Opinion: A New Phase Of Uncertainty

We don't know when this will all be over. Those may be the hardest words to hear.

We spend most of our lives planning around calendars and clocks, schedules, seasons, schooldays, holidays, ETAs, projections and informed predictions.

I try not to compare any other tests in life to war. But because I've covered wars and conflicts, I think I recognize what many people in places like Sarajevo, Asmara, or Afghanistan always told me: it is not just the danger, but the uncertainty of not knowing when a crisis, the hardship, loss, and peril, will be over.

The coronavirus is now much more widespread than it was in March, when many of us began to count the weeks; which have become months; and now will clearly stretch into next year. Scientists have learned a lot about the virus, and refined treatments. But words we've sometimes used to try to get hold of what's happening may have put wrong metaphors into our minds. Wave is not quite right, because the coronavirus won't swell, then just fall, like an ocean wave. Surge is not quite right because at this point, more than eight months into the pandemic, the rise in cases is not sudden, but continuous.