What happens next? Gauging the fallout from the pandemic

What just happened? Some 15 months after the pandemic first struck, it’s still horribly unclear, which is perhaps why there have been no decent books making sense of Covid-19. This is not just about a virus but a collision of politics, panic, digital media, human behaviour and incompetence. Niall Ferguson’s Doom looks at each of these aspects, putting them into historical perspective in a book of dazzling range and rigour. He offers several answers — and none of them is comforting.

For most of human history, viruses were unexceptional — hard to research, because no one thought them remarkable. When plagues struck in the Middle Ages, we’d rush into quarantine, which acquired its name in 1383 when Marseilles asked sailors to self-isolate for 40 days. Vaccine passports were attempted in the form of fedi di sanita, certifying that new arrivals had come from plague-free zones — not based on science, Ferguson argues, but observation and ‘a growing reluctance to leave one’s fate in God’s hands’.

Viruses helped as well as hindered the story of the West. We carried Europe’s lurgies over the Atlantic when we discovered America, and they killed more natives than our armies ever did. One of the blessings the Pilgrims gave thanks for at Plymouth in 1621 was that disease had killed off 90 per cent of the indigenous peoples, leaving the land free to settle. The Victorians saw disease as a price paid for venturing out into the world. One Royal Commission calculated that of 70,000 British soldiers in India, 4,830 would die each year, requiring 5,800 hospital beds for those incapacitated by illness.

Covid perhaps marks the end of Britain being sanguine about killer viruses. We have long talked about ‘excess winter deaths’ with about 20,000 victims — but because they tend to be elderly, they attract far less concern.