As the pandemic wane, let’s hope for the best, but prepare for the worst
The idea that we might finally be putting the pandemic behind us, that the problems, restrictions and suffering we’ve experienced will be consigned to the past, and that we can once again get on with life — even if we have to continue living with an endemic virus that causes infections of low severity — is like finally seeing the light at the end of a long tunnel.
But as we begin to lift those restrictions, and see the possibility of no longer having to wear uncomfortable masks: in short, a return to normality, not a “new normality — we should maybe take a moment to see things from the virus’s perspective.
A virus does not think. It is not even an animal. It has no intentions, good or evil. In fact, it is almost like a chemical reaction: a compound that finds a substrate on which to multiply. In reality, the virus does not “try to infect” us, it simply succeeds by trial and error. When a new variant emerges, when suddenly another wave comes and we go from Alpha to Delta, or to Omicron, there is no central command devising a strategy to infect more humans or to maintain the pandemic. It is simply that a mutation that occurred by chance (all mutations occur by chance) has turned out to have properties that allow it to replicate in human organisms.
