Eleven months ago, at the height of the first wave of the coronavirus, I wrote a post proposing that COVID-19 had spread so quickly because it was not disgusting enough.
I noted that you can't take a picture of COVID-19 symptoms, unlike many other diseases such as smallpox or measles.
I suggested that if COVID-19 caused visible symptoms, such as a rash, people would be more afraid and disgusted by the disease, which could have helped slow the spread.
Now, nearly a year later, it's striking to me that COVID-19 remains an essentially invisible disease. If you try to picture COVID-19 in your mind, I'll bet you think of something like this:
COVID Google Images
Here we see COVID-19 as a little ball covered in red spikes. These images are the top three hits in Google image search for "COVID-19" (for the United States).
But the iconic spiky ball isn't ...
