Year: 2026
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.-W. H. Auden, Musée des Beaux Arts C atastrophes are curious things.Earthquakes, hurricanes, fres, and foods have persistent meaning for those who directly experience them.For others, they are a feeting news item glanced upon while fipping through cable news stations, heard about while scanning for their favorite radio station while driving to work, or perhaps seen in today's headline but not tomorrow's, where the story shows up on a page deep inside the newspaper, already fading.Catastrophes are forgettable.But what to make of COVID-19, a catastrophe that is global in nature?Millions dead, millions more grieving for those gone, millions of lives and livelihoods disrupted, many still living with the lingering symptoms of long COVID.While the virus is still with us, killing thousands a month in late 2023, in early 2024 in the United States alone nearly everyone has seemed to move on.Tis is the conventional wisdom, adopted as policy since most pandemic programs sponsored by the US government have faded away and by ordinary people who go about their business unbothered by the pathogen in their midst.Now and then you'll walk into a shop where those tending the till are masked up, see a scattering of people on the train similarly attired, hear x Foreword
Author: Gregg Gonsalves
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W7133749310