October 29, 2020.
It was a crystal-blue sea and sky day at the beach with nary a piece of plastic to be seen. With or without plastic there is always plenty of camaraderie and conversation with artist extraordinaire Rebecca DiDomenico who was in California to visit family.
From a distance, a pinkish thing tucked into the sand at the far end of the beach was barely discernible. As I neared, the maroon appendages looked like a supercomputer rendering of the Covid-19 virus where the bright red spikes ring the body of the virus like jewel in a crown. Hence, the name “coronavirus.”
Confounded, I could not figure out what I was seeing. So bright, so virulent. Is that the virus washed ashore?
Back home, at my computer, my Google search took me to “Belly Flops Octopus” a plastic Kong dog chew toy and yes, it came from China.
It has been a year fraught with tales and blame about where the Covid-19 virus originated and how it rapidly spread person to person, imperiling the entire planet.
A seafood market in Wuhan, China has been hypothesized as the source for the outbreak but recent studies are finding the virus was already in Europe in late 2019.
We’ve grown so accustomed to there being great amounts of plastic on the beach, that we are surprised when there is near none. We fear our successful cleaning will have us putting up the “out-of-business” sign. But, we say, that even one piece of plastic on the beach is one too many. And, in the case today, even one tiny infectious agent, gone viral, is one detrimental gene too many.