Cattle plague was a lethal disease of bovines cause by the rinderpest virus, an agent closely related to measles. It came to Britain from Europe in the mid 1860s and killed at least 420,000 cows. Rinderpest is not a coronavirus. Its R number is probably three times greater than that of Covid-19, and its mortality rate is much higher. But as a model it still has relevance to contemporary events.

The statistics make grim reading. In a 2013 report, Overview of Fatal Incidents Involving Cattle, the Health and Safety Executive notes in its usual lapidary prose that ‘this paper gives an overview of fatal incidents involving cattle to (a) Enable Agriculture Industry Advisory Committee members to consider the current trends in agriculture accidents involving cattle.’ There is no room for complacency. The HSE logs 74 'fatalities involving cattle' in the UK in 2000-15, compared to 53 deaths caused by Islamist terrorism in the same period.