"In this pandemic, the mask reveals far more than it hides. It exposes the world’s political and economic relations for what they are: vectors of self-interest that ordinarily lie obscured under glib talk of globalisation and openness. For the demagogues who govern so much of the world, the pandemic has provided an unimpeachable excuse to fulfil their dearest wishes: to nail national borders shut, to tar every outsider as suspicious, and to act as if their own countries must be preserved above all others. When these tendencies combine with a fawning loyalty to the free market, the results can be ruinous. In mere weeks, the mask went from being an urgent human need to a cynically exploited asset in a global resource grab – the fastest such journey, perhaps, of any product in history. Sometimes, it felt as if the mask itself was beside the point – that it was just a trigger to rehearse old routines of acquisitiveness and discord, with no further, greater end in sight." Ho...