I heard it was prescient. But I don't watch movies, television, or streaming. (Maybe once or twice a year I will look at something on youtube.) I assume you have seen the film, can you tell me what you think?

This coronavirus and the disease it causes (COVID-19) is without doubt the biggest event, so far, of the 21st century. The world will be dealing with it for all of 2020 and most of 2021. For large swaths of humanity it will be catastrophic, for the rest "merely" earth-shaking. This changes everything, even chess. Tournament cancellations we have seen, it's just the beginning.

Any individual human is a bundle of contradictions. Average that over a large population and we can predict a diverse range of responses to the crisis: from perseverence or valiance on one side; to passivity or stoicism in the middle; over to denial or panic on the other side. And there will ever be the extremes: those who sacrifice their health, wealth, safety, and even life for family, community, or mankind; as well as those who try to exploit the situation for personal gain, or willfully wreck and destroy for no discernible reason.

Given the possible range of human responses to the crisis, we as a society need to find a balanced response to those responses. On the one hand, forebearance due to the circumstances. Not everybody has the same challenges, not everybody has the same capacity to react with grace. On the other hand, call it like we see it. If you are behaving badly, get a grip on yourself, or society will eventually put a forcible stop to it, for the greater good.

In a way the human race is lucky on this one. It happened now rather than before. Now we have the science to diagnose and track and eventually treat. Now we have the technology to disseminate information widely and nearly instantaneously. Now we have general levels of education for the public to understand what is required of them. And if I see a silver lining, it's that perhaps we will see a renewed trust in experts and expertise, instead of the previous trend to denigrate "so-called" (sic) experts.

But in another way we are very unlucky. The nature of the enemy means that our best methods of fighting are denied us. We can't mobilize as a group. We can't pitch in to help those in trouble. We can't go where the action is. So, we do all we can, which for most of us is to stay home.

That's all I got. Time to go outside for my daily dose of fresh air.