With Such Precautions

Many of us worried that the pandemic would last a full two weeks, which seemed like an eternity back in 2020. To prepare, we stocked up on non-perishables and toilet paper. To stay safe, we wrapped playgrounds in caution tape and wiped down our deliveries. To keep in touch, we downloaded Zoom and enjoyed cocktails with our neighbours — from our own stoops or balconies, of course. And to try to understand an invisible killer, about which we knew almost nothing, we turned to literature.

In those early endless days, we read or reread Stephen King’s The Stand, which opens with the accidental release of a covertly engineered superbug. There was also Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain, which starts with the introduction of a highly contagious extra­terrestrial microbe, and José Saramago’s Blindness, which begins with the onset of an epidemic of visual...