What Could Be Worse Than Coronavirus? Plenty
A Q&A with Lawrence Wright, whose new novel saw a pandemic coming.
You never know what’s coming.
Photographer: Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images
As we deal with the deaths, disruptions and potential depression caused by the coronavirus pandemic, there’s an uncomfortable question that has to be asked: What if things were a whole lot worse?
Bear in mind that the Spanish influenza of 1918 infected a third of the global population, Ebola kills half the people it infects, and the Black Plague nearly wiped out European civilization. It’s hard to imagine a plague that combines the worst aspects of them all. But Lawrence Wright did exactly that in his forthcoming novel, “The End of October,” well before the rest of the world knew that coronavirus was upon us.