In the process of compiling the stories, I have asked myself about the recording of history. For the first time in the history of the world, women are fully in control of the way our stories are told. Some claim only men should be able to record the story of the Plague, as they were the worst affected. Respectfully, I disagree. Women are, in the majority, the people left. We are the ones whose lives have been splintered and left behind. Many are working jobs they didn’t choose, working six days a week to aid economies in crisis, raising children alone while coping with the weight of grief. In a world that has changed unimaginably, the way in which we record our stories has changed too.
As I have spoken to women and men who have experienced the Plague in different ways, I have tried to start answering the important questions we will face for decades and centuries to come. Why did the Plague spread as quickly as it did? What impact has it had on societies across the world? How have individuals re-formed families and coped with the changes forced upon them? How are children coping in a new world unlike anything their parents envisaged for them? How has the remaining male population integrated into a world in which they are an extreme minority?
When my daughter asks me, “How did the world change?” I hope she can find some answers here. I hope she can one day read this and understand something of the past. It is not so long ago that things were very different. I have been a mother before, but motherhood, like so much else, has changed. My experience feels more in line with mothers during wartime than my experience parenting my son. I am a single parent in a world that is changing faster than we can keep up with, a world that is now smaller than it has been for decades. The arrival of a new baby is now a blessed relief from widespread death, rather than a common experience of adulthood.
Compiling this report was in many ways the hardest thing I have ever done and yet, it was also a source of comfort and joy when my life was blasted apart by grief. My superiors at UCL, particularly my mentor, Margaret King, and, later, those I have worked with on the United Nations Male Plague Commission, have been an enormous support.
It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge the limitations of this report. The Plague began in Scotland and spread across the world, but I have not been able to represent the stories of as many different countries, cultures and people as I would have liked. Many countries, particularly in the southern hemisphere, are still awaiting certification of vaccination. Much of what used to be China is still closed off to the outside world; the Shanghai contingent who traveled to Toronto to arrange the production of the MP-1 vaccine were some of the first individuals from the Chinese states to fly outside of Asia. Iran, Iraq and parts of Yemen are still in total blackout with no communications leaving those countries. I hope, in time, that our understanding of the Plague’s impact will only grow in breadth and variety. This is just the beginning.
I have attempted to strike the correct balance between focusing on the impact of the Plague on the living and remembrance of the dead. One of the things I have tried to remember in the long and emotional journey back to a semblance of normality is something Maria Ferreira wrote: “Perhaps some traumas are too overwhelming to recover from.” On an individual and societal level, perhaps recovery is too great a goal. We can never regain what we have lost and we must accept that, mourn that, grieve what cannot be, and find a new way to exist. More than anything, in the coming months and years, I hope women and men can find a sense of camaraderie in these pages. The horrors of the Plague have made many of us feel alone and yet the most common experiences—widowhood, the loss of children, parents and siblings—are near universal.
Finally, I would like to dedicate this report to my family: my husband, Anthony; my son, Theodore; and my daughter, Maeve. We will not be together in this life but I am so very glad you have been mine.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I first heard about coronavirus as most people likely did, through snippets of news and e-mails from friends saying, “Have you seen this? So weird!” For a number of weeks, it felt distant in that way so many foreign news stories do. Something awful and scary but ultimately a disease I would remain personally unaffected by.
Only a few months on from those e-mails and news reports, I’m sitting in my flat in central London in lockdown. I leave the house once a day for exercise, and shop for food and other essentials once a week. I don’t know when I’ll next see my family, my friends or my colleagues. Billions of people around the world are in the same position. I feel immeasurably fortunate to still be employed and to have recovered from suspected coronavirus （I have not been tested but experienced the virus’s telltale cough, breathlessness and extreme fatigue after returning to London from a trip to northern Italy）。 I know you’re meant to “live your truth” through art and everything, but contracting coronavirus was a step toward authenticity I could have done without.