One of the cliches of the past few years is that “nobody wants to remember a pandemic.” Over and over it was said that there were many commemorations of the First World War, a civilization-redefining event that impressed itself across the Western cultural consciousness through poetry, fiction, film, and art in the following decades, leaving us a much more cynical civilization than before. But so little was said about the great influenza! Wasn’t that mysterious?
Well, I can understand why now. I lost friends during the pandemic. Not to the disease, fortunately. To the moralizing. The constant drumbeat from the authorities that the people themselves, by their behavior, could control, slow down, and turn back the pandemic imbued all action with moral significance and political meaning. This in turn meant that a true Covid-era stickler could upbraid you as something like a traitor or mass murderer for putting your garbage can on the street while not wearing your mask properly.
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