The United States is a week away from a Christmas that was supposed to feel far more festive than the last. Two weeks away from a new year in which it was once possible to imagine the pandemic fading into the background of mostly normal life.
Instead, nearly 1,300 Americans are dying every day from the coronavirus, more than 120,000 are testing positive, and millions more are experiencing a kind of fear — that very particular kind amplified by a lack of information, and by the knowledge that even what seems clear this afternoon could change by evening — that they thought they had left behind.