There were eight or nine women for every man in the socially distanced registration queues. Not for the first time, I reflected on why most of the people who work in roles like my own – part-time, community-based care – are women. Among the 14 staff at my own practice, I'm the only man. I wondered, too, whether the imbalance was connected to the way this pandemic has disproportionately affected women's careers. Back home, I asked my wife what she thought. "The pandemic has just made clear what was always the case," she said. "We've a system that undervalues the work of caring, even if that's what holds everything together."

Like many parents, while schools are closed I've had to cut back significantly on the work I can do – I've had to pull out of conducting admission interviews for next year's medical school intake, and I haven't been able to do any locum shifts to support other community clinics.

Among families I know, support for children with special needs has been appalling throughout this pandemic, and the patchy and inconsistent way in which school places have been offered has been immensely frustrating for many. I wrote to one inner-city headteacher after one of my patients, whose son is at the severe end of the autistic spectrum, told me that his behaviour had become so disturbed that she feared for his safety. He has a deep need of predictable routine, and the uncertainty around school closures and travel restrictions has had a devastating effect on his wellbeing. The headteacher replied to tell me that my patient's needs were too great to be accommodated, as there was inadequate resource in the system for him to be considered.

Far from blaming teachers, I blame the impossibly narrow criteria for who qualifies for restricted school places. Though I occasionally hear of some children who are flourishing with home schooling, I more commonly hear stories that speak of a chronic, low-grade misery. Just how much children have been asked to sacrifice is particularly upsetting, given how little autonomy they have, and how little they have to fear from the virus.

On 17 January I left Edinburgh for the Orkney Islands, to spend a week standing in for one of the nurse practitioners on an island with a population of just 300 and, thankfully, no coronavirus. It was a six-hour drive to the ferry terminal from my home in Edinburgh along empty roads through the Highlands, passing highway signs that read "Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives". I'd made the same journey in June to cover the islands' Covid clinic, and it was maddening to think that the UK has been so lax in policing quarantine, and so disorganised in terms of testing and tracing, that this third lockdown had become necessary.