In an instant of time, a tiny speck of living matter—a virus—has deprived us of many of our closest physical connections. No handshakes, no hugging, and no breathing the same air. The pestilence has isolated us, separated us, left us alone and lonely.
We do have our electronic links, our e-handshakes and e-hugs, if you will. We can see each other through a camera lens, hear others’ voices with that brief but annoying delay. These amazing technological connections are better than nothing, but just aren’t the same as face-to-face presence.
We turn on the news only to see other people, also sitting in their homes staring at their computers’ camera eye, telling us of mounting death tolls, of the disease’s pattern of spread. They warn us to stay in our homes, wear a mask, wash our hands, and remain apart and disconnected.
Is there no escape from the bad news? No spark left of human resilience? No positive examples of people using ingenuity to solve problems? Are there no tales of women or men standing and facing danger with bravery?
Yes, there are. The Coronavirus has taken many things from us, but not our books. Today is World Book Day, and we still have books.
Sure, a TV show or movie can entertain for an hour or two, but a book will enthrall you for days. Moreover, it will engage your imagination to conjure your own images from the words, not spoon-feed ready-made video pictures.
I’ll bet you’ve often thought, “I’ll read that book someday when I have time.” Now, you have time.
Read that book. Let it transport you away from this place of isolation and quarantine. Lose yourself in other lands, other times, and join up with fascinating people, many of whom cope with far greater difficulties than yours. Maybe these characters aren’t people at all, but we all know the literary metaphor—animals, robots, or aliens in stories are really stand-ins for people. They may prevail in their struggle; they may not, but their will to strive onward may inspire you to endure the worst that COVID-19 can inflict.
It’s a fine day to read a book, don’t you think? Happy World Book Day, from—
Historians will look back, I believe, at the Coronavirus Pandemic of 2020 as a ‘black swan’ event. For the rest of us, memories of this may fade, but they’ll never go away.
What’s a black swan event? According to Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, a black swan event has three properties: (1) It is a surprise; (2) It has a major effect; and (3) After it occurs, people consider it to have been inevitable.
We’re still in the middle of the pandemic and the accompanying economic disaster, but I believe they both meet all three criteria. Some have written articles denying this, on the basis of Criteria (1). Medical scientists had warned us about pandemics, they say, and we’ve even had pandemics before. Novels and movies about disease outbreaks were warnings, too.
No. For most of us, the COVID-19 outbreak and the economic shutdown came as a sudden shock. If anything, those who deny this pandemic is a black swan are just proving it satisfies Criteria (3). It’s to be expected that some will claim we should have known.
Let’s get beyond that. I’m less interested in arguing about criteria than in what we do now. How do black swan events change us? How do we prepare for future ones?
When this is over, I believe most people will revert back to their pre-virus lives without much change. They might wash their hands more often, but that’s about it. They’ll go to concerts, sporting events, and church. They’ll shake hands. They’ll fly on planes.
However, for everyone now alive, this pandemic will linger on in memory. It can’t un-happen for us. We’ll think about it when we meet strangers, when we buy toilet paper, when we choose investments or apply for our next job. No matter what we do from now on, a corner of our mind will remind us of the risks we’re taking. Future generations will shake their heads at our curious hygiene fixations and risk-averse financial strategies.
For us, that small voice in our head, that conscience, represents part of the solution to the Black Swan problem. As Taleb recommended, you should make decisions that allow you to exploit positive events while still guarding against black swans.
In other words, hug your family, but fist-bump strangers. Go to the basketball game, but don’t scratch that nose itch until you’ve washed your hands. Invest some of your portfolio in stocks, but keep some money in safer accounts. Take that job aboard a cruise ship, but keep your list of grocery store contacts.
Despite their low probability, black swan events happen. The Stock Market Crash of 1929, Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy Assassination, 9-11, and Coronavirus 2020 are all examples, but more await us in the future. They’ll be unpredictable, significant, and, afterward, strangely inevitable.
You can’t plan for what you can’t predict. But reserving a few resources for imaginable worst-case scenarios might prove wise if the worst case comes to pass.
One more thought about black swan events. As a species, we’ve survived them all. No matter what the future hurls at us, we’ll be inventive and adaptable. We’ll fight our way through. We’ll come out the other side—roughed up, perhaps—but standing tall.
Welcome to the battle for the future. In this corner, you’ve got a black swan. And in this corner, the entire human race. Let’s get ready to rumble! With all my money bet on the humans, I’m—
Let’s take a break from the unpleasant coronavirus news of the present, and travel to the future. Specifically, let’s see how our descendants might prevent or deal with pandemic viral outbreaks.
