Lockdown 2020

When Albert Camus wrote ‘The Plague’ in 1947, he could have been predicting Covid-19 in 2020. Some of his words would not be out of place today. The worry and fear that people live with every day is hardly diminishing. Unlike in 1947, the fear today is not only about health and life but also about the future, employment and quality of life in general. There is a fear of the present, concern for the future and a longing for the past.
Breaches of lockdown are manifestations of that longing for the past – how it used to be. The ‘new normal’ is difficult to accept.
How could one of the biggest economies in the world have fared so badly? How could the United Kingdom with a tradition of medical research and evidence in medicine have not foreseen events? Why did a country endowed with scientists and with plans for dealing with such an eventuality not act earlier than it did? We need to do better next time that a new virus appears, as surely it would.
Covid-19 has shone a spotlight on society. We have seen ourselves as seldom before. We have seen ‘the good, the bad and the ugly’.