Do You or Don't You?

Terry Shames here, answering our weekly question: Do you include covid, politics, climate change among the background or foreground parts of the environment? If so, why? If not, why? 
I’ve read two recent books that include Covid, but only glancingly. One was Michael Connelly’s The Fifth Witness, and the other was Beautiful World, Where Are You , by Sally Rooney. In the first, the virus is mentioned toward the end in a casual way. The reader knows what’s coming, but Haller doesn’t. In Rooney’s, th...