Spillover, revisited

“You’re overreacting. Look at how many people die from the flu every year,” my mom said. This was a couple weeks ago, and we were on the phone discussing my plans to visit home. My parents live in Houston, I live in Portland, Oregon, and my annual work trip to SXSW in Austin presented an all too rare opportunity to visit Texas. I was expressing my doubts that the trip was going to happen. There was this new coronavirus, and it sounded serious.

My mom, like many at the time and some even now, thought the media might be blowing the whole thing out of proportion. She mentioned my own writing…