Just four years ago, the entire earth ground to a standstill, paralysed by a virus too small for the naked eye to see. The world, as we knew up to then, seemed to have suddenly disappeared into an abyss from which something perhaps best described as dystopian emerged. Individual freedom was almost instantly curtailed whilst borders went up and mobility ground to a halt.
Governments panicked and societies were scared into submission. Humanity with all its hubris felt fragile and denuded as nature unleashed a force supposedly contained by the advances science. Normally stingy finance ministers threw untold billions at the problem in an attempt to keep societies afloat whilst economies were put to sleep in suspended animation. The scare of corona was universal: it dominated conversations, caused great alarm, and spawned conspiracy theories.
Though scientist has long warned about the dangers of a major viral outbreak, no disaster scripts had been prepared or scenarios gamed. Public officials were as clueless as the rest of us, which added considerably to the generalised sense of helplessness.
However, time is a great healer and hard-won experience soon fades into the background noise or evaporates altogether. Lessons learned are forgotten as the business-as-usual mindset prevails. Yet, the Corona Pandemic now on the cusp of entering the history books, profoundly changed the public perception of the role of the state, government, and society.
In Corona Journal, veteran journalist and analyst Wim Romeijn not only maps the disconcerting events that marked 2020 but also provides a context, including lessons from history and teachings from philosophy. He retraces our collective path into the pandemic and out of it in a series of captivating reportages, written as events unfolded.
