If you aren’t fatigued after nearly 10 months of COVID-19, I want to know your secret.

Uncertainty, ever worse numbers, vanished structures that had organized our lives, a smaller cast of characters in our lives. It just wears you down. And adds up to confusion.

While the specific coronavirus COVID-19 took many of us by surprise, people in public health had long worried that we were susceptible to some new pandemic. After all, we have seen outbreaks of Ebola, SARS and avian flu in the recent past.

So why were we confused by COVID? Some but not all the blame belongs to the White House, where the office dealing with pandemic readiness had been closed and where the president wasn’t interested, maybe because he couldn’t find political advantage in caring.

Lack of interest, or concern, may well have cost him the election.

Some but not all the blame belongs to China’ government, which tried to cover up the disease and punished Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist, who 362 days ago warned that a new virus was afoot. Li died of the disease 39 days after alerting the world.

Lacking federal coordination, states have been left on their own. Some have done well. Vermont has an infection rate of 1,057 per 100,000 population and a death rate of 17.8 per 100,000. Those figures are through Wednesday and are the lowest in the country.

Maine — give Gov. Janet Mills kudos for this — has the third lowest infection rate at 1,581 per 100,000 people and third lowest death rate at 23 per 100,000. That’s amazing, since Maine has the oldest population and old folks are most likely to die with COVID.

Other governors have pooh-poohed the threat. South Dakota’s governor thanked the president for letting her decide what’s best for her state. She has refused to take preventive steps, and her state has the second worst infection rate at 11,051 per 100,000.

More examples of confusion. About 9 a.m. every day, the Maine CDC posts two sets of numbers. The total of new infections the day before and an adjusted number that reflects the cases from the previous day that, after further checking, had been identified as being people not from Maine or as being false positives.

The Bangor Daily News always leads with the total of new infections. The Sun Journal, public radio and others lead with the adjusted number. So on Wednesday, the BDN reported 753 new cases, the SJ reported 748. Both were correct, but still confusing.

A den of anti-science trolls loves to comment — a loud minority of commenters in the BDN deny that COVID is a threat, a few in the Washington Post say, basically, “forget about it, it’s just old folks” — and their misinformation adds confusion.

Yes, Dr. Anthony Fauci told us in March not to wear masks. If you recall, his specific words were that the supply of N95 masks had to be reserved for health care workers. The trolls overlook that explanation and hammer away at him. More confusion.

The progress of science on the subject has made even food handling confusing. Early on, the CDC worried about the virus lingering on paper and other surfaces. Sellers at farmers markets were ordered to bag food for sale so shoppers couldn’t touch it. Only after tests showed that surfaces don’t host the virus for long did that caution end.

Maine’s restrictions are applied by county, which is easy on regulators but hard on folks who live in counties. Our county lines, which were probably drawn after a night of heavy drinking, put Bridgton in the county with Portland, Millinocket in the county with Bangor. So, folks who never leave Bridgton are told to follow the restrictions on folks who never leave Portland. Portland had Maine’s highest infection rate earlier. Confusion.

Building capacity may be the most confusing guidelines. The governor has limited indoor gatherings to 50 people, regardless of building size. UMaine basketball and hockey teams have played all 16 games out-of-state. The hockey teams have postponed 12 games. UMaine is trying to reduce the team entourages. The usual coterie for  basketball is 60-70 people, for hockey closer to 100. Sports commands no high priority, but they are an outlet for many people, I among them, especially in such confusing times.

Note that the Legislature, with 184 members, meets in the Augusta Civic Center, which is indoors. But, then, no one ever said elected officials are immune to hypocrisy.

While these instances serve to confuse us (or at least me), Megan Craig, a philosopher at Stony Brook University, wrote in The New York Times, that the biggest confusion from COVID is the compression of time into the present few minutes. “This is the present tense,” she wrote. “A tense present. The past has contracted to the last (normal) day in March … . The future is no farther than bedtime on any given day.”

Now, if a philosopher finds these times confusing, what can the rest of us expect?

Bob Neal is chafing at the bit under quarantine. It may seem trivial, but his primary winter activity is attending women’s basketball games. ESPN+ just isn’t the same.