Somewhere along the line we have lost a sense of proportion about the Covid-19 pandemic. At the beginning, we were rightly concerned that a novel virus, to which human populations had never been exposed, might represent an existential threat to our species. This justified rapid, and often poorly-evidenced, actions to interrupt transmission of the infection. With hindsight, many of these seem arbitrary and ineffective but they appeared to make sense at the time. One result, however, has been to create levels of fear and anxiety in some populations that make it difficult to contemplate any kind of return to what we have thought of as a normal life. This applies as much to politicians as to publics. We seem to be constrained to discussions of a ‘new normal’, an impoverished human existence that will last until such, uncertain, time as we get a vaccine that will protect us. …
…Could we live alongside the Covid-19 virus as we live with the influenza virus –as a ‘second influenza’? Maybe we do want to crawl into our bubbles and hide our faces from one another – but let that be a positive choice rather than an unexamined one.
A socialsciencespace blog
We must stop this fear culture. There have been numerous eminent scientists predicting further viruses ’waiting in the wings,’ Are we supposed to just stumble from one catastrophe to the next? Is this the new normal? It would appear that we are allowed to die of anything but Covid. All NHS resources have been diverted to the great fight. No word about all the other battles now being lost to cancer/heart disease/stroke etc. That is all being ignored. These fatalities are merely nameless statistics not worthy of note or a mention in daily dispatches. Politicians playing God, deciding which fatal disease will be treated while the others are deemed not worthy of resources. Covid is king. Something has to be done before millions of people die from non Covid diseases. Many more than will die of Covid. The legacy of death will be of biblical proportions unless drastic and immediate action is taken to restore treatment and tackle waiting lists.