We are at war

I often wonder what life was like for my parents who lived in London during the Blitz. I've lived long enough to have seen several: Vietnam (not my country), The Falklands War (very far away), the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (nearer, but still...).  Unlike my parents, all were wars I experienced as a dispassionate observer through the medium of television. They were wars that went on "out there" somewhere, but daily life for me, as for so many, didn't change.

Covid-19 is different. Yes, it's not a conventional war, but defeating it it requires a war-time like response.  And while we're not there yet, largely because Republicans seem more concerned about their and their donors' wallets than the health of the country, but we are moving slowly and fitfully towards getting things if not under control, at least less terrible than they could have been.

Life has changed with "shelter in place", in ways perhaps analogous to what Londoner's went through in the war. Of course we're not huddled in tube stations, sleeping on the platform (but my parents didn't either, they were living with my grandmother in Highgate.

And there is now a change in risk. Even with the rise in terrorism, Islamic or domestic, there was little chance I'd be impacted. But with covid-19 the risk is significant.  The enemy isn't human, but it feels like more like we are at war than any of the armed conflicts I have lived through.