• Home
  • Health & Wellness
  • Disclaimer
    • Terms of Use
    • Privacy Policy
    • DMCA Notice
Podcast
  • Home
  • Health & Wellness
  • Disclaimer
    • Terms of Use
    • Privacy Policy
    • DMCA Notice
24/7 Health News
No Result
View All Result
Home Article

Digital technology is helping us memorialise the pandemic – despite the government wanting us to forget about it and move on

February 25, 2022
in Article
0

As the warnings to “stay at home” fade from memory and we’re told we must “learn to live with COVID”, it is easy to forget the first dread-filled days of the pandemic two years ago. Then, kisses, hugs and handshakes were freighted with danger and, panicked by the images from Italy of intensive care wards filled with elderly patients, we rushed to supermarkets to empty the aisles of bleach and disinfectant.

Sure, there had been precedents: in 1918, there was a similar panic when hospitals were inundated with allied troops whose lungs had been compromised by “Spanish influenza”. In response, several US cities banned large public gatherings and passed public mask ordinances, while Australia imposed quarantines on soldiers returning from Europe. But these measures were far from universal. For instance, New Zealand did not attempt to quarantine returning troops.

The fact is that before COVID, entire cities had never been locked down at the same time and never before had social distancing been applied at such a scale – and for such an extended period. This was a remarkable achievement, one that few experts thought possible before the pandemic.

But the coronavirus pandemic was also unprecedented in another way. For even as we learned to keep our distance from other people, lest they prove unwitting carriers of the virus, so there was also an explosion of virtual social connections. Thanks to Zoom, Facebook and Twitter, we could “see” friends and family and offer words of solace, even if we could not touch them and wipe the tears from their eyes.

How this will affect remembrance of the coronavirus pandemic is difficult to say. From the moment Prime Minister Boris Johnson grasped that COVID threatened to overwhelm the NHS, he has been at pains to present the pandemic as a crisis comparable to war. But while war memorials can draw on a familiar suite of symbols and rituals, the same is not true of pandemics.

For example, despite killing over 50 million people globally, there are no contemporary memorials to the 1918-19 Spanish flu anywhere in Europe or North America. Nor, with one or two notable exceptions, have those who perished in the Great Flu pandemic been memorialised since. As Guy Beiner, a historian of modern memory, puts it in a new collection revisiting the 1918-19 pandemic, “the Great Flu is essentially a lieu d’oublie, a site of social and cultural forgetting”.

It is also hard to locate meaning in a natural phenomenon lacking clear heroes and villains. “Who are the perpetrators if the Flu is caused by mutations of a string of RNA?” asks the memory studies scholar Astrid Erll in the same collection. “What could the moral of the story be if victims are claimed randomly?”

However, for those who have lost close family members to COVID and who will not soon forget their grief – and the government errors that contributed to their trauma – there is an urgent moral story to be told, one full of agency. This story is written in red ink on the National Covid Memorial Wall, an unauthorised “people’s memorial” on Albert Embankment emblazoned with 160,000 hand-drawn hearts, one for every British victim of the virus.

Organised online

Conceived during lockdown by COVID-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, a patient-activist group that organised online, the wall is a vivid example of how social media and connective digital technologies are enabling the remembrance of the pandemic in ways that would have been inconceivable in previous centuries. And it is not the only example. The Anglican church is also having to adapt its rituals and traditions to the digital age: hence St Paul’s Cathedral’s Remember Me project – an online book of remembrance containing the names of thousands of victims of COVID.

The result is a new politics of memory, one in which activists, with the support of religious and moral leaders, are increasingly able to dictate what form memorials to the pandemic should take, and whose memories should be accorded prominence.

Despite Johnson’s repeated invocations of the blitz spirit, we were not all in this together. Indeed, when most of us were observing the social-distancing regulations, the prime minister and his Downing Street staff were holding social gatherings in an apparent breach of the lockdown rules.

History suggests that pandemics do not end when politicians tell us they are over but when they become objects of cultural forgetting. Yet, for many of us, there can be no end to the pandemic as long as questions about responsibility for the death toll remain unanswered and the coronavirus continues to claim lives.

