Coronavirus was the last thing our extremely fragile, febrile democracies needed and I'm not sure they're going to make it.

Future historians:

"The great pandemic of 2020-2022 swept across a world already on the brink of disaster, with populist extreme right wing governments, buoyed by the new misinformation age, ensconced in traditional bastions of democracy."

"The pandemic exaggerated the septic wound between truth and untruth that had been exposed by the soon-to-be dictator of what was the United States of America, and forced people apart in a way nothing had before."

"With the concept of verifiable fact eroded to almost nothing, civilians were left totally exposed to the dangerous myths and Anti-intellectualism of those seeking to rewind three hundred years of social progress."

"The Great Regression, ironically led by powers that had in prior centuries led the swift charge of modernisation, had begun."

"The devastating effect of the pandemic - not just in terms of lives lost - would shatter trust in conventional science and conventional politics for generations."