One day, perhaps several months or a year from now, the 2 SARS-CoV-2 (novel coronavirus) pandemic will be declared over, but it will not be business as usual. The virus of 2020 is not something to be consigned to disease history alongside the Spanish Influenza, polio, SARS, MER, AIDS or numerous cholera outbreaks. It is a life-altering event that has rendered obsolete our concept of what is normal.

Whether the pandemic is natural or man-made––a topic to be taken up later––does not alter the fact that it is making the earth conspicuously healthier. To speak of the virus in neutral, much less positive, language in the face of the mounting human death toll and economic disruption may seem perverse, but the effects of a virus cannot be judged by human, moral standards.