Coronavirus Crisis: After Enduring This Bad Time, We’ll Appreciate the Good Times More

We’ve been through difficult and scary times before, like 9/11 and the Great Recession, but we’ve never faced anything quite like this. Not even terrorist attacks or a severe economic downturn forced us to close schools for weeks or months at a time, effectively end spring-semester classes at colleges and universities, make millions of Americans work from home, suspend sports seasons, and quarantine millions of Americans in their homes. In past crises, we at least had the option of dealing with the fear by coming together: at Masses in churches and gatherings in synagogues, in public ceremonies and events, in bars and restaurants. One of the better ways to cope with a scary situation is to know you’re not alone, that lots of other people are in the same circumstance, and to be around them. Chinese coronavirus has taken even that from us. Now interacting with people has turned into something potentially dangerous.

Because of a live-animal market in Wuhan, China, our lives are turned upside down. We fear for our elderly relatives and immunocompromised friends. We wonder how our health-care systems will handle the influx of cases. We wonder if our medications and medical devices will be available in a few months, or whether the supply chain will be too disrupted. And we wonder how much economic pain is coming down the tracks.

About the Author

Jim Geraghty

Jim Geraghty is the senior political correspondent of National Review.

Featured Tags

Manage following

Coronavirus

We’ve been through difficult and scary times before, like 9/11 and the Great Recession, but we’ve never faced anything quite like this. Not even terrorist attacks or a severe economic downturn forced us to close schools for weeks or months at a time, effectively end spring-semester classes at colleges and universities, make millions of Americans work from home, suspend sports seasons, and quarantine millions of Americans in their homes. In past crises, we at least had the option of dealing with the fear by coming together: at Masses in churches and gatherings in synagogues, in public ceremonies and events, in bars and restaurants. One of the better ways to cope with a scary situation is to know you’re not alone, that lots of other people are in the same circumstance, and to be around them. Chinese coronavirus has taken even that from us. Now interacting with people has turned into something potentially dangerous.

Because of a live-animal market in Wuhan, China, our lives are turned upside down. We fear for our elderly relatives and immunocompromised friends. We wonder how our health-care systems will handle the influx of cases. We wonder if our medications and medical devices will be available in a few months, or whether the supply chain will be too disrupted. And we wonder how much economic pain is coming down the tracks.