David Collum is the Betty R. Miller Professor of Chemistry at Cornell University. He is the intellectual utility infielder of internet commentary, covering all the bases: culture, politics, finance, science, and technology, with often surprising views on the the predicaments of our time. Here we attempt to make sense of the fast-moving corona virus story and the increasingly weird and troubling second-order events spinning off of it into the global economy and politics. Dave tweets at @DavidBCollum