Every individual matters.
Sometimes, disasters can bring out the best in people. Images of private citizens in boats rescuing strangers off roofs after Hurricane Katrina were truly uplifting, even as the larger scene in which they occurred was devastating.
With this disaster, even more than with a hurricane, we will need to rely on each other, on a much larger scale and for a much longer time than any of us are accustomed to. We need young and healthy people to take all possible measures not to get the virus — even at possible cost to themselves, and even though their own risk of suffering serious harm from the virus is very low — in order to slow the spread for the benefit of those most at risk.
And as economic activity declines with widespread social isolation, we need those whose livelihoods are not at risk to give some consideration to those whose are, and support them.
But leaders are still critical.
But we won’t do our best if it’s all on us as individuals. If we are to be as collectively minded as this slow-motion disaster calls for, we need our leaders to show, in their actions and their words, that they have all of our best interests at heart. We may be extremely divided politically, but we share physical, biological and economic space, and that makes us all connected by this virus.
This moment, as events on the ground finally force us to grasp the threat of the virus with greater clarity, is the moment the hurricane starts to make landfall.
In the United States, there is an increasing realization that our government wasted the time that scientific prediction — and the experiences of China, Italy and other countries — bought us.
Starting around a week ago, in the absence of either widespread testing or guidance from the top on social distancing measures, state and local governments, as well as the private sector and individuals, stepped up and began to take actions on their own, before the Trump administration finally began to take the problem seriously. But much more action is needed. Only the federal government can muster the kind of large-scale coordination — and resources — that a slow-motion hurricane, simultaneously striking everywhere, demands.
Adam Sobel is an atmospheric scientist at Columbia University and author of “Storm Surge,” a book about Superstorm Sandy. He has a podcast called “Deep Convection” on climate, science and life.
