The pandemic’s most bitter pill

The pandemic’s most bitter pill

Twentieth century physicians, armed with germ theory and soon potent bacteria-killing drugs, could do what previous practitioners couldn’t, explained James Kyung-Jin Lee, the director of the University of California, Irvine Center for Medical Humanities. … This infused the following narrative into the American mind, said Lee: “Yesterday I was healthy. Today I am sick. But I’ll get better tomorrow.” … “We’re now at a point in 2020 when the world has essentially been brought to its knees by this new coronavirus,” said Lee. This narrative isn’t infallible, he emphasized. It’s fragile.