A reflection from the Dean during Lockdown 2.0

Monday 9 November 2020

The current coronavirus pandemic has, amongst many other things, provided a good deal of work for medical and social historians. Through radio and television programmes, books, and podcasts these historians have brought to life (as it were) previous pandemics: the Black Death of the fourteenth century, the sweating sickness so prevalent in Tudor England, and the so-called Spanish flu pandemic during which more people died than in the whole of the first world war. Human society eventually emerged from these pandemics, as we will emerge from the current pandemic. But our forebears, like us, never knew how long the health emergencies of their time would last. They lived with uncertainty.

My sense is that we are finding this uncertainty the most difficult aspect of living with Covid-19.