On this weekend of Chinese New Year, nothing is, sadly, as usual. Covid-19 restrictions have reduced festivities and brought crowd control measures to Chinatown. It takes a lot to subdue what, for most people in this part of the world, is the most joyously important event of the year. Few of us will deny we are living in exceptional times.

After four traumatic years of world chaos, political turmoil in America and later the global plague of Covid-19, many of us now fall into one of two groups: those who dread to see the daily newspaper's international headlines, and those who bring up CNN on their phones as soon as they wake up in the morning.