Five years on from the pandemic, the right’s fake Covid narrative has been turbo-charged into the mainstream | Laura Spinney

Five years on from the declaration of the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s the masked passenger who is suspect.

Public health experts have watched its advance with a gathering sense of doom.

They know that how we respond to the next pandemic depends on how we understand the last.

But the purveyors of the new narrative have picked the wrong target: science.

The technology for building new, effective vaccines quickly came on in leaps and bounds.

Our best hope for protecting tomorrow ’s teenagers is to make our societies more resilient.

We saw this clearly at the height of the emergency, but we’ve forgotten it. Remember the shortlived calls to reduce gaping inequalities, shore up our health systems and work forces, and “build back better”.