Five Years Ago

 From time to time I browse in the Nigeness archives to see what was going on On This Day in past years (there are now 17 of them to choose from). The entry for this date in 2020 – just five years ago – reads like a dispatch from another world, one that is fast fading from memory, helped on its way by a general desire to forget: who would wish to remember the worst excesses of the Covid panic and the enthusiasm with which many (most?) accepted a confiscation of basic liberties more extreme than anything undertaken even in wartime? It would have got worse, too, had not the virus weakened into something very much less threatening, as viruses do. 
  July 25th 2020 finds me quoting Junius on the subject of 'arbitrary measures' and citing mandatory mask wearing as just such a measure. At the time, the Great Panic had only been raging for a few months, and far worse things were to come, with lockdown after lockdown ravaging society and the economy, and ensuring there would be no recovery for decades, if ever. And we now know (what many of us were pretty sure of at the time) that it was all in vain: the medical and social outcomes of countries that had relaxed lockdown regimes or none at all have been better than those that clamped down hardest. As for the vaccine that was supposed to give us back our freedom – not only did it do no such thing, it also saved lives on a very much smaller scale than was claimed at the time, and at considerable health cost, especially to younger people (who never needed it in the first place). 
  Well, those were strange times, and it's easy to forget how strange, how rampant was the hysteria triggered by the virus, and how willingly the population at large complied with the mostly arbitrary rules that were enforced – rules that those imposing them often knew were having no good effect (and if they didn't know, they should have done). Being near the beginning, July 2020 was almost an innocent time – we even got to Dieppe en famille a week or so later. The place was heaving with tourists – no 'social distancing' there – but maniacally insistent on the wearing of masks. All very odd. Another world, another time – but only five years ago. And if/when the next virus comes along, will things play out any differently? I'd like to think so, but then I've always been a cock-eyed optimist.