The pandemic that didn’t change the world

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Airlines flights in Alaska 1805, Los Angeles to Washington, DC, March 5, 2020. Not until I address an abandoned capital a few hours later, did I absorb what is happening. The world has changed.

Then, faster than even the bulls that predicted, they are unchanging. Urban life was mostly by 2022. Tourism was always as it was. (Imagine the midst of the will that the British government will return to additional runways in Heathrow and Gatwic.) Restaurants such as Fort Nox to enter. There are remnants of the epidemic – in the rates of office occupation, in public debts, in continuous health problems, in horrific memories – but the idea that society will seem strange.

Five years later, one lesson highlights, and it is difficult for the journalist to accept it: almost all events are fast.

In my life, the only historical turning points were the fall of the Soviet Union, the election of Donald Trump and the current war in Ukraine. I would like to suggest the 2008 banking collapse, but it seems more from the European Center than ever. The American economy overcame this shock, then some. China and India continued its height though. The Iraq war, then? Failure, and Regional A blessing for Iran, but to some extent without changing the world.

Almost all in the public domain, which are required to devote time and think about it. I was given a summer of my twenties to the scandal of parliamentary expenses

After September 11, it was logical that religious terrorism would dominate Western strategic thinking after that. Who is now classified as the traditional war between the state as a threat to life and freedom? I remember a former colleague, at the height of ISIS, saying that Britain should reduce its nuclear deterrent to finance special forces, intelligence and other graceful assets. The argument was not just convincing. In the room, it was close to overcoming. If we look back, however, you may exaggerate how much the world changes. It takes almost a human separation to stand outside your era and see it passing. Failure, however, irreversible errors occur. (This should not be political. The art that dates back is often the one that seeks contemporary importance.)

Of course, the “turning point” is a malicious phrase. Most social change occurs through gradual trends. Again, though, which of these in my life was really important? The rise of China and the non -Western, certainly. But the digitization of life? Without entering into a solution (“You can see the era of the computer everywhere but in productivity statistics”), it is not as if we are growing at unknown rates in the symmetric era. In Britain, after decades of liberal norms, from “relativity” and the loss of respect, the public expanded the death of the Queen with dedication that she would have done in 1960. It was revived with the registration of developments, a professional can excel over the depth of the direction or the new idea at all.

You can go in two ways here. One is to relieve yourself, meaning “this also must pass.” But there is a dark angle: weakness and beatings of almost everything. If a huge event, like a community, does not put a community on a new path, what is the chance of “the epidemic of unity”, or most of the elections, or this or that or that generation Z heresy? Almost all in the public domain, which are required to devote time and think about it. I was given a summer of my twenties to the scandal of parliamentary expenses.

There were other things that you should take from the epidemic. People are bad predictions of their behavior in the future. Compare high vaccination rates with all the rejection who appeared in investigative studies. Also, no one can defend the cities free of cars to think a lot about it. Without the presence of the surrounding traffic, silence and stillness prevailed that was more than the Middle Ages than the gentle. But the final lesson, with a five -year distance, must be the “landing” of the human nature in the face of events merely. Many conservatives came to see that era as an authoritarian farce. With more justice, they may be considered the highest justification for their regulations on the world.

Janan.ganesh@ft.com

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