Albert Camus, Covid-19, and what is says about modern Britain?

As only he could, Albert Camus in his classic 1947 novel, The Plague, mines the human condition in the midst of a crisis in which solidarity, selflessness and mutuality are the means of survival, and in which individualism, selfishness and self-regard are death itself.

Camus:

This whole thing is not about heroism. It’s about decency. It may seem a ridiculous idea, but the only way to fight the plague is with decency.

The personal and social struggle forced upon us by Covid has been extraordinarily revelatory in what it has revealed about our common humanity. And when we trace the trajectory of the pandemic we cannot but avoid the harsh truth that Covid denialism began, here in the UK, at the level of government.

When Boris Johnson, prompted by his otherworldly special adviser Dominic Cummings, infamously voiced the possibility that the UK might ‘take it on the chin’ in the interests of herd immunity, he instantly exposed himself as a moral and ethical monster. And here, as Camus artfully reminds us, ‘A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.’

Johnson voiced this macabre possibility in an interview on ‘This Morning’ on ITV on…