The one thing those who have been sick really know, which thousands of people are learning from covid every day now, is that ultimately you have no control over your body. I will try not to get covid, but I might get it. If I get it, I will try not to die, but I might die. That’s what having a body is. Only when you get sick, or maybe have a child, do you realize what a half-familiar mammal you’ve wound up living inside—that you can no more tell it to stop feeling horrible than you can order your stomach to be flatter or your eyes to be bluer.
