"The Coronavirus Doesn’t Have a Social Message"

Andrew Sullivan contemplates plagues.

There are days when I appreciate how deeply our social and political divides are rooted, even in the face of a deadly epidemic. But there are also days when I hope that the human experience of sickness, death, and grief will help us to see what we have in common rather than what we don’t. And that the collective nature of this experience might help restore a sense of citizenship that has no marker of divisive identity. In an epidemic, we are humans first. No one is to blame. Everyone is at risk. And only relentless, pragmatic empiricism offers a sane path forward.