There are moments you wonder if this corona thing is just another flu-like issue — one against which we will develop immunity — and other moments when it seems like in winged in from the Twilight Zone.

It is stealth. It can hide from tests. There are false negatives. There are false positives. There are misdiagnoses. It may have been around quite a bit longer than generally suspected — perhaps more than a year in the overall North American populace. It causes a truly bizarre range of effects — differentiating it from a common “bug.” As a report said the other day, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci has “urged caution in the face of a pathogen that continued to surprise and baffle the world’s leading scientists.”