I’ve just begun listening to a podcast called Fiction/Non/Fiction, and browsing through the catalog tonight, I chose Episode 10, called “Coronavirus and Contagion.”
Though it aired on February 13 of this year, the episode was recorded on February 9 — two days after the death of Dr. Li Wenliang and two days before the virus received it’s name: Covid19. The number of deaths at the time was 800, almost all in Asia, and I believe the number of cases their guest, Lauri Chen, cites is under 40,000, worldwide. Four months later it’s like listening to an audio time-capsule.The discussion is serious, but there is yet a sense of the academic about it, with the American hosts discussing a phenomenon that is happening on the other side of the world.
I have fallen far, far behind in terms of pandemic updates, but for the record, the number of worldwide cases is just shy of 7.5 million, and the number of deaths is more than 400 thousand.