  The all-pervasive lens that humans ordinarily use to watch and analyze the
pandemic is time. This article considers an alternative. Instead of tracking
incidence as a function of time, new cases are counted as a function of
cumulative cases. This resource-centric perspective, which is more natural and
physically justified, is the perspective of the virus. In this article, we
demonstrate the relevance of this approach by characterizing an outbreak as an
independent increments Gaussian process that fluctuates about a deterministic
curve, called the incidence-cumulative cases (ICC) curve. We illustrate these
concepts on Influenza A and COVID-19 outbreaks in the US. The novel perspective
presented here reveals universal properties of disease spread that would
otherwise remain hidden.
