Which Future?

At the corner of my street is a cherry tree that bursts into spectacular bloom each spring. Its lowest branches are just taller than the head of an average person, and if you stand underneath and look up, you will find yourself immersed in an unbroken expanse of soft pink blossoms. On windy days, the petals drop to the ground and disperse, blowing against curbs and doorsteps in a lush accumulation of color. N. has dubbed it the “celebritree,” as few passerby can resist stopping for a moment to bask in its ostentatious splendor. This year I’ve had to keep tabs on it from my window as I stay indoors, but it is only a little less glorious from a distance.

In New York City, the peak of this wave of the pandemic seems to be behind us. Each day brings fewer deaths, fewer calls to 911, fewer hospitalizations. But the numbers have stabilized at a very high rate: still nearly 500 deaths per day and over 10,000 confirmed deaths from coronavirus to date, more than in most European countries. We have lost so many—friends, neighbors, beloved members of our communities—and will lose many more before we emerge from this. The ongoing questions are when that will be and what our city and country will look like in the coming months and years.

The uncertainty of what lies ahead weighs on us right now—when we will see our parents again, when we will be able to gather with friends, when we will be able to grocery shop without fear of infecting workers or becoming infected ourselves. But it’s likely that we will never return to where we were just a few months ago. This pandemic is stunning in how quickly it has reshaped everyday life, shuttering restaurants, bars, retail stores, and public transportation in some locales in a matter of days. Many of these businesses won’t reopen, and the ones that do could be required to operate at reduced capacity. We may stop shaking hands with one another and start wearing masks year-round. Concerts, festivals, and sporting events will have to rethink their models for attendance.

We have survived pandemics before; the Black Death and the influenza pandemic of 1918 are the ones most frequently mentioned, comparable in their global scope to what we’re experiencing now. And we’ve been through countless other epidemics and outbreaks of infectious diseases: cholera, yellow fever, smallpox, polio, and, more recently, AIDS, SARS, and Ebola. A number of them have had lasting social impact, ushering in, for instance, changes in sanitation, water purification, and sexual behavior. No one can predict what the world will look like in a year, both the human toll and the consequences for societies around the globe. But returning to some approximation of regular life will not be like flipping a switch; it will proceed erratically and non-linearly, with inevitable setbacks requiring new shutdowns at the same time that researchers work to develop treatments and ultimately, we must hope, a successful vaccine.

The virus is within us, and it likely will be for a long time.