My Facebook Memories from 2020 and 2021 are full of posts about #Covid-19. It’s so weird to me how that’s just vanished from the national conversation.

Everyone knew at least one person who died from it, often more than one. Nearly everyone was terrified of dying from it themselves, and the ones who weren’t were burying their heads in the sand. It killed a million Americans in a year and a half—more than every war we’ve fought, combined, for a century and a half. At its height, it was far and away the leading cause of death. It still kills people, albeit at a much reduced rate: far less than the big killers like heart disease and cancer, but about ten times as many as die in motor vehicle accidents. You know, by way of comparison.

And it will happen again. Maybe a new strain of SARS-CoV2, maybe influenza, maybe something else entirely. Something is out there right now, something that doesn’t infect humans, or causes at most mild symptoms, or isn’t easy to catch. Yet. Mindlessly waiting for the next mutation, for its turn.

I don’t know what it’s like in other countries. In the US, we seem to have collectively decided to pretend it never happened. We’re good at that, of course—if we weren’t, the current political landscape would look very different. And I don’t want this to be about politics, but of course it is. When the next plague strikes, and the next after that, and the next after that, our response will depend critically on who’s in charge. Sorry, folks, pathogens don’t care about market-based solutions.

Honest, I’m not trying to ruin anyone’s day. I just can’t quite believe that we’ve all tacitly agreed to this case of national amnesia. But I suppose I don’t have much choice.