Containment Considerations, Parta Quarta

The Merriam-Webster dictionary app provided me the definition of vapor, which is as multifaceted as many other words. I know it is trite to begin a talk with a dictionary definition, so maybe I can weave it throughout this reflection, where the dictionary entry will appear in quotes.

The act of ingesting nicotine is perhaps the most recent version of vapor. Like the cloud of tobacco smoke it means to replace, vaping spreads through the air and “impair[s] transparency.”

According to Qoheleth, “something unsubstantial or transitory” describes all things, which he summarizes as hevel hevelim, a chase after wind. For him, a belief in the hereafter culminates in the earthly delights he is here after, and get ‘em while you can.

The most curious dictionary entry, employing the plural form, is an archaic one: “Exhalations of bodily organs (such as the stomach) held to affect the physical or mental condition”; alternately, “a depressed or hysterical nervous condition.”

It’s as if our physical maladies had a spiritual dimension to them, and our emotional ones too.

This “novel” coronavirus (as if there were anything new under the sun): from the outset I was intrigued by the appearance of corona, the Latin word for “crown” that I recall in Revelation 2:10: Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life (esto fidelis usque ad mortem, et dabo tibi coronam vitae).

I don’t much concern myself with the peculiar details of the last book of the Bible, preferring a broader perspective: it is bookended by Genesis, suggesting that the first and the last contain significance for everything in between. The primeval preface of Genesis’ first eleven chapters has a super-historical quality to it, as does the entirety of Revelation, a declaration of Christ’s triumph over the Ancient Oppressor.

Rev 2:10 has a way of summarizing the upshot of the whole book. Through all these tribulations, be faithful... Trials are hevel hevelim, the vapor of vapors. They seem and are very real, but their potency  (Latin vis, whence “viral”) is limited. They are, finally, “blustering, or idle talk.”

Anyhow, the “corona” component of the virus has to do with the corona, or halo, that appears around each molecule.