I’ve started playing a little game, listening out for every time a politician, scientist or senior medical figure uses the word ‘unprecedented’.

I mentally tick it off every single time I hear it, and let’s face it I’ve heard it a lot recently.

I can’t think of one of the government’s sombre early evening briefings when the word unprecedented wasn’t used, and quite often used numerous times to describe the situation we now find ourselves in thanks to the coronavirus pandemic.

But the fact remains there isn’t another word that will do. There is nothing that has happened in the lifetime of any of us that can compare to what’s happening now.

This pandemic is really happening and it’s killing people.

History will judge whether or not the UK government’s response was correct, but you wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of history on this one.

Left unchecked – as the Spanish Flu of 1918 was – the group of experts advising the government predicted coronavirus could kill more than half a million people in Britain before we gained so-called herd immunity.

With social distancing alone, that figure falls to 250,000.

Which brings us to where we are now, the unprecedent lock down of an entire country.

Even during two world wars, pubs opened and life sort of went on.

But this is a different kind of enemy. It’s unseen. Your next door neighbour could infect you, the person behind you in the supermarket queue could be asymptomatic but still infectious.

I am currently living my life by a new set of rules. I treat everyone as though they have the virus and could infect me. I treat everything I bring into my home as though it may contain traces of the virus and could infect me.

And I act as though I may already have the virus and respond accordingly. I wash my hands so often they are chapped and cracking. I disinfect work surfaces and I keep my distance from other members of the household.

My fervent hope is that I, and members of my family, can stay healthy long enough for a vaccine and effective treatments to be found.

But at the time of writing, I looked on the Warrington Guardian’s website to get a feel for how the rest of the town is behaving. Not great by the look of it.

In the list of most read stories, this is what I found.

Number 2: Police warning after reports of ‘large number’ of people walking Trans Pennine Trail

Number 4: Warrington tips close after huge queues of people making non-essential trips

Number 5: Group of Warrington youths coughed at NHS workers claiming they had coronavirus

Number 8: Warrington Police are stopping cars to make sure your journey is necessary

For goodness sake people, get a grip. This is serious, this is literally life and death. Your actions are beyond selfish and you are putting people’s lives at risk. Exactly what is it about the government’s advice you don’t understand?

I despair, I really do.

On a different note, I’m given to understand a number of high street chains that have had to close and will be furloughing their staff are planning on making up wages in full. And Asda said it would give full paid leave to those who needed to self-isolate for a minimum of three months as well as paying colleague an extra weeks’ pay in June as a thank you for their continued work over the coming weeks.

Given the government is paying 80 per cent of wages for furloughed employees, is it too much to ask employers to pay the rest?

I tip my hat to those employers who continue to look after their staff in these most difficult and unprecedented times.