Covid was devastating – why are we pretending it didn’t happen? | Emma Beddington

A recent book about the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic details a collective forgetting' of the period. Our lack of Covid reckoning suggests history is repeating itself

My best friend has been ill and it's taken both of us back to March 2020. For her, it's reawakening the real trauma of getting very poorly and waiting, struggling to breathe, for an ambulance that never came. I was far luckier, but it's revived memories of trying to keep in touch with her, waking each morning terrified she wouldn't answer my messages, as our robustly fit and healthy neighbour died in hospital, his partner unable to visit.

Covid was so bad for so many - why aren't we talking about it more? My friend, who suffers badly from long Covid, struggles to understand the refusal of many people to think or talk about the pandemic; their reluctance to understand what it has taken from her and from so many others. She's baffled by the apparent desire to pretend it never happened, or that it wasn't a big deal.