Disease X: What Is It?
COVID-19 has taken a huge toll on us all. Not just economically, but physically and mentally too. All facets of our lives have changed since what was defined as a pneumonia-like illness came out of the blue and left us in quarantine and isolation. While I have previously made light of the situation by writing a somewhat puff piece on what to do when you find yourself in quarantine, I believe it would be best to prepare ourselves for another epidemic. Unfortunately, the game is more like a Russian roulette. A blind gamble. You do not know what could attack next. Small pox? Tuberculosis? Malaria? Cholera? Influenza? Swine flu? Bird flu? Ebola? Chicken pox? In Algebra class, X is usually used as the value of an unknown number. In this case, we do not really know what the disease could be. It could be a previously undiscovered species of bacteria, virus or parasite. It could be a species we know. It could be a species we heard of before but it never really affected human beings, but now