Opposite Paths, Opposite Outcomes

Perhaps the most curious thing about COVID-19 is not its complicated pathology, its rapid mutations, the fact that many are infected and remain symptomless while others die, or that some experience a debilitating long version of the disease set in after the initial infection. Rather, in our highly globalized world, the rapid spread and almost universal human encounter with the disease has become a threshold moment in human history. While other pandemics have come and gone in the past, and while scientists promise us COVID-19 is the first of many more to come, most of us will demarcate our lives in two periods: before the outbreak and after.

But this is only the shell of the curiosity—the kernel