Michel de Montaigne, the 15th century French philosopher, once wrote in his Essais, ‘He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears’.
The rapid spread of COVID-19 has brought with it not only physical trauma, but an unprecedented wave of psychological debility. It has ground the engine of the world to a halt in a matter of weeks.
While there are signs of the initial impact of the pandemic waning, the biggest challenge now facing the government is to get that engine moving again. However, there are scars left behind that will not be so easily healed.
For the last few months the government had the unenviable task of slowing the rate of transmission of the virus. This required making the public aware of the risk of the virus, and rightly so. If left to spread unchecked, the health system may well have been overwhelmed. The controlled rhetoric used by the government, however, was distorted by unbridled …