This may have been the strangest week of our lives that most of us have known. The current Crisis, which I will call IT (Incredible Times) has seen some astonishing stuff.

Mostly it's been wonderful to see a magnificent response from so many. The local shops that look out for their customers, the people who want to volunteer, the services across the board. The NHS, our Councils and their officers. The key workers who have to keep things going for the benefit of all.

The chatting with total strangers in a queue, at a two metre distance, and the common cause that has caused the vast majority of people to stay at home, stay safe, make it safe.

The governments who abandon long held principles because 'it's a freaking emergency and we want to have something left when this is all over'. The populist politicians (not ALL of them obviously) who find the leader and statesman within.

The fact that the BBC and experts can apparently be trusted again because they're good at what they do and they're needed to get the message out. It's a big list.

On the other side of the coin there are the dangerous minority. The food hoarding thing has probably been overstated. It doesn't take many people buying just one extra packet, in case, to strip the shelf pretty quickly.

Picnics on the beach though, gatherings anywhere beyond essential needs, and other creative stupidities are just the sort of thing that selfish people revel in, because it's their right. Like the drunk driver, they not only put themselves in danger but everybody around them too. Only a lot more and at a much larger and longer lasting risk.

I normally avoid overtly political comment in the widest sense. Not in a party, don't want to be, don't think you care as long as I do my job in Brantham, Babergh and Suffolk.

But then, I read this emerging from the Home Secretary who today...well to quote the BBC website (their copyright of course)...

''Frontline NHS staff in the UK on visas will be given an automatic one-year extension to help the UK battle the coronavirus.

"Home Secretary Priti Patel said doctors, nurses and paramedics whose visas were due to run out before 1 October would be given the 12-month extension free of charge so they could 'focus fully on combating coronavirus and saving lives'.

The new measure will apply to around 2,800 immigrants working in the health service, and will be extended to their family members "demonstrating how valued overseas NHS staff are to the UK".

Ms Patel also confirmed the Home Office would lift the restriction on the number of hours student nurses and doctors can work in the NHS to make more staff available.''

She said: "Doctors, nurses and paramedics from all over the world are playing a leading role in the NHS's efforts to tackle coronavirus and save lives. We owe them a great deal of gratitude for all that they do."

Several words and thoughts came to mind more or less immediately, but I've toned things down a bit here.

First was, 'Hang on; these are people we were applauding in the streets last week!' Or did our clapping only apply to the non-immigrants in the NHS? That's very generous of us. They, and their families, can remain, to help clear things up for us because of how valued they are, because we owe them a debt of gratitude for their leading role in tackling IT.

But only for so long and then they can sod off to wherever? Even more kindly, we will not even be charging these noted taxpayers for the privilege of being at the highest level of risk and the joy of being overworked and under supplied with testing or Personal Protection Equipment.

Further, everybody's going to be able to work more hours than previously thought safe. Many of them would have done so anyway, because of the sort of people they are, but this will make it legal (for the government too). So, of course, I posted on Facebook. Disgusted of Brantham.

Next it occurred to me how politically inept (can I say cack handed?) the Home Secretary is being. Presumably this is Government policy, although with Priti Patel one can never be sure. In that case the cynicism displayed, with no sense of any possible irony, is one of the most remarkable features of the whole decision.

If a minor Councillor in rural Suffolk can see the arrogance, injustice, and immorality of this, I wonder what the papers will say. For what it's worth, I'll be urging my Conservative colleagues to lobby their party and Government to think again.

And it's pretty stupid too. We've encouraged a large number of retired doctors and nurses back into the NHS to cope. They won't stay forever. There is also likely to be a mortality rate amongst NHS staff. Hopefully not huge, but there will be one and we don't know what we are going to need in the future, or actually next month.

We're all familiar with what an epidemic is. We're currently at the pandemic stage, where the disease is prevalent in a population. There is a third stage. Endemic is where a disease can be regularly found in a population. By now, it must be clear that the population in question is the whole world. If a disease rolls around the world at differing times, always able to flare up or breakout again there is a likelihood that it will. Any reservoir of the virus somewhere can produce a series of waves, without any predictability.

The not so funny thing about viruses is that the two things they are best at is reproducing, using our or animal cells to do it, and mutating. All cells can mutate as the copying mechanism is imperfect. Viruses are brilliant at it. They multiply more quickly and their structure makes mutation both more likely and faster. The ones that don't work aren't a problem. They die, don't reproduce. End of story.

But the ones that mutate to produce a virus that is stronger, better at reproducing and just maybe different enough, are a big problem for us in the future. This is why by the time we are able to produce any vaccine in large enough quantity to inoculate populations, that virus may have produced a strain or variant that is unaffected by the vaccine.

Back to square one. We might be seeing a lot of square one if we aren't careful.

Some may applaud these generous terms that show exactly how valued overseas NHS staff are to the UK.

It's better than they had before after all. I'm not sure what gratitude they will feel or why they should. We don't only owe them gratitude, we owe them a debt.

I suggest we may not be done with them yet, nor should we be. Maybe we will be considering a further stay of execution in a year's time.

Then when we're sure that we have no further use for them, we can applaud them loudly as they board their departing flights. And we become a little bit shabbier.