“Early in the spring-2020 semester, I had planned to say quite a bit about Homer’s figurative use of disease and the literary tradition it initiated. But as we concluded February in exhausted anticipation of spring break, Covid-19 made the artistry of that metaphor abruptly beside the point. It seemed — and still seems — futile to talk about what plague means in the history of human discourse when plague quite literally is the current defining condition of homo sapiens.” – Chronicle of Higher Education