Much of what we used to do without a second thought—pressing an elevator button, reaching for a doorknob—now feels stressful and potentially dangerous. There are so many unknowns about this virus. We lack crucial information about how it can be transmitted, how long it lingers in the air, when we are most contagious to others. We don’t know if those who have recovered from COVID-19 are immune to the disease, and for how long. The most direct mode of transmission is to breathe in droplets or exhalations from someone who is infected, or to touch something that the person has sneezed or coughed on and then to touch one’s eyes, nose or mouth. The likelihood of transmission through handling unwashed produce or a mail delivery is low, we’re told, but scientists, with their scrupulous adherence to methodology, cannot rule it out completely.
In New York City, where the virus surrounds us and has likely been circulating for several months, even going outside feels fraught. The sidewalks are never completely unoccupied. When I walk around my neighborhood, I scan the area in front of me to see who’s unmasked, who might be coughing, who is violating social distancing rules. I hold my breath when people pass by too closely.
As the weather improves, the parks have become increasingly thronged with people seeking relief from cramped apartments. Running outdoors is one of the few forms of recreation that’s still permitted, but some experts recommend keeping a berth of 10 or even 20 feet from others. That amount of distancing is nearly impossible here. Are we at risk if someone in front of us sneezes or coughs and we then run through a cloud of their exhalations? How do we factor in wind speed and direction, sunshine, levels of humidity?
Thus the air itself has become potentially hazardous, a reservoir of omnipresent, undetectable contagion. I’m reminded of miasmas, the foul-smelling clouds emanating from livestock and decaying filth that were once thought to be sources of disease. Before the widespread acceptance of germ theory in the late nineteenth century, physicians and laypeople alike believed that illnesses such as cholera, typhoid, yellow fever, and bubonic plague had atmospheric origins. The miasma theory of disease explained why poor urban areas so often experienced outbreaks and epidemics, where deficient sanitation, dilapidated housing, and streets filled with rotting organic matter created disease-causing vapors that hung over such neighborhoods in a haze.
For all the advancements we’ve made over the past decades in understanding infectious disease, the coronavirus, in its newness, is upending our one-way narrative of progress. We may no longer give scientific weight to miasmas, but at times I feel as though I’m living in nineteenth-century New York, wary of the contamination that might be hidden in the air around me. A vaccine against the virus could be 12-18 months away or more, so in the absence of any effective remedy we have been reduced to the most basic method of control: avoidance.