The A1 Verse: Choose your own pandemic

Every so often, a story published on the front page of the New York Times is so well written, meaningful, and appropriate to the Bulletin’s concerns that small snippets of it, properly chosen and arranged, produce something more than journalism, something that approaches … poetry. That blessed coincidence occurred April 18, 2022.

We suspect it’ll occur again.

Weighing Risks As Virus Threat Becomes Norm

(from the original by Benjamin Mueller)

Like it
or not,
upon us,
mask fallen,
the focus now—
as numbers climb again,
the onus fallen on Americans
to face the virus, the being or dying—
count the millions of weakened and poor,
and face steep barriers to calculating risks.