The Prognosis
Looking the consequences in the eye

http://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2020/10/the-prognosis/
Date Written:  2020-10-01
Publisher:  Literary Review of Canada
Year Published:  2020
Resource Type:  Article

What has impressed me about the coronavirus is the extent to which its fearsome reputation has eclipsed and occasionally exceeded its actual effects. This is not to deny that some of these effects have been, in places, quite terrible. It is only to point out that the myth of the pandemic -- the story that already clothed it upon arrival -- has sometimes had more influence on policy than the facts of the matter, which are more difficult to ascertain.