Yeah, people's nerves are a bit frazzled at this point. Mine too.

And these dunderheads we have running around making statements based purely on conjecture or half-assed models are not making it easier. This is sort of like when I try to get my students to understand the concept of entropy. Is it a state property just like internal energy and density? Or is it's production a measure of how efficient a process or system is working? Or is entropy a mysterious concept that has implications for religion and philosophy if taken as a whole?

Truth is it is all three of these and more. And this virus has just as much ambiguity right not. Is it a lethal virus that can and does completely destroy the human body? Yes. But it is also no more serious than the flu.... if you are one of the lucky ones. Can it leave survivors scarred and permanently lessened? Yes, but it can also be so mild as to be unnoticed by some.

Right now we just don't know much. We do know one thing though: this thing has done a lot of damage and the terrifyingly destructive steps taken to contain it so far have limited its reach. A lot. But what happens later on? Are we just postponing the inevitable? We could well be doing just that. We don't know if herd immunity is even possible with this thing, it may mutate out of our reach time and again. Same for a vaccine. We haven't ever invented one for a coronavirus yet... will we manage to do so this time? And just why the hell is the death rate such a scattershot function? Are there different forms of it that have different lethalities?

Hell, I don't know. But on one wants to hear that.

Will