Covid’s race to forget must slow down

Something strange happened one night last week. For the first time in over 16 months of Covid, I went to a cocktail party. It was a networking thing for businesswomen, on a rooftop in the middle of London, and it was all encouraging, intimidating, and deeply uncomfortable.

The sight of so many new faces, greedily free champagne, was undeniably pleasant. This was offset by the disheartening reminder that any of them could have breathed viral disaster into my nose or vice versa. There was also the alarmingly accomplished guest list of executives, managers, movers and shakers. And me.

Yet many of us were equally and painfully uncomfortable having to totter over high-heeled shoes that hadn’t been worn for over a year.

Afterward, I realized that this all sounded strangely familiar to me for some reason I couldn’t identify, until I realized that there was a topic I had barely heard of. all evening: the pandemic.

Move on

It reminded me of another gathering, also involving a drink, with friends at a Melbourne pub early last year. It was only weeks after the city was blanketed in thick gray smoke from one of the biggest wildfires of the 21st century.

The air had been stale. Face masks were selling. Flights were delayed and a tennis player collapsed at the Australian Open after a coughing fit. Outside the city, people had fled to the beaches under an unearthly blood-red sky to escape the fires that left vast swathes of the country in a blackened and smoldering state of ruin.

But in the pub that night we talked about work, family, other friends and more. Everything except fires. When I asked why, a friend smiled and said, “It’s over now. We have evolved.

The urge to forget is understandable. Who doesn’t want normal life to resume after the much more serious global Covid-19 crisis?

Even so, there have been gains in the midst of this exhausting and painful period – not enough, but some. The question is, will there be many more serious advances, and could those that do exist collapse as the pandemic abates and the rush to forgetfulness sets in?

The benefits of some upgrades are already evident. Coming out of the London party, I ran into one of the guests pulling up her ankle-length dress to get on a bike for a three mile nighttime ride home.

“Good for you!” I blurted out, having drunk a little too much free champagne.

This kind of night cycling was too rare a sight before the pandemic. Yet even I have done it since authorities took advantage of the blockades to expand more cycle paths across the city. Weekend cycling, in particular, is up 240% from a year ago, as fear of a London bike ride eased.

Cycling infrastructure

The lanes are part of more than 1,400 km of cycle infrastructure built during the pandemic in Europe alone. Similar trips are underway from Bogotá to Sydney. But as vaccinations spread, there are already fears that the building frenzy has reached its peak.

What about other changes?

As it stands, it’s hard to imagine the transition to more flexible and flexible remote working being completely reversed.

The unprecedented attention the pandemic has given to underfunded nursing homes for the elderly around the world may not fade quickly either, although it is not clear whether this will bring lasting change.

The same goes for inequality, climate change and many other pressing dilemmas that preoccupy Davos attendees every year.

There could be more hope without embarrassing facts such as the paltry 2% of pandemic recovery spending going to clean energy measures.

Or the news that, since this month, people in the richest countries have taken more than 80% of the doses needed to fully immunize 70% of the world’s population, while only around 1% of Africans have been fully immunized.

The list is long, as is the pandemic. Eventually it will end and when it does we must not forget all the powerful reasons to remember it. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2021