When some of these people became ill with symptoms of Covid-19 and asked to be tested, they were refused because they didn’t have a direct connection to China, or they weren’t sick enough. It was a bit of a moot point, though, since the testing kit developed and distributed by the CDC was faulty and couldn’t be used. This unconscionable delay in testing, coupled with the fact that 25% of American workers lack sick leave, effectively forced people to return to work, spreading the infection further.

As I finish writing this, I am far up river in the remote southern part of Borneo, near Camp Leakey, Biruté Galdikas’s 50-year-old orangutan research center. I’ve been “off the grid” for the past two days, and am posting this via satellite. When I left, things were not looking good for the US, and (predictably) the virus had further polarized our already deeply divided country. The funny thing about viruses, though, is that they don’t care about political parties, or national boundaries, or net worth. All they care about is reproducing. And this one seems to be particularly good at it.

When I decided to go through with my travel plans to Southeast Asia, many people told me I was crazy. “You’re flying into the eye of the storm!” some said, looking at the infection numbers as of a few weeks ago. Now I can’t help but feel the same sense of surprise and horror at what’s unfolding back at home. The US and Europe are now the centers of the storm. Good luck to us all.

Spencer Wells is a geneticist, anthropologist, and a former Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society.