Covid has played out like a blockbuster film. Biden should hire some scriptwriters to end it

It's time to resolve the narrative - otherwise we'll be stuck in act two for ever, says Veep writer Ian Martin

For a year now, the reality of humanity's global struggle against the coronavirus has felt oddly fictional. Very much, in fact, like a blockbuster movie.

Covid-19: The Reckoning follows all the movie cliches. The story starts somewhere in the world requiring subtitles. Patient Zero eats a what? An infected bat? OK, maybe it's a pangolin (what's a pangolin? Who cares, never mind). Then the contagion spreads like a slow-motion tsunami across the planet as dumbass politicians first play it down, then panic. Or, in America's case, dismiss it, blame China, promise it'll go away, ignore it some more, commend the ingestion of light and disinfectant, ignore it again, actually get it, shrug it off, host a series of superspreader events, repeatedly lose an election then scuttle off to become a human pathogen infecting civilian life. Again.