Culture | Chronicling the past

When is it too soon to write history?

Early accounts can stand the test of time, but they have to be riveting

An illustration of a clock melting over a pile of books against a empty landscape. — Illustration: Eric Thompson

Feb 5th 2024

The signs, at first, were small. On December 15th 2019 mentions of “pneumonia” and the Chinese word feidian (SARS) started to spread on WeChat, a Chinese social-media app, multiplying faster than any disease. By February people outside China had started buying tissues, gloves and masks. Then, as “2020”, a new history of covid, explains, people started keeping their children home from school. Without giving too many spoilers, the reader can guess what happened next. The covid-19 pandemic happened next. History, in other words, happened next.

This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “The present as prologue”