I am minuscule, so tiny I cannot be seen by the naked eye. Almost invisible. My beauty is as bewitching as my heart is malevolent. Flaunting my crown, I strut back and forth across this world, subverting order, destroying commerce, and upturning civilisation. No place is too remote. No one is safe. I feed on weaknesses. My proper title is Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2. Don’t you ever forget my name, for I am a remorseless killer.
And me? Well… I am its human quarry. A masterpiece of precision engineering. I’m a unique design that’s survived for thousands of years. Perfect at original conception, but soon after self-flawing, I am told I have remained so millennia after millennia.
Nonetheless; intelligent, vivacious, multi-talented, creative, socially mobile, arrogant, and expert, are some of the words to describe my species. My ancestors have built cities, created economies, waged bloody war, and founded great empires. We have shaped this world as we think best. The way we want to keep it. We are recovering the position we lost at Babel. Together, we have discovered the Earth is round, climbed Everest, visited the Marianas Trench, explored the moon, and probed deep into interstellar space. There seems no limit to what we can achieve. I sometimes think we chase after the wind and never catch it.
Yet, I am scared, now. Scared of this thing, I cannot see. Afraid of something I cannot control. Of a virus that plays hide and seek with me and brings my world to a juddering halt. Perhaps even my life. I call it SARS-C 2 but naming it, neither quells my fear nor deters it.
This chasing after the wind. It can’t all have been meaningless? Can it?
