This is one for the long haul.  The curve of public health has ended up being a series of hills, a short drop down only to climb again, steep in illness and misunderstanding.  There is no end in sight, certainly not mid-summer, as the optimists in healthcare originally predicted.

Let us be clear, this is no hurricane.  Those storms: the predictable beginning, middle, and end of them, we always thought unnecessarily long, but now see as brief, merciful.  The graspable swirl of hurricanes, dervishes on a screen, destined to end within weeks. Manageable in our minds—we’ve been through them so many times.  Hunkering down because we know release, freedom, is just around the corner.

But the virus doesn’t promise freedom anytime soon.  Some say it never will let us go, let us be like we were.

Everyone knows someone who has caught Corona.  Most people have submitted to testing at least once.  And the virus…for some, it’s nothing much, a cough and fever, which rest takes care of.  For others, it’s a nightmare of suffocation and alienation.  For the unlucky, it is a lonely end. 

To think that this happened.  It still seems unreal: the virus holding us all captive.  Those who try to break out to normalcy, to engage, to socialize in the old ways, are punished by its unwanted presence.

This virus marks everyone.  No matter those who scoff, question, second guess, debate, doubt. 

No matter those who try to outwit it.