Alex Himelfarb

None of us will emerge from these months and months of plague unchanged or unscathed, whether by personal suffering and loss or by the realization that we need to do better, be better. For decades, we were sold the idea that self-reliance and competition trump interdependence and cooperation, that government, rather than being the expression of our common…

The renowned medical historian C. E. Rosenberg describes epidemics as dramas that unfold, with remarkable consistency, in three acts. The first features denial, not so much because of a failure of imagination as because epidemics always represent a threat to our interests. Merchants fear for the loss of trade, politicians fear for their electoral prospects, governors for their capacity to…