Professor Lewis Dartnell, Professor of Science Communication, has written an article for Penguin’s Perspective series about COVID-19’s effect on the way we think about the world.
Professor Dartnell wrote: “The international disruption of the coronavirus has suddenly shone a glaring spotlight on this Earth-spanning network of manufacture and distribution. We take a huge amount for granted in our everyday lives, without ever needing to pause and ponder where everything has actually come from. How was it made? How far does the supply chain reach around the world? That is until, of course, certain items stop just magically appearing on the supermarket shelves. As an individual, how much do any of us actually know how to make and do for yourself?”
He later added: “So my hope is that on a simple, individual level, one small positive outcome of this virus, and the mirror it thrust up to our society, is that when we are able to return to our ‘normal’, pre-pandemic, lives and the high-street re-opens we’ll retain this appreciation of all that is going on behind the scenes of the modern world to support and provide for us.”
