The aim of this essay is to explore the impact of contemporary safety consciousness on the reaction to threats like COVID-19 and, more generally, on the way society fears. It argues that in recent years, safety has been sacralised to the point that it has become a...
Watch out, fellow Covid inmates – our long-awaited liberation from house arrest may apparently cause anxiety, stress and ‘Reentry Syndrome’. Or is this all just another case of ‘Makee-Uppee Syndrome’? Why am I not surprised that mental health charities are now warning...
It seems that the only legitimate grounds on which the UK government’s lockdown policy can now be criticised is that of mental health. Take the The Sunday Times this weekend. It featured an article about how Covid has spread an ‘epidemic of fear’ among the young, and...
When governments the world over began imposing lockdowns in response to Covid-19 earlier this year, I was surprised by just how many people were comfortable with such measures. Nine months later, and little has changed. Millions, it seems, have learned to live in...
Family rules and routines have been relaxed, or even abandoned, over the past few months. A parenting expert says it’s time for adults to take back control at home. Who won’t admit that lockdown has played havoc with the way we parent our children? For many families,...
Not only are people retreating for their health, but many are using the virus as an excuse to create 'judgment-free' zones. n the Anglo-American world, where the idealization of a ‘safe space’ has gained widespread currency, living under quarantine conditions is far...
Schools can't stay locked down forever. It's time for bravery and action. Survey after survey suggests that a significant section of the public fears the ending of the lockdown. Such anxieties are especially pronounced among parents, many of whom reacted with...
'Evidence' has been turned into a gospel truth and that's bad for political decision-making. Since the outbreak of Covid-19, the word ‘evidence’ has turned into a quasi-religious concept. There are constant appeals to ‘the evidence’. We need more and more of it, we...
Disasters have a nasty habit of appearing from nowhere. They catch communities unaware, and people struggle to understand what a disaster such as COVID-19 really means. Finding meaning in an apparently meaningless threat to human lives has continually invited...
Britain has gone into lockdown. Outwardly it seems that everything has changed. But the reality is different. The cultural patterns of the past continue to influence the way communities experience and respond to Covid-19. The response of government policymakers,...