The coronavirus was once “novel” because it was new. Now it feels both ancient and eternal. Having endured the emergence of two major strains even since the rollout of vaccines, a difficult thought is planted in my head: What if the pandemic never ends? The scientists tell me that “endemicity” is now the goal: COVID-19 will never go away, but eventually we will be able to control it. That sounds good, but we have just spent a year proving that we cannot control it, even when the tools for control appear to be at hand.
“Now is the time to overreact,” I wrote in The Atlantic in March 2020, a few days after the global pandemic received its formal declaration. I hoped that a feeling of dread might spur excessive action—lockdowns or rent cancellation or border closings—whatever might have brought the virus to heel. But we have overreacted less and less with each cycle of outbreak, and watched new setbacks follow every victory. That gloomy slog has begotten new generations of dread.
Having lived through the past two years on Earth, one should be allowed to wonder if our present circumstances might persist endlessly. Perhaps as superstition, to ward off its arrival through voodoo. Perhaps as hostility toward the too-early-to-tell recklessness of bureaucratic scientism. Perhaps as sensation, to let despair’s heat burn off any useless hope or fear that still remains. Perhaps as practice, to gird ourselves for the worst-case scenario. What if it never ends?
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