There are two million three hundred thousand tragic ways, and ever more daily, to mark the course of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 that has plagued the world with COVID 19 over the past years and change. We may never quite trace its exact origin or its direct path around the globe and into a pandemic we thought could never happen again.
Still there are markers along the way worth noting. Cases of a then unidentified disease were first noticed in Wuhan China as early as perhaps November 2019. By the end of December China had isolated the virus, deciphered its genetic code and shared at least that data.
I began following news the disease around then and noted that CIVID 19, as the disease caused by the virus was named, had spread in the Wuhan region and was soon detected in Italy, so I watched and waited for the first cases in the US, expecting they might be found in Atlanta, where I live, because of our busy international airport.
As it happened, the first case in this country was found in Seattle on January 20, in a man who had returned from visiting family in Wuhan. He was hospitalized and recovered, but by then the disease had infected others in the area and elsewhere, perhaps due to him or likely from independent sources connected in some way to its origin. We may never know because, in part, our medical infrastructure and government were not prepared. To this day, contact tracing is mostly handled by word of mouth by those who tested positive being willing to step forward and reach out themselves to those they may have infected.
It turns out that the real world is complex and unpredictable, and we don’t have Dustin Hoffman and Renee Russo to save us all in less than two hours, just before the closing credits. It may be more like something from Stephen King, in which the last scene shows whatever creature thought to be defeated is seen walking into the darkness with ominous music in the background.
Today does mark one year since the first known death in the US by COVID 19. CNN reports that Patricia Dowd (pictured above) died on February 6, 2020 in San Jose, California of what was later identified as COVID 19. They didn’t know for some time, because testing then, as to a lesser extent now, was hard to come by.
By the end of February, the first horrific outbreak in a Seattle nursing home had become known, and by then I had ordered hand sanitizer, masks, gloves and other supplies, expecting the worst. Despite the willfully blind denials of too many and failures at nearly every level of government, what we have seen has been just about as dreadful as one could have imagined.
Those of us who have survived have done so by luck, some common sense, dedicated medical professionals and the kindness of others. Nearly 27 million in this country, however, have been known to be infected (said to be probably three times that number infected but untested) and 450,000 have died (probably many more if you add collateral deaths that wouldn’t have occurred in the absence of the disease).
In mentioning medical professionals, we should call out our real life Dustin Hoffman, Anthony Fauci, who stood tall and true through death threats and talk of drinking bleach, though he did say he’d rather be played by Brad Pitt (and was).
The next weeks and months promise hope, through vaccines just now beginning to be distributed, but thousands still die here daily. What’s more, the virus has begun to shape shift in ways that may challenge the vaccines.
The story of Pandora, the Greeks’ Eve, echoes in the events of this past year. After Prometheus gave man divine fire, Zeus chose to punish man by commanding Hephaestus to create woman, which I suppose does show that both history and myth were written by men. Each Olympian was commanded to give a gift to Pandora, whose name means “all gifted.”
Hermes, the precocious child-god and a favorite of Zeus, gave Pandora a “pithos,” actually a jar but later mistranslated by Erasmus into what we know as a box. As we all know, Pandora’s curiosity led her to open the box, releasing all the evils of the world. One thing remained in her box, “elepis.” This word is often translated as hope, or more aptly the spirit of hope, but scholars have long questioned this simple interpretation. Perhaps it was a reflection of what one may see in it, whether hope or despair in knowing we are all too human to do more than merely hope.
Pandora buried her box with elepis still within, and the Greeks never quite explain who released it, if at all. I do know we need it ever so today.
