There is an omertà, or code of silence, around 2020 – a blind spot. Most people don’t want to dwell on the pandemic, the trauma, the boredom, the anxiety and the uncertainty about when it would end, or if it would end, whether the rules would change or why the rules hadn’t already changed, and work out who was a covidiot or a superspreader or a doom monger.
But like a forgotten mask in an old coat pocket, the effects of the Covid pandemic are still with us. The lockdowns and the fear of being near other people, the restrictions on freedom and the despair of isolation – and the virus that killed more than 200,000 people – have all had profound impacts on Britain, on life at work and at home, and in the NHS, in schools and theatres, and on the rest of the economy.