The Conversation

Mark Honigsbaum does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

ShareTweetSharePin
Previous Post

How the pandemic has affected periods

Next Post

How long does protective immunity against COVID-19 last after infection or vaccination? Two immunologists explain

Next Post
How long does protective immunity against COVID-19 last after infection or vaccination? Two immunologists explain

How long does protective immunity against COVID-19 last after infection or vaccination? Two immunologists explain

Most Read

What causes stuttering? A speech pathology researcher explains the science and the misconceptions around this speech disorder

What causes stuttering? A speech pathology researcher explains the science and the misconceptions around this speech disorder

December 15, 2022
morning back pain

Morning Again Ache Trigger Is Not the Mattress

October 11, 2021
lower back pain relief exercises

5 decrease again ache aid workouts

October 11, 2021
3 years after legalization, we have shockingly little information about how it changed cannabis use and health harms

3 years after legalization, we have shockingly little information about how it changed cannabis use and health harms

October 15, 2021
Nasal vaccines promise to stop the COVID-19 virus before it gets to the lungs – an immunologist explains how they work

Nasal vaccines promise to stop the COVID-19 virus before it gets to the lungs – an immunologist explains how they work

December 14, 2022
bleeding in gum

When The Bleeding in gum Is Severe ?

October 11, 2021
Good Night Sleep

6 Causes of Good Evening Sleep

October 11, 2021

COVID vaccines: how one can pace up rollout in poorer international locations

October 5, 2021
Ten small changes you can make today to prevent weight gain

Ten small changes you can make today to prevent weight gain

October 12, 2021
Support and collaboration with health-care providers can help people make health decisions

Support and collaboration with health-care providers can help people make health decisions

December 16, 2021
Greece to make COVID vaccines mandatory for over-60s, but do vaccine mandates work?

Greece to make COVID vaccines mandatory for over-60s, but do vaccine mandates work?

December 1, 2021

Multiple sclerosis: the link with earlier infection just got stronger – new study

October 12, 2021
News of war can impact your mental health — here’s how to cope

Binge-eating disorder is more common than many realise, yet it’s rarely discussed – here’s what you need to know

December 2, 2022
Nurses’ attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccination for their children are highly influenced by partisanship, a new study finds

Nurses’ attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccination for their children are highly influenced by partisanship, a new study finds

December 2, 2022
Kick up your heels – ballroom dancing offers benefits to the aging brain and could help stave off dementia

Kick up your heels – ballroom dancing offers benefits to the aging brain and could help stave off dementia

January 3, 2023
How hot is too hot for the human body? Our lab found heat + humidity gets dangerous faster than many people realize

How hot is too hot for the human body? Our lab found heat + humidity gets dangerous faster than many people realize

July 6, 2022
The promise of repairing bones and tendons with human-made materials

The promise of repairing bones and tendons with human-made materials

January 4, 2022
As viral infections skyrocket, masks are still a tried-and-true way to help keep yourself and others safe

As viral infections skyrocket, masks are still a tried-and-true way to help keep yourself and others safe

December 14, 2022
How regulatory agencies, not the courts, are imposing COVID-19 vaccine mandates

How regulatory agencies, not the courts, are imposing COVID-19 vaccine mandates

October 24, 2021
Heart disease risk from saturated fats may depend on what foods they come from – new research

Heart disease risk from saturated fats may depend on what foods they come from – new research

November 29, 2021
Late night eating may cause greater weight gain – new research points to why

Late night eating may cause greater weight gain – new research points to why

October 12, 2022

10 Things I Learned During My Body Transformation

October 12, 2021

7 Health Benefits of Sweet Potatoes

October 12, 2021
Nobel prize: how chilli peppers helped researchers uncover how humans feel pain

Nobel prize: how chilli peppers helped researchers uncover how humans feel pain

October 12, 2021
How air filters can make COVID wards safer for patients and staff

How air filters can make COVID wards safer for patients and staff

December 1, 2021
GPs don’t give useful weight-loss advice – new study

GPs don’t give useful weight-loss advice – new study

December 16, 2022
Four ways to avoid gaining weight over the festive period – but also why you shouldn’t fret about it too much

Four ways to avoid gaining weight over the festive period – but also why you shouldn’t fret about it too much

December 22, 2022
Five ways to avoid pain and injury when starting a new exercise regime

Five ways to avoid pain and injury when starting a new exercise regime

December 30, 2022
Why suicide prevention support is crucial for people with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder

Why suicide prevention support is crucial for people with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder

September 28, 2022
Too hot to handle: Climate considerations for youth sport during the hottest years on record

Too hot to handle: Climate considerations for youth sport during the hottest years on record

July 19, 2022
  • Home
  • Health & Wellness
  • Disclaimer

© 2020 DAILY HEALTH NEWS

  • Home
  • Health & Wellness
  • Disclaimer
    • Terms of Use
    • Privacy Policy
    • DMCA Notice

© 2020 DAILY HEALTH NEWS