Futuristic Caduceus
Speculation about the future is always error-prone. Many technologies I’ll mention won’t pan out, or will introduce unforeseen problems. Also, these probably won’t eliminate the existence of viruses; new ones will mutate to get around our best efforts to defeat them. Still, those concerns never stop a SciFi writer from imagining! With that in mind, let’s time-travel.
Getting Infected
People used to pick up viruses mostly from the animal world. Now, in the future, there is less opportunity for doing that. Synthetic foods have lessened the need for humans to consume wildlife. High crop yield technologies mean we need less farmland, so we no longer destroy habitats, thus keeping wildlife in their own areas.
Other technologies have rendered humans immune to most viruses. These technologies include artificial immune systems, implanting favorable animal genes within humans, and designer babies.
Infecting Others
If someone does pick up a virus in this future time, advanced filters in building ventilation systems lessen the spread. Workplaces and transit systems contain sensors that detect whether occupants are running a fever, and alert them. Bathrooms include automated hand washing machines. Facemasks use fabrics that prohibit the flow of pathogens or bacteria in either direction. Some have opted for nasal and throat implants to do the same thing.
Alerting the World
Upon discovery of a novel virus, doctors in this future world have new ways to notify other experts. Chatbots share the information instantly. Universal translators ensure precise understanding.
Sensing Infections
Various technologies have enabled people to know at once if they’re infected, long before they feel symptoms. These include home-use scanners, (inspired by Star Trek medical tricorders) wearable and implantable sensors, digital tattoos, genetic diagnosis, and nano-med-robots.
Developing Cures
Today, in our future world, supercomputers work on vaccines immediately after notification of a novel virus. They employ advanced modeling to test the effects of drugs virtually, and in many cases can skip time-consuming animal and human trials. Resulting vaccines are then personalized, tuned to individual body chemistries.
Getting Treatment
People no longer go to a doctor’s office or hospital. Medical care is virtual now, with human doctors remaining remote. Drones deliver food and medical supplies. Robots provide in-home care, including cleaning, examining, and operating. 3-D printers manufacture pain medication in the home, meds that are tailored to the subject and provide instant relief. Recovery makes use of gaming therapy, with virtual reality helping to relax the patient’s mind.
On the near horizon is the long-sought ‘autodoc,’ a staple of 20th Century science fiction—an enclosure you climb into that cures all ills.
Tracking the Spread
Artificially intelligent algorithms conduct contact tracing analysis to map the spread of the virus, notifying people they’ve come in contact with a virus carrier. Through the use of augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality, experts can track and forecast outbreaks as hotspots emerge. These same technologies permit rapid identification of the most at-risk individuals.
Isolating the Infected
As in previous ages, governments still vary in the degree of freedom allowed to individuals. Some are more coercive in enforcing quarantines than others. But artificial intelligence at least allows informed decisions based on contact tracing and mathematical modeling. Moreover, citizens have access to real-time fact-checking to distinguish truth from propaganda or bias.
Back to the Present
Unfortunately, that ends our trip to the future and we’re back in 2020 now. I know, it’s disorienting and humbling. Still, imagine a time traveler from fifty or a hundred years ago visiting our time and being equally amazed at the medical wonders we now take for granted.
You’re stuck at
home, all you can think about is COVID-19, and you’re in the mood to write a
story. You’re stuck for an idea. Below, in no particular order, are nineteen
free story prompts involving diseases. Some may be similar to stories already published,
but you can write your own version.
Character A, hated by the family, returns home from travel and spreads coronavirus to the family. Character A recovers, but beloved family member Character B dies. Character A must live with the guilt and with being blamed by the rest of the family.
In a near-future world, everyone is isolated from each other. Social distancing is detected by implants and enforced. People maintain contact virtually. Reproduction occurs under strict, sterile conditions. People are repulsed by old movies showing close contact between characters.
A variant of the Loxothylacus panopaei barnacle mutates and now affects humans as it did with crabs, turning them into zombies. Stay out of the water!
A deadly virus, able to persist in air for a long time, spreads through Earth’s atmosphere. The only human survivors live separated from the atmosphere—submariners, astronauts, people in artificial biospheres, etc.
Two rival countries each have biological warfare research programs and struggle to create a deadly disease targeting only one area, or one race. A double-agent spy participates in both country’s programs.
A ‘covidiot’ character deliberately engages in disease-spreading behaviors, either from ignorance, denial, or perverse delight.
A freedom-loving country with limited government reluctantly imposes strict controls to limit a disease’s spread. Once a vaccine is found and the danger is over, the government becomes more autocratic, having discovered a taste for power.
In response to an outbreak, the government forms a task force including expert scientists. However, their guidance worsens the spread and accelerates the curve instead of flattening it. Only a brave ‘crackpot’ scientist from outside the mainstream has the answer.
