Remembering the Covid Catastrophe
An early morning interview with the BBC drives homes the parallels between the coronavirus pandemic and the catastrophic fire at Grenfell Tower in 2017.
Regular readers of this Substack will know that I’ve been writing about the importance of remembering the coronavirus pandemic for some time. But I am well aware that for many people the pandemic and the accompanying lockdowns are a period they would rather forget. So when a producer from BBC Radio Wales asked if I’d be willing to discuss the curious absence of state-sponsored memorials to Covid-19 and other historical pandemics with Roderick Vaughan, the presenter of Sunday Supplement, I was happy to oblige, even it meant rising early.
Between items on the British government’s deal with Tata Steel to preserve 4,000 jobs at its Port Talbot steel plant and the 50th anniversary of the Chilean coup, Vaughan was curious to know why nearly every town and village in the UK boasted a memorial to the fallen of the First World War but none to the 228,000 English and Welsh victims of the 1918 “Spanish” influenza pandemic.
We also discussed the National Covid Memorial Wall, an unauthorised crowd-funded memorial to the 220,000 British casualties of Covid-19 on London’s south bank, and whether the memorial should be made permanent and, if not, what should replace it.
You can listen to the interview here and read my recent piece in The Conversation, in which I address the subject in more detail, here.
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