Our pandemic

Now, after a year, the numbers have become numbing. We can’t blame the media, who were simply doing their job by reporting facts, but as thousands became hundreds of thousands it became impossible to maintain a sense of scale. What exactly do 300,000 dead Americans look like?

For a few naïve months, rural Montana managed to convince itself that nothing about those horrific numbers applied to us. We were one of those enviable white spots on the map of the country that showed few if any COVID cases. Engaging in the same kind of magical thinking that convinced some to put their faith in re...