‘We will have to choose our apocalypse’: the cost of freedom after the pandemic

To remake society after the pandemic, we must swap Insta selfimprovement for something more radical, argues author Sam Byers

Across much of the west, March is a milestone both surreal and distressing: a full year of life in Covid-19's shadow. Twelve months ago, we couldn't imagine what we were about to experience; now we can't process what we've endured.

This was a year of seemingly irresolvable contradictions. Our grief was collective, yet rituals of communal mourning were denied us. We hymned the global effort" to produce a vaccine, then recoiled into vaccine nationalism the moment that effort bore fruit. Even as Zoom held us together, Covid denial and conspiracy theories in the family WhatsApp tore us apart.