Wednesday morning, I woke with a slight cough, but I went to work. I’ve been off and on sick since the beginning of December, which I blame on stupid masks keeping me from being exposed to normal diseases. I didn’t feel awful on Wednesday, but I knew I wasn’t well, so I put on a mask and set about teaching for the day. I actually graded a lot of work before school, and taught two good classes in the morning.

But at lunch, it hit me like a wave. I felt dizzy. I had chills. A fever was coming on. The creeping dread fell upon me…I was really sick. This was Stephen King’s The Stand-level sickness…

This was a Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion-level of illness…