Rereading Joseph Heller's Catch-22

Abstract

There was a tension in the air unlike anything I'd experienced, even during hurricane season in Houston. The threat of demise comes from an undiscerning virus that is motivated only by the evolutionary directive to infect any organism that it can and replicate. Last November, when my mother came down with coronavirus and her oxygen levels dropped, she delayed going to emergency room because she was certain she would leave the hospital in a body bag. [...]what difference does that make?"3 In other words, within this protracted battle to defeat the virus, an overwhelming global threat has come to feel very personal. Months into the lockdown, I was entrenched in the bureaucracy of the federal and state governments, the Centers for Disease Control, and the World Health Organization, all providing ever-changing guidelines