Today, on January 1, as we look back on the year we could never have imagined, how can we even begin to tell the story of 2020?
Where it begins and ends is easier – in the elite ski resorts of Europe.
Last February, the ski resort of Ischgl, on the Austrian-Swiss border, was its usual magnet for the international rich and famous.
Nicknamed ‘Ibiza on Ice’ for its famed apres-ski nightlife, skiers gathered in packed bars.
Thousands went home again, carrying the just-emerging coronavirus to more than 40 countries on five continents, including the UK.
Fast forward to December and despite being urged to “stay at home”, around 3,500 people from the UK were estimated to have travelled once more to Switzerland’s elite ski resorts.
And then hundreds left again, under cover of darkness, as Switzerland asked them to isolate to prevent the spread of “the British Covid”.
Vote Leave’s Andy Wigmore – a man not generally known for his sympathetic view of refugees fleeing persecution – even compared his family’s flight with the von Trapps from the Sound of Music.
There are few images that better sum up the inequalities of the coronavirus pandemic than that of wealthy Brits fleeing the pandemic police in their Moncler salopettes – while back home The Trussell Trust was issuing a food parcel every nine seconds.
While SUVs with UK numberplates queued to cross the Swiss border, at Newcastle’s West End foodbank in Benwell, people queued in the cold and rain as volunteers issued food parcels for 4,404 people.
“It’s always humbling to see that despite struggling, people hold on to their dignity and hope,” said the foodbank’s CEO John McCorry.
Words which may not have applied to the off-piste von Trapps.
This year has been a time when the coronavirus followed the faultlines of inequality across the world. In Latin America, the disease – initially spread by elites travelling for holidays and business – is known as “the disease of the rich that kills the poor”.
But its effects have also been felt unequally across the UK.
The super-rich began jetting off to “disaster bunkers” as far back as March.
The World Economic Forum reports that global billionaires increased their collective wealth by 27.5% in the early months of the pandemic.
But it’s also true that those in even modestly higher-paid jobs have generally been able to shield from the pandemic by working from home, while others have flouted lockdown rules in one big Escape to the Country.
There, some have bemoaned being cruelly denied boasting about their bakes on Instagram in case people spot they are using the Cornwall Aga.
While others, often with different generations crammed into cramped flats, have played a dangerous frontline role driving our buses, emptying our bins, cleaning our hospitals and caring for our sick.
This story has been told most starkly via the death rate. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that people in the most affluent areas are a staggering 50% less likely to die from Covid-19.
Black people are more than four times more likely than white people to die. Disabled people have experienced death rates two to three times higher than non-disabled people.
“High-value” business travellers have been treated differently from others, while key workers have been told unmistakably of their low value by being denied a pay rise by the Government.
One in three young people have been furloughed or lost their job. The gender pay gap is widening.
University College London researchers have found other stark differences.
Almost half of those who were finding things “very difficult” financially before the pandemic are now reporting things are “much worse”, with a further 23% saying things are “worse”.
Meanwhile, of those who were financially “comfortable”, around 27% are actually better off.
This year has also seen great solidarity between neighbours and communities.
The year that millions stood up to help each other in the most moving of ways. But we need government to embody those values.
As we face 2021 together, the question is how do we bear the brunt of the pandemic more equally?
This is why we need to give key workers a pay rise and better working conditions, why we need to end exploitation in the gig economy, and to see that migrant workers, who stepped up during the pandemic, do not face destitution.
It’s why we need a permanent uplift to Universal Credit, and for that to be extended to disabled people.
Beyond that, we need to ask how we strengthen pandemic solidarity.
And what else can we do to better protect key workers?
So 2020 may be the year that inequality increased, but as we emerge from the whiteout, 2021 must be the year we finally understand how to share the burden of the pandemic.
It’s the debt we owe to those key workers who have already lost their lives.
