COVID-19 at 50: An Oral History

Extract from Interview #723, conducted 3 June 2069 

Dr Tom Pritchard & Beth Edwards

TP: When the schools reopened in June 2020, did you go straight back?

BE: Yeah. It wasn’t an easy decision for my parents, because the R-Number was still really high. As it turned out, the Second Wave wasn’t far off.

TP: How did you feel about it all?

BE: Excited. I was eleven and desperate to see my friends. But everything was so different. Classrooms with just 8 desks; all those 2-metre crosses on the floor. You couldn’t even touch the taps when you went to the loo.

TP: And how were playtimes?

BE: Weird. If a kid fell over, the teacher had to get a colleague in full PPE to help them. I thought the kid was being taken away at first, because for me, PPE meant COVID and hospitals and death… That’s when my anxiety got really bad.

It’s been two days since the story broke and the lockdown messaging fell apart — a blur of hysterical ministers and crisis comms. As of this morning she’s been covering Twitter as well, because James is off sick with “a cough”. Annoying, but not half as annoying as the boss fluffing her name in front of everyone on Zoom. That really grated.

On her laptop, the Prime Minister is doubling down, defending his man at a lectern framed by two Union Jacks. She hears him insist that the aide “acted responsibly, and with the overwhelming aim of stopping the spread of the virus”.

She types the seventy characters in a cold, hard rage. Then she pours herself a glass of red and watches the tweet go viral.

Twelve minutes later, her work phone vibrates: “Laura — WTF!”

“It’s LARA, you prick,” she taps back, and reaches out a hand for more wine.

The politician stared glumly into the night sky. It had been another day of crises and scandals, and he needed a moment to himself. At precisely six minutes past ten, the International Space Station came winking into view, a luminous orange-yellow dot that moved steadily across the heavens at 17,000 miles per hour. He watched it with a hint of envy. Imagine being a Doug or Bob, stepping off a pandemic-riddled earth into the cool, quiet void of space. Circling the planet every ninety minutes, safe in the knowledge that it was all happening down there. So unlike his earth-bound reality — a spectacular rise through purged ministerial ranks (good), which had now shackled him to a lunatic government and the biggest public health cock-up in living memory (very, very bad). He watched the space station disappear from view and trudged upstairs to bed.

“Jon, a quick word about the tweet that’s just gone out.”

“Yes, Minister?”

“You don’t think it looks a bit too upbeat, do you?”

“Upbeat, sir?”

“Well, you know, given the whole excess deaths thing.”

“A flutter at the races will take their minds off it, sir.”

“And you’re sure they won’t twig…?”

“…that you’re Health Minister?”

“No, Jon. That I’m the MP for Newmarket.”

“I really wouldn’t worry, sir. They’re all too busy barbecuing.”

“Right. Splendid. In that case, I suppose we’d better give Dido a ring. See how the Test & Trace malarkey’s coming on.”

“I’m afraid she’s in a Jockey Club meeting this afternoon, sir.”

“Ah well, I guess it can wait. Pass me The Racing Post, would you?”