There’s an eerie silence in the world these days.
Humankind is hibernating, waiting until it’s safe to come back out again. To return to a life we once knew but will never quite be the same again. It’s a society transformed by the COVID-19 (or coronavirus) pandemic, a killer that emerged from Asia in late 2019 and quickly swept around the world in a matter of weeks. This virus is unlike any other we’ve seen since 1918, when the Spanish Flu killed over 50 million people over two years and extinguished the lives of more people than were lost in all of World War I, which ended just as the flu began overwhelming the globe.
Today, we face another pandemic, one that by the time this article has reached readers will surely have already reached millions of lives. Or, maybe, will be reaching an apex. What we do know about this pandemic is that it is unpredictable. It’s easily transmissible, can be carried in otherwise healthy people without presenting one outward symptom, and may incubate for 14 days – enough time for an unsuspecting carrier to infect a lot of people. Because of those dangerous wildcards, the United States, along with many other nations around the world, has put a temporary pause on everyday life.