A year ago today, February 6th, the first known soul was lost to covid in the United States. Four hundred sixty-two thousand more have since lost their lives. In just one year. I can't make the number real.
I was tracking its spread in China a year ago "from the safety of New York," at a time when a thousand deaths seemed catastrophic. "This looks to me like something which might end up in every Chinese life story," I wrote, not conceiving it might turn out to be so globally.
There are reasons to be hopeful. We again have a government doing what government is supposed to be doing, thinking about the public good and marshaling resources to care for it. But the time squandered and the deaths which might have been prevented boggle the mind.
