We receive and interpret information constantly, without paying any attention to the underlying physical phenomenon that makes such a process possible. Answer your phone, and observe the sound of your voice, and the words you pronounce, converted into a series of binary off/on electrical impulses, transmitted through electro-magnetic vibrations. We have learned to make abstraction of it all. What is meaningful for us is not the physical phenomenon, but the information transferred.

A recent physical phenomenon has generated enormous attention to itself as a phenomenon, but few make mention to the information it carries. That phenomenon is a coronavirus: a genetic code in the form of a minute protein. Not even a living organism, the code replicates within a host environment, until there is no longer any environment available in which to replicate.

You can view the entire Covid19 genome on the internet, and you can contract it on any street corner. The code is 29811 nucleotides in length, starting with cytosine and ending with thymine. On one level, this code is nothing other than biological manufacturing instructions for a virus. As such, it carries no useful information for humans other than what virologists require to induce immunity. 

If we were to look at the code in terms of its effects on all levels, what information might we extrapolate from it? In other words, what is the possible meaning of this virus for humankind?

CovidDecoded is a collection of my musings--sometimes grave, sometimes exasperated, sometimes humorous, sometimes absurd--as the coronavis epidemic unfurled, and also in its wake. For all careful observers, the patterns became clear enough: there was more at stake than the virus and human health. But could this be decoded? The metaphor was suprising: a virus reproduces a code. But could it be decoded?

My musings delve into diverging conspiracies, uncover unexpected confessions, and open up conversations with the most unlikely personalities.  In a spirit of honest and open inquiry, there are facts that need to be told, but also points of view that are worthy to be seen. Only then can such an event be decoded.

After my best efforts to get to the bottom of conspiracies and non-conspiracies, fact and fiction, comedy and tragedy, I do not pretend to have cracked the code, but do hope to jolt you out of the program. I will invite you to a posture of not knowing, making yourself resilient for the times ahead.