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Friday, July 16, 2021

The pretence of normality is contagious – even for a Covid realist like me

By the end of our first proper holiday in an age, all sense of risk had evaporated under the Florida sun It was almost two years since I’d been on a flight, and – not words I thought I’d ever hear myself say – I was excited to be back in an airport. How glamorous to be leaving the city, not in a minivan, and for somewhere further than upstate New York. It was a Sunday morning, JFK was quiet, and right up until boarding the delusion persisted: this is all back to normal and everything’s fine. However bad things had been, we were on the other side of them now. Since the start of the pandemic, there have been two distinct slipstreams, of people who stayed put and of those who stayed on the move. For the past year, it has been a source of grim amusement to glance at the feeds of a few wealthy friends and, while everyone else cowered in their homes, see them pop up on the beach in Greece or at an empty tourist attraction in Indonesia. These people took risks, and one might smugly have accused them of recklessness. On the other hand, there’s only so much trouble you can court when you know you can be airlifted out. Continue reading...


READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.theguardian.com