that they are assumed to mistrust.