Science says

simultaneity is the relationship 
between two events assumed to be 

happening at the same time within 
a given context. Science says camels

and civets, ferrets and bats, have all 
been non-human hosts for coronaviruses.

Science says a non-pathogenic version 
of COVID-19 jumped from an animal

host—some say bat, others say pangolin—
to a human; and then developed quickly 

into a pathogenic strain. A pangolin 
is kind of a large, scaly anteater. 

Curled up into itself, it looks like 
a shuriken or throwing star, something 

a ninja could send flying with a flick 
of the wrist, before you feel it lodge 

in the side of your neck and the carotid
artery supplying blood to your brain. 

Did you know it is the world's most 
highly trafficked non-human mammal? 

In some countries, there are beliefs 
(not science) that decoctions of its meat 

and scales can cure excessive anxiety 
and hysterical crying in children, or women
 
thought to be possessed by devils 
and ogres. Science says there's no known 

cure for the pandemic raging in all 
the nations of the world right now. 

Science says it's reckless and dangerous 
to tout so-called cures that haven't been

clinically tested or verified. Science
knows how human behavior, pushed to

desperation, has been shown to defy logic.
Science knows why the man who took 

chloroquine phosphate died; it can also
hypothesize about how he might've thought 

it was identical to the anti-malarial with 
a similar name. Science takes pictures

with electron microscopes, showing each 
virion crowned by a halo. From there, 
 
it's possible to make the leap to that other
image in close-up: each round cluster, clad

in red-tinted caps; and tiny white letters
spelling something lethal above the brim.