Concerns arise about hantavirus or Ebola spreading in a way similar to Covid-19. News about withdrawal of international aid in central Africa intensifies attention to outbreak risk. Memories of early 2020 are compared with what children actually retain. Two children who were five during the first New York lockdown mainly remember increased screen time and sweets rather than public health details. Years later, their nostalgia lacks concrete recollection of empty streets or field hospitals. The writer notes personal memory glitches, including reflexively checking for a mask. The piece also shifts to cultural moments, such as John Travolta’s appearance at a film premiere, as a contrast to pandemic seriousness.
"Much discussion in my household this week about the possibility of hantavirus or Ebola becoming Covid-like in their spread. As darkening news from central Africa throws the withdrawal of US international aid into terrible relief, so we revisit memories of those early months of 2020 when reports of a strange virus in China slowly crept from final item on the news list to blaring emergency."
"For anyone with kids finishing primary school, there's a question as to what and how much about that time they'll remember. My two, who are deep into the second world war as part of their year 6 history curriculum, like to speculate that when they're 80 they'll be subjects of what-did-you-do-in-the-blitz curiosity for having lived through the great pandemic of 2020."
"They were five when the first lockdown happened in New York and mainly remember it as a time of unlimited iPad time and sweets that resulted in one of them having two fillings before she was seven (the shame!). Six years later and they adopt a tone of fond, ancient mariner-like nostalgia, which on closer inspection involves no actual memories not of an empty Broadway, nor the field hospital in Central Park, nor the sound of sirens echoing through the city."
"For me, meanwhile, strange memory glitches occasionally surface so that even this morning, as I left the house, I had a moment of patting myself down thinking I'd forgotten something; for a split second my brain provided me with the answer: Damn, where's my mask?"
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]