In a wet market in Wuhan, on the floor beneath a cage of bats, a gastronomically adventurous pangolin had scarcely even jabbed its tongue in the direction of what would become the world’s first trillion-dollar meal before Britain appeared to discover a clamorous appetite to know how the coronavirus has changed it.
For months on end, across the various channels of public debate there has been a ceaseless desire to state how everything will be different from now on.
It is 100 days since the first Covid-19 case appeared in Britain. Its deathly grip has been like nothing we have seen before, its disruption unprecedented.
Today, British people live indoors. They do not go to school. They do not see their grandchildren. Millions of them no longer have jobs.
But these are changes that cannot last. They do not shed much light at all on the question of how this grimly historic time might change the future.
Change is a word that never goes away. It is among the most powerful currencies in the economy of human emotion. Politicians sell themselves in the futures market of change, with the glad assistance of their brokers in the media. Change is new, new sells; though not even the greatest of them tend to turn out to have been worth the agreed price paid by the public.
When Barack Obama strode out into the electric night in Grant Park, Chicago, the world was meant to have changed forever. It does not appear so changed anymore.
To say how Britain has been changed by coronavirus, one must first know what Britain was to begin with. And there are at least a thousand lockdowns worth of books and television documentaries, not to mention an Olympic opening ceremony, to confirm that the answer to that particular question is unknowable too.
The very speed at which things have changed should be evidence of the speed at which they can change again, by changing back
In the months just passed, visions of the future have spread as fast as the virus itself. More home working. More video conferencing. Less flying. It was barely days before the sight of the busy, touchy-feely, life as we once knew it started to jar with us as we watched it on TV in films and dramas.
An idea seems to have taken hold that it will take months, years to get back to how things were, that the resolve to push towards the bar in a busy pub, or reach into one’s pocket in the local shop and hand over a humid coin, will take us a long time to find.
That will depend on the speed of scientific innovation, but the very speed at which things have changed should be evidence of the speed at which they can change again, by changing back.
Arguably the most enduring image of that famous night in Chicago was the weeping face in the crowd of the veteran civil rights campaigner Jesse Jackson. It was a reminder that the world is not changed in a moment. Change comes about through the slow, and punishing grunt work of long decades, mostly by men and women whose names are forgotten, if they were ever known at all. Change doesn’t happen in the moment history is made. It is merely revealed.
Which is why there is nothing innately historic in a freak biological accident in a Chinese market. The kind of change that lasts is not that which happens to humanity against its will. It happens because committed individuals convince enough people that the world can be a better place, be it through something as lofty as civil rights, or merely that they cannot live without a revolutionary new touchscreen telephone.
Has a sudden global pandemic revealed to the world, or to the country, changes that were already there? Arguably, it has made us see more clearly that which has not changed, but that had come to be obscured by the rapidly changing ways in which we live our lives.
We already knew, just about, that the world goes round thanks to the hard, under-rewarded work of low paid people. We already knew that we can get by, for a time, if pushed, without the services of almost anybody, apart from health and supermarket workers. But it helps to be reminded.
It has been said, many times, that when all this is over, there will have to be a drive towards making things fairer, now that we have understood once more what matters.
But coronavirus has also accelerated our march to the future. To take but two examples, coronavirus is already hastening the death of physical retail in favour of amazon, and the triumph of Deliveroo over the local restaurant. We may all be able to suddenly see how the world has become less fair, of how exploitative working practices are on the rise, but we are still doing nothing to prevent our ever faster rush into their no longer merely convenient but suddenly essential embrace.
It feels like it has been pointed out almost hourly that the brunt of the suffering will be felt by poor people not rich people, as if the fact that life is harder if you’ve got no money is some kind of profound observation
Coronavirus could have ripped through the world of 20 years ago almost as easily as it has done today. It would not have been cushioned by online grocery shopping, amazon, video calls with parents and grandparents. It sticks in the craw, but the companies that have become so fashionable to loathe are the ones that have made life bearable.
For months it feels like it has been pointed out almost hourly that the brunt of the suffering will be felt by poor people not rich people, as if the fact that life is harder if you’ve got no money is some kind of profound observation. Such things are said in the hope that a fairer state of affairs might emerge. There is precious little evidence that they will, and plenty to the contrary.
We have watched the going out of the human tide and witnessed the return of nature in its place. Forgotten mountain ranges are suddenly visible above Indian cities. The birds and the bees and the blossoms are brighter than anyone can recall.
The moment has been claimed as a dress rehearsal for the even greater sacrifices waiting ahead if we are to avoid the far greater miseries the planet is waiting to inflict on us. The global grounding of planes shows, apparently, that we can do it.
But governments around the world are also currently making ominous calculations about what levels of risk they are prepared to take with the lives of their own people, as the price to be paid for the certain harm that will follow from mass economic contraction.
It is a dress rehearsal that shows we are not ready for the performance. The decisions waiting for us far closer ahead than we think are dilemmas, in the truest sense of the word. They are choices that must be made between only undesirable options.
Coronavirus has not shown us that we have to live like this. It has shown us that we can’t. It may have made us understand the urgency of finding a sustainable future, but it has made such a thing harder, not easier, to find.
Such a vicious jolt to the way we live has certainly put the country’s recent dramas into freshly ridiculous context.
It is almost embarrassing to look back now upon the years of national anguish over Brexit. It is also now clear to see that its effect on Britain has been cultural far more than it will be political or economic.
It really did turn us into two tribes. One might hope that such a terrible event, so soon after, might do its bit to heal, but it is clear to see that those who love Brexit are far too quick to forgive the government its terrible mistakes. And those who loathe Brexit are resolutely determined to cut it no slack at all.
As an entire world of people find that their hopes and dreams have been put simultaneously on hold, in their place has come the realisation that maybe, just maybe, they don’t matter all that much anyway
Across this broad-brush picture however, there is one hideously jarring streak. The particular band of Brexiteer that was motivated entirely by ideological libertarianism now sees the lockdown as an affront to the free market which must be ended at once, just as the European Union was, and still is.
It may be that many a Brexiteer, especially an elderly one, might have come to realise these people were never exactly on their side. It is a realisation that is too late to do anything about.
Since the UK voted to leave the European Union, a seismic event that now seems barely to have registered, the old Chinese curse, “may you live in interesting times” has been regularly heard. We certainly live in interesting times now, even if their wider meaning cannot yet be known.
These interesting times are certainly unique in their mundanity. Those who live in interesting times are meant to be left with interesting stories to tell, grim though they may well be.
Of the moments in recent memory that are meant to have changed the world, few have left behind change that is clear to see.
For the most part, 9/11 made it more laborious to board planes, unless you happen to live in one of the countries upon which war was falsely waged over it.
The 2008 economic crash might be the exception, given that its miserable consequences are still being felt now, especially by the young. For those fortunate enough to avoid personal suffering or bereavement, the coronavirus’s principle legacy will certainly be economic, but it is far too early to say anything of value about that.
Thus far, it is a strange and lonely story that has been lived in awful unison beneath millions of ceilings, behind millions of doors, to a people frozen in place and time and powerless to do anything about it. But that will not last.
The most obvious revelation has certainly not been one of change but of rediscovery. As an entire country, an entire world of people find that their hopes and dreams and ambitions have been put simultaneously on hold, in their place has come the realisation that maybe, just maybe, they don’t matter all that much anyway. That life is about the love of friends and family and beyond that, precious little matters.
That is no small or sad thing. It will be interesting, in the years ahead, to see how quickly it is reforgotten.