This number of nlr opens with a set of texts on the covid-19 crisis. Coursing round the world, the virus plays the role of an etching acid that reveals the lineaments—political, economic, social, cultural—of the uneven landscape beneath. Less lethal than such zoonotic forerunners as sars or mers, as Mike Davis spells out below, it is highly infectious, ripping through our 7-billion-strong species in a matter of months. It is this speed that motivates the lockdowns of public activity which have transformed the covid-19 outbreak into a socio-economic disaster. Famously, the initial vectors of contagion were the networks of globalization, cultural and economic: manufacturing supply chains, tourism, international evangelical gatherings and overseas students scattered its microbes from Wuhan to Qom and greater Milan; pilgrims and ski resorts helped to disperse it. Proselytizing Muslims (the Tablighi Jamaat) and Christians (the Seoul-based Shincheonji Church of Jesus), with their fellow-worshippers in Mulhouse and Rio, were mega-spreaders. Students from Wuhan’s giant university complex travelled back to their homes in South and Southeast Asia. As nlr goes to press, the pandemic is making its way across the us, from nyc to Detroit and New Orleans, and seeding itself through Latin America and Africa, where the impact of co-infection with endemic deadly diseases like tb, malaria and hiv is still unknown.