The ongoing trauma of COVID-19 will no doubt mark entire generations in ways inherent in an unmanaged global pandemic. The question that I ask is why this ongoing trauma seems so particularly profound and so uniquely shattering, and whether there is anything that we could do now, while still in the midst of disaster, to begin the process of social and moral repair? I will begin by considering the trauma of isolation with unknown time-horizons, and argue that it not only damages our experiences as social selves, but its languages of overwhelming grief rob us of hope of self-restoration. Second, I will examine some reasons for the “why us”-type of trauma experienced by so many in the Global North, and suggest that such laments are predicated on the misalignment among our socio-historical awareness, disaster-imagination, and our sense of ourselves as uniquely unfortunate. Finally, relying in part on Viktor Frankl’s notion of “tragic optimism,” I conclude by considering how we may begin to reconsider our traumas as not just endings of what is, but beginnings of what still might be —as repair without a master plan.

COVID-19 的持续创伤无疑将以不受管理的全球流行病所固有的方式标记整整几代人。我要问的问题是，为什么这种持续的创伤似乎如此深刻和如此独特地破碎，以及我们现在是否有什么可以做的，虽然仍处于灾难之中，开始社会和道德修复的过程？我将首先考虑具有未知时间范围的孤立的创伤，并认为它不仅损害了我们作为社会自我的体验，而且它压倒性的悲伤语言使我们失去了自我恢复的希望。其次，我将研究北半球许多人所经历的“为什么是我们”型创伤的一些原因，并提出这种哀叹是基于我们的社会历史意识、灾难想象、以及我们对自己独特不幸的感觉。最后，部分依赖维克多·弗兰克尔的“悲惨乐观主义”概念，我最后考虑了我们如何开始重新考虑我们的创伤，而不仅仅是什么的结局是，但仍然可能是的开始——作为没有总体规划的修复。