It is hard to avoid seeing unfolding human events as history that has already been made, and so it is with the vaccines that are being rolled out against Covid-19. The vaccines will give us a high degree of protection against the virus, and we owe this triumph, and the ever more effective treatments that will surely follow, to the genius of science. Many would like to believe that, in the months ahead, we shall be returning to a time of accelerating progress in society, or at least of relative safety.
Underlying these responses is a belief that humankind has reasserted control. With the pandemic soon to be contained, we can look forward to resuming the expansion of human power that seemed to be under way before it struck. In fact, the lesson of this year is that we must learn to live in a world we cannot fully know or control.
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