The virus that occupied headlines for much of 2020 inadvertently diverted attention from a more dangerous pandemic simmering beneath. This less glamorous one involves inequality, which no one likes talking about anymore because escapism is now a global pastime. Still, one has to have lived under a rock over the past 12 months to not notice a widening gap between the haves and have nots.

In April, the International Monetary Fund warned anyone who was listening that inequality would rise, based on predictions that the world economy would contract by 4.9 per cent in 2020. Two months later, the World Bank pitched in with its own good news about poverty rates going up for the first time since 1998, pushing a staggering 71 million people into extreme poverty. If those zeroes make little sense to us, it is only because of the precarious nature of our existence, where the loss of a job is enough to push us into the kind of debt it takes decades to climb out of.