We’re In It Again

Is a new pandemic on the way? Yes, probably several.

Don’t be so shocked, it was obvious. Photo by Jared Rice on Unsplash

The bad thing with reading too much is that you get really, really good at predicting problems, even if you might not have any solutions to offer.

In February 2020, my friends were joking about COVID. I wasn’t.

I had just ghostwritten a couple of op-eds for an Upwork client about the spread of the virus, so I got deep into all the news coming out of Iran, New York and Italy, the first epicenters after Wuhan. I followed the rising curve in every single country the virus reached, and read countless interviews public officials downplaying its severity despite the images coming from hospitals and morgues packed to the brim.

The really strange thing was having to write the op-ed from that perspective.

“Nothing is happening here, it’s all going to go away soon,” was the message. If we just take people’s temperature at airports, we’ll be able to keep the virus under control.

I didn’t believe a single word of what I wrote, but hey, this stuff paid the bills.

“In Argentina, we have much more of an issue with dengue fever,” Health Minister Ginés Gonzalez García said a month before we entered one of the world’s longest lockdowns. People believed him, and nobody was worried.