The first time I heard about Covid-19, I put it in my mental file for Asian viruses that did not affect my life. SARS, swine flu, MERS and so on. The outbreaks came and went. Even ebola stayed put. I had such an impoverished understanding of contagion. Didn’t we all?
China put a whole city on lockdown. A city larger than New York City — no one allowed to leave. This was over two years ago, at the end of January 2020. And do you know what I thought? “Dictatorships are gonna dictate.” I thought it was just China being China.
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