History in real time: Field Notes From A Pandemic logs COVID-19 as it happened
Posted November 1, 2020 11:31 am.
Last Updated November 1, 2020 11:32 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Vancouver (NEWS 1130) – It’s no secret 2020 has been a year like no other. Books will be written about how the world navigated COVID-19 and, indeed, some already have. Field Notes From A Pandemic: A Journey Through a World Suspended is one of them.
Billed as “part travelogue, part COVID-19 road map,” the memoir reads like a novel set in a bleak, not-too-distant future. Instead, it is very much rooted in our present. Journalist and author Ethan Lou begins his journey in China just as the novel coronavirus is beginning to take hold.
LISTEN: Field Notes From A Pandemic
“I ended up very unfortunately travelling amid the pandemic, caught in more than one lockdown,” he explains. “And that compounds on the fact that I was going to see my ailing grandfather at the beginning of this. Writing for me is a way to deal with all these things. It’s therapeutic and cathartic in a way for me.”
Lou argues globalization made us particularly vulnerable to this pandemic. “It’s no more deadly than SARS but it’s much worse than SARS because China now is four times more connected with the rest of the world than back in the day of SARS and when we are all so interconnected this way, I think small disturbances can ripple into tidal waves.”
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He also lays out how the response to the pandemic exposed some structural deficiencies in the geopolitical system, particularly Europe and the United States, and how China is poised to take advantage of them. “They view this as an opportunity to eclipse the US,” says Lou. “When the pandemic is over, we will see geopolitical power, not tilting completely, but tilting substantially and in an observable way towards the East.”
Look for Field Notes From A Pandemic: A Journey Through a World Suspended from Penguin Random House.
