The chroniclers of history's great plagues _ physicians and novelists, diarists and archivists _ tend to recount uncannily similar moments, always poignant in retrospect, when people allow themselves to believe that the devastation has reached its height.
And then it gets worse.
The novel coronavirus is no longer a novelty. Some six months after the outbreak began in Wuhan, China, and three months after COVID-19's formal designation as a pandemic, nearly every corner of the world has been touched. Billions of people found themselves in lockdowns and shutdowns; economies everywhere cratered.
Now, though, many parts of the planet are behaving as if a corner has been turned. The gears of daily life are again beginning to grind; the workaday world is reasserting itself. But infectious disease specialists say the virus could smolder and flare, subside and reappear, for a very long time to come _ even after a widely available vaccine is developed.
In the United States and Europe, the pace of new infections has slowed from springtime peaks. But in the world as a whole, the caseload is growing fast, and experts are deeply alarmed by the speed of the spread in far-flung countries such as Pakistan, South Africa, Brazil and Russia.
On Sunday, the World Health Organization reported its largest single-day number of new cases worldwide: 136,000, with only 10 countries, most of them in the Americas and South Asia, accounting for three-quarters of those. More than 7 million cases, and more than 400,000 deaths _ roughly one-quarter of them in the United States _ have been reported to the WHO.
"Globally, it is worsening," the organization said.
There are success stories such as New Zealand, which recently pronounced the virus eradicated. But in countries where the epidemiological picture has brightened, including many in Western Europe, "the biggest threat is now complacency," said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
"This is not the time for any country to take its foot off the pedal," he said.
An outbreak of contagion is often bracketed by momentous events. The Plague of Athens occurred in the midst of the Peloponnesian War; the 1918-19 influenza pandemic erupted in the waning days of World War I, its victims ultimately far outnumbering those of combat casualties.
The coronavirus outbreak took hold shortly before the George Floyd protests for racial justice swept the United States and beyond; even at so necessary a moment of mass outcry, health experts worried over infection peril posed by the enormous gatherings.
In some countries where the situation is growing more dire, governmental denials of the outbreak's gravity and a wholesale rejection of economically costly shutdowns are helping the virus either to cement its foothold _ or to come roaring back.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government's top infectious-disease specialist _ seen less in public in the weeks since the White House halted briefings by its coronavirus task force _ this week called the virus "my worst nightmare."
Speaking to a biotechnology conference via a recorded video, Fauci said in a span of months, coronavirus had "devastated the world."
"It just took over the planet," he said. "And it isn't over yet."
Here is a look at several key regional tipping points in the worldwide coronavirus fight.
