"Never will so many ask so much of so few." In his choice of language on St Patrick's Day to pay tribute to healthcare workers, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar's echo of Winston Churchill’s wartime words added him to a growing number of national leaders using bellicose speech when talking about Covid-19.
The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron all compared the struggle against Covid-19 to war.
Churchill’s famed speeches provide a wealth of morale boosting material for a crisis, but his pre-WWII utterances are relevant too: In the 1930s, he, and others, foretold the great threat the Nazis would present.