I don’t know if I will articulate this quite right, but sometimes I think we place so much thought in what future selves will think of us (“what will the history books say about 2020?”) and not much about past selves. I know, it sounds silly, but hear me out.

Imagine telling an ancestor about this year, about how much we were able to do to prevent and protect. There are anti-masker, anti-science villains, of course, but they’re the outliers; most of it would astonish them. So much of this year has been acts of love and sacrifice.

Sometimes I think that gets lost because the awful stuff makes for more compelling news. Of course it does! But people from historical pandemics would, I think, mostly be astonished at what the average person has been capable of doing thanks to technology, science, etc

I don’t mean to be very Pollyanna-ish but honestly if you could tell, say, the average Londoner in the 1660s that there was a brand new plague but many people could protect themselves by being able to do their jobs from home it would amaze them!