Incapacitated

The numbers are alarming

Percentages deceive

The immensity of the problem

Systems overloaded

While people become incapacitated

The numbers are alarming

The sickness, the deaths

Mutation rates are not so high

If the numbers were lower

The transmission rates keep too many

Options at play

Too much room for genetic drift

Too much room for succession

Viral success

Our researchers have not reached consensus

On factors effecting selection

No way to predict the next challenge

Emergent

So we live and love and wish

That all of this will end

This changing

That normal is able to return

But

Normal hit the road, jack

Slipped out the back door

Took a train to nowhere to be found

There will be pockets of collapse

There are already

The remaining are shoring up the salvage

Streamlining, tightening, casting off the excess

To keep food on shelves

Medicines available

The clock ticks inevitable

The tocking will not slow down

Something new is coming

From a direction unknown

Our current scrambling is only barely

Readying us for what’s to come

Overwhelming

What has been

What is

Woe to the day our kids look back

At this time

As the good old days