When we look back at WW2, most of us are aware of the major battles, the high points and the low points and, above all, we know that the Democratic powers emerged as the winners - both from a political and a military point of view. We know that, for us Brits, war began in 1939 and that it officially ended in 1945. Yes, we know these things because we have
studied the war at school and we have seen innumerable documentaries on the topic. In other words, looking back gives the war the qualities of a film with a beginning, a middle and an end. And that is how we understand it.
No such luxury of retrospect for those who lived through the war. They had no idea what was going to happen. They did not know if they would survive. They did not know that it would end in 1945 and they certainly had no idea concerning how it would end! For those who lived through it, it was always in the here and now, a constantly shifting reality without the context that retrospect can bring.
The Corona pandemic that we are currently experiencing is, in this respect, similar to WW2. We don't know when it will end. We don't know how it will end. In effect, we don't know who will survive and who will die. It is highly likely that the post-Corona world will be very different from the pre-Corona world but we have no idea what these differences will look like. And, in years to come, our grand children might ask, "What did you do during the great pandemic, grandpa?"
So, what will we tell them? We will tell them that a lot of good people died. We will tell them that we just got on with the job at hand. We will tell them that we were not heroes. We will tell them that we were just doing what was expected of us in a time of crisis. Now, where have I heard these words before?
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