We first heard about it in casual conversations, something over there, way over there, making people sick.  It had something to do with the marketplace, or maybe animal parts. The pangolin, perhaps. It was spreading quickly, chances are it had been spreading for a while, before it even reached our ears.

A U.S. shutdown can never happen, we all reasoned.  That’s crazy, like something from a novel. That’s not in our narrative.  Americans reject that kind of story as real.

Yet, pandemics have always been part of the story, we soon learned.  The Spanish Flu of 1918, the avian one of 1968. A few decades on, and here’s another plague, with a name at first confused with a beer, claiming the title within weeks.

This time around, we ruthlessly chronicle the pandemic—posting and commenting, proclaiming, predicting, badgering, pleading.  We read and read about it, and then we don’t.  Because we’re tired, but we’re learning there’s no rest from this virus.  So we start again to listen and interpret and digest and read, so that we may stay safe from this communicable devil.

Masks, damp from our own breath, will protect us from that of others.  Or will they?

Hand sanitizer should kill 99.9% of the germs? Or does it?

Tainted materials should be okay to touch after three days in isolation.  Or is it four?

It depends on what you read, or who you listen to, this channel or that one, maybe choose this video, stay away from that one. 

Unlike hurricanes, this virus cannot be outrun, out maneuvered, or out waited.  It is stuck through this year, like needle into fabric or a pin through the thorax.

And all we can do is abide.