Citation: Julia Dauer, “Seasonal Time, Variant Time: Pandemic Futurity,” Synapsis, December 18, 2021.
Image citation: “Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) flowers at autumn,” Wikimedia Commons.
This essay considers two competing ways of conceptualizing illness: seasonal time and variant time.
Since the emergence of COVID-19, scientists have speculated about whether cases will ebb and flow in seasonal patterns. In the face of uncertainty, seasonal explanations have staying power, for both scientific and narrative reasons. Historically, many illnesses from yellow fever to the flu have fallen into seasonal patterns. But COVID-19 waves have continued along the lines of variant time, recycling the early stages of what Priscilla Wald calls the outbreak narrative again and again as new variants emerge and spread, blame is cast, and suffering unfurls along a set of unpredictable timeframes.
As a narrative structure, the seasonal model bears a promise of cyclic relief. Variant time can run parallel to or against seasonal shifts, disrupting anticipated periods of disease abatement. This essay examines a moment in late 2021 when public narratives about oscillated between seasonal time and variant time.