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Of Tea Parties and Rabbit Holes: Where is COVID-19 in Wonderland?

Allyson Choi
8 min readAug 18, 2023

If you told me I had to watch Alice in Wonderland as a pre-requisite to completing my Ph.D. in molecular virology, I would have laughed at your face while sipping on probably my third cup of tea that same day.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Perhaps you, too, should get yourself a cup of tea. It is going to be a long journey ahead, so sit tight.

Photo from https://www.disney.sg/

Barely fresh out of the COVID-19 pandemic, drawing parallels between a catastrophe-causing microscopic virus and a harmless childhood tale such as Alice in Wonderland would definitely not be on anyone’s mind. Nobody, but somehow mine.

Just how are they even remotely connected?

You see, when Alice was in Wonderland, nothing made any sense at all. Alice started her whole journey quite literally down the rabbit hole because she was curious where Mr. Rabbit was going. On the other hand, Mr. Rabbit, too, was rushing because his broken clock watch had told him that he was late. “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!” exclaimed the rabbit as he hurried through Wonderland in order to attend a tea party hosted by the Red Queen of Hearts. But it was not easy at all to keep up with Mr. Rabbit, was it? Now this is where all the fun begins.

  1. Alice had to change sizes so many

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Allyson Choi
Allyson Choi

Written by Allyson Choi

Virology Ph.D. | Researcher | into growth mindsets, personal finance, tomorrow's technology and just a little bit of science.

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