Editorial: We Will All Emerge Heroes

So, how are you doing? We’re just getting into serious social distancing and quarantine public practices, and the best medical assessment of the exploding coronavirus pandemic is that, notwithstanding a massive self-destructive turn, it’s going to remain in effect for numerous months, at best.

As the cases of new infections rise at a frightening rate in today’s hot spots, it is heartening to note that there is already evidence to show that where serious social distancing policies have been put in place in recent weeks, the rate of new infections is dropping rapidly. A study by the Kinsa company, reported on the Rachel Maddow Show Tuesday, shows this.

This means that making the effort to stem this pandemic is not in vain. While research labs are working overtime to develop a vaccine that could be available within a year or so, if enough people resolve to stay the course on social distancing, then many lives and much social chaos will be saved and avoided, respectively. Here is a situation where in a unique way, each and every one of us has the potential to be a true hero, and that is not an overstatement. Moreover, since we are doing this as a collective human community, we will enjoy the rewards of such a shared sacrifice in the form of a sense of human solidarity and mutual love and respect that promises to unleash uncommon levels of joy and happiness. As we spin on this orb through a wider universe that we know far too little about, nothing will answer any sense of existential separation better than such an exercise in solidarity, a victorious solidarity that we all played a role in achieving. Yes, you won’t have to be a superhero or superstar to bathe in the glow of a great human victory. You need only to stay the course of our current offensive to defeat this deadly virus with our willful actions to act out the necessary prohibitions and, if so inclined, engage myriad volunteer opportunities to help others in the fight, too.

Who would have thought the challenge in such a war as this would be not only be the mindless but aggressive virus, itself, but a U.S. president and his sponsors who are trying to lure enough of us with the sickening promise of a “return to normal” in the midst of a battle that is a pure, potentially genocidal, illusion? How appalling that our adversaries in this battle are “Donald and the Other Deadly Bugs.” The temptation that we could all just call this whole thing off in a couple weeks, will, we hate to say, be overwhelmed by the inevitable flood of new infections, seriously ill people and deaths.

Maybe social distancing will work so well that the pandemic fails to materialize on the scale now being predicted. If so, some may criticize us, but how happy we’ll be if that were to occur.