Is the Covid Narrative Changing?

Narratives change over generations. Remember Iraq? Nowadays, no one of any influence looks favourably on the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Does even the hawkish George W. Bush Jr still believe in it? Trump, Biden and Obama all rejected its premises. People have moved on. For all his bluster and reinvention, Tony Blair’s former head of communications, Alastair Campbell, still fumbles around, never quite able to put to bed the ghost of the WMD scandal and the infamous dodgy dossier. As I said, people have moved on.

The Middle East was thrown into utter turmoil, and the promised Arab Spring came to little. Across the region, the revolutions and regime changes often appeared worse than what they tried to liberate people from. The loss of life, and the US and UK military losses, were stark. A post-9/11 President Bush seemed sadly blasé about war, forgetting that pulling the trigger is a last resort. Western governments shy of intervention may well allow other global players to wreak havoc.

I say all this because there is a parallel with the West’s response to Covid-19 in 2020. Back then, even the government advisor and epidemiologist Neil Ferguson proclaimed astonishment at how the overwhelming majority agreed with the lockdowns. The incredible thing was that locking down the country, suspending rights and imposing what amounted to martial law was never in the government’s original plan. But most of us went along with it, particularly given the convenience of nice weather, the possibility of Zoom meetings, and crucially the Conservative Chancellor’s keenness to print money and furlough the workforce. The government even closed schools.

I heard all sorts of middle-class narratives thrown about:

“With quiet roads, it’s given Nature a chance to breathe and reclaim the land.”
“I’m able to have more time with my family.”
“I came to appreciate that working from home is a possibility.”