This postscript is being written in the midst of the widespread social lockdown, the seemingly universal response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the past few months, things we’ve previously taken for granted have been viewed with fresh eyes and, occasionally, through perspectives laced with fear, insecurity and an increasing sense of trepidation. There are banal and perhaps ridiculous behaviours (for some reason, the panic buying of toilet paper, milk, and bread started almost as suddenly as it stopped), but more pressing are questions around how we support and care for those who are most vulnerable to the virus. For those who are consigned to some form of medical quarantine, there is a lingering possibility of an impending, and solitary, period of illness and even death. For those in mourning, the process of grieving no longer comes with some form of limited closure to which we may have been previously accustomed. We are all subject, in our own ways, to this new reality. The impacts of these new elements of life, of course, are partly financial but also emotional and psychological.

Worryingly, we still don't really know what it is that we’re living through, and what the world will look like in the months and years to come. One thing seems indisputable: for most of us, the world and our place in it will change. We know this because we have already made adaptations to the everyday; from the rituals and practices of greeting one another, to how we work, make leisure and consume media; there have been spikes in sales of games consoles, streaming media services, as well as consumption of user-created media, via YouTube.com, for example, some of which explores alternatives to the pandemic source and alternative treatments. More generally in mainstream mass media, there seems to be a paucity of views which challenge or provide alternatives to guidelines, policies and statements about the state, or phase, we are in, and how we will come out of it. On this note, it is curious, and possibly quite annoying for some of us, that Piers Morgan, through a particular form of populism, has emerged as one of the most consistently critical commentators of the UK government's response to COVID-19.