Prologue: The New Normal

In late January, a colleague came down with cold and fever. She was back at work in a few days but the cold turned into a hacking cough and refused to go away.

“Keep sipping hot water” the usual tips and discussions started.

“Take steam”, “Try Homeopathy”, “No, I think you should go to a doctor, you probably need antibiotics”.

“There is this new virus in China...” “Oh don’t scare her, this is just due to our office AC”

Her cough was cured after a course of antibiotics.

The discussion about the ‘new virus from China’ kept intensifying. WhatsApp forwards and YouTube videos started flooding us with medical jargon and statistics.

Everyone knew the name Wuhan by February. Conversations were dominated by data, the gory fascination of watching a trickle turn into a deluge, the flood turning from China into Europe and Asia. The rest of the world started talking about Italy and Iran and South Korea with growing fear and also with a tinge of smugness.

We were still safe, we kept reminding ourselves, smirking at people wearing surgical masks at bus stops.

Wasn’t the virus still far away? It was just another one like the MARS and the SERS which touched a couple of countries and went away.

Unfortunately, this virus kept sweeping aside conventional wisdom and international boundaries with complete disdain. While we were laughing at WhatsApp videos of people in other continents stocking up on toilet paper for the next decade, the trickle started appearing right at our doorsteps.