It's incredible to me that we find it easier to discuss the political implications of continuing lockdowns than the political implications of 100,000 people being dead.
But the bereaved don't have a political presence, do we? Nor do those most at risk. We're a policy issue. And policy issues are difficult to discuss.
People who have died because of covid-19 are just sands in an hour glass measuring the time until we can get back to normal. It's unacceptable to be angry for those who aren't here anymore because, somehow, to speak of that result of political decisions would be uncouth, messy
The virus doesn't have agency. We can't lay the blame at its feet as if it were an enemy within. But that does not mean there has not been good decisions and bad decisions; good actions and bad ones. Everyone dead was making the best of things until they couldn't
I mean, I can tell you how shit it is to lose someone right now. It is incredibly, surreally shit. You can't see them before, you don't know if you'll see them one final time. No rituals, no coming together. No places to go or things to share the burden of loss and remembering
Death during covid is not a moral story for the person who has died. It is a moral story for the rest of us, collectively. And we can't even have that discussion sensibly. What does it mean when 100,00 lights go out forever? What does it mean for those who survive them?
In any other time, each of these sudden deaths would be a time for reflection. But right now, each new death just adds to a mire of the unspeakable; to a growing fear that becomes so pervasive it is easier to ignore than to engage with. Easy to be a skeptic than pay respects
There won't be truth and reconciliation for those who are gone and those who have lost because the lessons of the dead will be unpalatable to those who were part of the diffuse cloud of responsibility. A new myth of blame will arise, one comfortable enough not to ask questions
I don't really know how I feel at the moment apart from achingly sad and scared of more death. I don't feel abandoned or without personal support. But I do feel almost certain that my experience, and the experience of others who have lost someone will be silenced and ignored
There will be many individual stories of loss to be told about this time. Perplexing, blinking, baffled stories of people who were there one day and not the next. That's not the silence I mean. The silence I mean is the romping on of political discourse through this inconvenience
Political discourse will avoid answering the question 'how did our society manage to lose 100,000 people?' in the same way it avoids 'how did our society fail to raise millions from misery?'. It'll be avoided because the answer will require too much change
I think it's easier to discuss the effects of lockdown than it is to discuss the effects of death, easier to say 'protect the NHS' than it is to say the NHS did not create the circumstances it works in. Easier to treat bad luck as fallen from the heavens over it having causes
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