Like everyone else, like all of you, I sit and wait, watching movies I’ve seen too many times and wondering how long until I know. For sure, I mean. The days are warming and the plants are blooming — bluebonnets everywhere — but what’s going on inside is what matters. To wit: Is there a microbe buried way down deep that’s biding its time before taking me out?

Nothing and nobody prepared us for this. The great advantage of life in a developed nation in the last half of the 20th century and the first two decades of the 21st is the benefit of medical progress. Diseases common in our grandparents’ age are all but forgotten. Polio anyone? Diptheria? As time passed, Typhoid Mary was reduced to metaphor.

Now we know better. Individual survival, technically speaking, is always a day-to-day crapshoot. People can be run over by a bus. But in the last few weeks it has become a tangible thing. Frighteningly so.

Our new companion, day in and day out, is uncertainty. Flattening the curve for the new coronavirus is but step one in what may be a long, mean year. The end of the shutdown order will not be the end of the threat. For now, of course, that’s all we have to look forward to. Crowded homes, suppressed fear, economic upheaval, boredom, fatigue, uninspired meals, movie franchise marathons — such is the domestic inventory for the lucky ones. Don’t complain, we tell ourselves. Think of the doctors, nurses, grocery stockers, the people living paycheck to paycheck who have no paycheck — people who don’t have time to get annoyed by Rocky V or the endless commercials about the joy of contactless food delivery.

Not that many weeks ago I was fretting about looming dental procedures, and the occasional misbehavior of my putter. In a flash, life as we knew it was postponed. The calendar that ruled our lives now mocks us, more so when we forget to cancel the notifications. Those still working have some structure to their days. The rest of us are learning what it really means to not have enough to do. We don’t stop to chat. We don’t gather. We run and walk in the park, together but alone, constantly eyeing the gap between our bodies and the unexpected crowd around us. Walk, rest, repeat. Every few days, go to the grocery store.

The most stringent of the medicos suggest even this much togetherness is not safe. Surely they’re wrong. Surely. Now they’re telling us maybe we should be wearing masks. Great. We needed one more log on the fire of paranoia that doesn’t ever go out. And we have to make the mask ourselves. It’s a Mad Max world for which we were completely unprepared. Though the immediate threat will peter out, I doubt we’ll ever be as confident again, not we Boomers anyway.

We stream and binge and every so often scan the headlines. The daily news is hard to read and even harder to watch. Just when we start to feel better — a new season of Ozark! — along comes a tale of a healthy someone who got sick and passed away in the space of a few days. At the age of 43. Gulp. Then another. And another.

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With nowhere to go and so little to ponder save for the chance of our remaining days being measured in double digits, we turn to virtual anything in lieu of social interaction. Tell me how a virtual happy hour isn’t a contradiction in terms. We are social creatures, even the misanthropes. Never has a backyard barbecue, or even a haircut, seemed so enticing. At this point another root canal doesn’t sound so bad.

It’s Groundhog Day, the movie version, except we don’t get to play the fool with an unsuspecting cast of character actors and clever soundtrack. We don’t get to play at all. Stay at home, the signs say. OK. We get it. And? Clean out the pantry again?

There is little news of anything but the virus. And every iteration of that is a bitter pint of gloom and doom, with a chaser of rising death totals and unemployment claims. The hours go by tortuously. We’re all children waiting for Christmas — and it’s still November. It’s hard to tell Wednesday from Sunday.

Retirees sort of know the drill, but for others it’s an endless holiday without purpose, for too many without pay. It should be some consolation to recall that our ancestors suffered through worse — the Great Influenza Epidemic, the Great Depression, the Great War — but in a swipe-left culture that treasures gratification on demand, looking back isn’t our strong suit.

When it comes to the butcher’s bill, so far so good in most of Texas. The toll in Houston is stunning, in a good way. By comparison, I mean. Then again, maybe that’s an illusion. We know about the dreaded incubation period, how it can take weeks for this bug to stir. We are told a big spike is coming. Perhaps this diverse, international city will be the next hotspot.

The upshot is that that our best chance is to get lucky. Which means every daily decision is fraught with consequence. The milk is running low, but dare we risk a trip to the store that could bring us in contact with a microscopic bit of virus lurking on a keypad or box of Cheerios.

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Those of us who’ve seen 60 in our rear view mirror had already begun to learn that our bodies are dead-set on betraying us. New months bring new aches, small but inescapable. Now we can’t help but think this or that particular twinge or throat tickle could be the first of more that will coalesce into a bona fide symptom. A simple cough could be a harbinger, a headache an omen. Come morning we feel OK. And it starts all over again. Can I smell the coffee brewing? Am I feverish or merely hot?

This, too, shall pass. Donald Trump talked about getting everything open by Easter, which was so at odds with medical predictions and even common sense that he’s pushed our national date of liberation back to May Day. It makes us feel good to anticipate it, whenever it comes.

Every one of us, from 7 to 70, wants to have faith that there’s a future substantially better than the present — a defining human trait. When civil war descended on Syria, its citizens took to the roads, and some the ocean, buoyed by hope that there was a place somewhere that could restore that faith. We stay put, alone and fearful, financially squeezed yet still believing baseball’s opening day will soon arrive, that the theater doors will open, that schools will be doing their thing and that our jobs will be there.

Until then, we walk in circles, knowing there’s nowhere to go. This war is everywhere, as is our common enemy. That the gun shops remain open is poor consolation. We can’t shoot our way out of this one. Americans by and large have been blessed not to live with gnawing fear in more than half a century. This was the land people came to to escape that. In this strange time, everything is upside down and the hours trickle by. The bank account dwindles and we avoid looking at our 401k, if we’re fortunate enough to have one.

Yes, Mr. Eliot, April is the cruelest month. Its losses will prove staggering, however you choose to measure them. One hopes we’re past the point of pretending otherwise. Yet as pundits and experts parse the weekly numbers — always the numbers — it’s easy to forget the odds are greatly in our favor, that most of us will still be here come May and thereafter. For now, that will have to do.

Mike Tolson is a former staff writer for the Houston Chronicle.