A contagious disease induces a death-like coma. Humans can fight it off, but only by enduring the coma for some period of time. Panic ensues until the first victims begin recovering and scientists discover the disease has a zero percent mortality rate. But damage done by the panic is far worse than the disease.
A sort of ‘sloth disease,’ perhaps transmitted to humans by sloths themselves. It’s very slow to infect, so a victim is contagious for many years before any symptoms appear. By then, the entire human race is infected. Symptoms, when they eventually manifest, can be whatever you dream up.
Someone introduces a new breed of dog or cat, so lovable-looking that it catches on immediately. However, this breed spreads a disease to its owners.
A disease with two symptoms—one good and one bad. Perhaps it triples its victim’s IQ or makes them immune to all other diseases. However, it has some undesirable symptom, too, like a horrible skin condition or other deformity. The disease doesn’t spread easily, and once scientists figure out how to control it, people may choose whether to intentionally contract it or not.
A disease that increases its victim’s sense of fear and desire to be comforted by others. However, the mere existence of the disease causes these same emotions in unaffected people so it’s difficult to tell who has the disease and who doesn’t, since everyone shows the symptoms.
Write a story from a COVID-19 virus’ point of view.
Imagine a variation of a team sport like football, baseball, or basketball, a sport that maintains social distancing without contact between players.
A performer, (singer or stand-up comedian) must adapt to performing without a live audience.
A virus targets human DNA with a specific range of damage, only killing victims within a narrow age range, say ages 18-22. Anyone outside that range is immune. See this article.
A ‘mood virus’ that causes symptoms to worsen with any negative mood such as anger, anxiety, guilt, sadness, and shame. Maintaining positive emotions is the only way to stay immune.
Isolation, shelter-in-place, and social distancing become permanent. In time, extroversion is bred out and no longer exists as a human trait. One day a single extrovert is born and must contend with a population of introverts.
Please understand, in providing this list, I’m not making light of the deadly COVID-19 coronavirus. I’m just thinking about it as a writer does—grist for the idea mill. Now sit down and write your story. After writing ‘The End,’ you can express your gratitude to—
The spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus has got us all thinking. Each of us is reacting in his own way. As a writer, my mind turns toward fiction possibilities.
Please don’t take this post as some attempt to minimize or make light of this contagious and deadly disease. The numbers of infected and dead continue to mount as this new virus spreads around the world. Nobody knows how bad this coronavirus will get. Though panic may be unwarranted, so is blind optimism.
So far, I’m not
showing any symptoms and am not under quarantine, neither the imposed nor
self-directed kind. To my knowledge, that’s also true of everyone I know well.
I’m not blogging about quarantines due to any personal experience, but merely
because the topic is timely and it interests me as an observer of society.
COVID-19 is causing some changes in our behavior. For the most part, we’re all washing our hands more often and more thoroughly. We’re travelling less, and going to fewer well-attended events. We’re practicing ‘social distancing,’ and greeting others with fist or elbow bumps. We’re staying in our homes more and connecting with each other virtually.
When TV journalists conduct video interviews of symptom-free people who’ve been quarantined out of caution, the people all say they’re binge-watching movies and playing games to pass the time. (Not reading books? Come on!) But they feel lonely and isolated. They want the two weeks to be over.
That’s
understandable. We’re social animals. We gain comfort from the close presence
of others. If we now must view others as potential bringers of disease, that
sets up an internal conflict, a tension between self-preservation and a need
for acceptance.
For most
writers, a symptom-less quarantine wouldn’t be so bad. Writing is solitary anyway,
and necessary social interaction represents an interruption of the writing process.
To some extent, writers practice a quasi-quarantine all the time.
Perhaps because
of their self-imposed isolation, authors sometimes write about disease
pandemics. Early examples include The Decameron (1353) by Giovanni
Boccaccio and The Last Man (1826) by Mary Shelley.
More recent
novels about pandemics are The Plague by Albert Camus, The Andromeda
Strain by Michael Crichton, and The Stand by Stephen King.
All these works depict horrible results after the disease has run its course. Few novels (except The Plague) show the effects of quarantine, of forced separation.
One extreme
fictional example of human separateness, though not involving disease, is The
Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov. In it, citizens of the planet Solaria grow up
detesting the physical presence of other humans. They don’t mind robots, but
can only talk to other people through holographic communication, a sort of 3-D version
of Skype.
Could COVID-19
or some later, more deadly virus, force us to behave like Solarians, alone in
our homes, communicating only by email and text, with drones delivering all our
supplies direct from robot factories? What would that isolation do to our
psyches, to our instincts for close contact?
There’s your
next story idea, free of charge. You may thank me for it, but not in person. Alone
(with my spouse) in quasi-quarantine, I’m—
