A. N. Wilson

Covid has warped our collective attitude to death

[Getty Images] 
issue 19 June 2021

So, having been promised that normal life would recommence on 21 June, we are once again frustrated by the Covid scientists. The trouble is, of course, that as far as we know the virus is never going away, so according to the logic of the scientists, there is no reason ever to allow us to return to our old way of life. And although it looks as if we are thereby being sensible and ‘following the science’, what it actually reveals is that we are fools to follow a few boffins in white coats, rather than following the received wisdom of the human race over the past 4,000 years: namely that death is an inevitability and even if we do not die of Covid-19, we are going todie of something else. Following the science means living in a fantasy world where death can be everlastingly postponed, or perhaps avoided altogether.

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