And now we have these mutations casting even more doubt onto these vaccines, but of course one does not discuss such issues in polite company.

And that's what's so disturbing -- the absolute lack of any public debate about any of this.

In following news on the mutant viruses in South Africa and the UK, it's noticeable that the responses re the effectiveness of the vaccine are very cagey - usually along the lines that 'we are confident that X vaccine will be effective against any new variants', or the double negative; 'we see no reason why it won't be'.

In the last couple of days, however, a few scientists are starting to break ranks:

Prof Shabir Madhi, who has led trials for the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in South Africa, said:

"It's a theoretical concern. A reasonable concern… that the South African variant might be more resistant."

I'm not quite sure why it's still theoretical - the vaccines and mutant viruses have been around for a couple of months - wouldn't you have a pretty good indication by now?

As we discussed before, the motivation from the big players that are rolling out billions of doses of vaccine shots world-wide to say, 'Sorry, they're now less effective' is zero.

This is shaping up as another one of those 'We can't tell you the real truth because of blah blah reason'.