2020-03-30_People

42 March 30, 2020

about these kids who are dependent on getting their

lunches and sometimes their breakfasts at school.

We spend so much time with these kids; we really

care about them. The response has been fantastic. I

just dropped off 50 $100 gift cards to an elementary

school. The staff were just so ecstatic. But that’s only

covering about 20 percent of their need.

VENA This isn’t something that any teacher doesn’t

deal with at some point. It’s time for everyone to

turn and look and call your neighbor, see what they

need. It’s time to just be family, community.

On March 11 medical historian Dr. Howard Markel,

whose study of pandemics through history has doc-

umented how measures like school closures can

save lives, was teaching class at the University of

Michigan when the school’s president announced

campus was shutting down.

We’re now scrambling on how to teach classes by

long distance—on Skype or whatever. With technol-

ogy, that’s easier to do now than it was in 1918 [during

the Spanish Flu pandemic]. But what we did have

then is a lot of can-do spirit and community effort

that we have not seen lately in our atomized, people-

looking-at-their-phones American society. As seri-

ous as coronavirus is, we’re going to come out on the

other end, and my hope is we’ll come out stronger

and more cognizant that we live in a global village of

emerging infectious diseases. It’s only 20 years into

the 21st century, and we’ve had five pandemic or ep-

idemic events—SARS, MERS, H1N1, Ebola and now

this. But the closing act to every one is global amne-

sia where we don’t do the legwork to prepare for the

next one. It’s not an issue of if, it’s an issue of when.

Penn State journalism professor and documentary

filmmaker Boaz Dvir, 52, says images from Italy’s

countrywide lockdown remind him of Tel Aviv

during Iraq’s 1991 missile attacks.

I’m trying to do my part, and that includes smil-

ing at people as often as I wash my hands, because

this virus gives us a chance to strengthen our com-

munity. The photos of empty Italian streets take

me back to 1991 Tel Aviv. At the time, the crisis felt

like it would never end. But it did. Things returned

to normal. I no longer roamed a ghost town. I was

again living in a vibrant city. Imagine that.

By SANDRA SOBIERAJ WESTFALL,

MICHELLE TAUBER, JOHNNY DODD,

JULIE MAZZIOTTA, KELLI BENDER

and MIA McNIECE. Reporting by

DIANE HERBST, CAITLIN KEATING,

DEVAN STUART LESLEY, NICK MASLOW,

LIZ McNEIL, JASON SHEELER

and SUSAN YOUNG

I

t was supposed to be a fun-filled week

in sunny Australia before shooting

began on the Baz Luhrmann-directed

Elvis Presley biopic, but things took a

shocking turn for Tom Hanks and Rita

Wilson, both 63, when they learned

they had tested positive for the coronavirus

soon after arriving from the U.S. On March

11 Hanks alerted the world, writing on Insta-

gram, “Rita and I are down here in Australia.

We felt a bit tired, like we had colds, and

some body aches. Rita had some chills that

came and went. Slight fevers too. To play

things right, as is needed in the world right

now, we were tested for the coronavirus,

and were found to be positive.”

The pair were the first global celebrities

to speak out about having COVID-19—and

the news of their illness helped drive home

the seriousness of the pandemic. Hanks

and Wilson spent five days in a Queensland

hospital but were released on March 16 and

TOM HANKS

& RITA WILSON

STAY STRONG

‘REMEMBER,

DESPITE

CURRENT

EVENTS,

THERE IS NO

CRYING IN

BASEBALL’

—TOM HANKS

ON INSTAGRAM

On the Mend

Hanks, who is now

resting at home

with Wilson, became

the first celebrity

to announce he had

tested positive for

the coronavirus.

IMAGES; CHRIS ELISE/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES; EVAN AGOSTINI/INVISION/AP/SHUTTERSTOCK; MEDIA-MORE/SPLASH NEWSCOUNTER CLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM: KHAPGG/BACKGRID; FUTURE-IMAGE/ZUMA; PASCAL LE SEGRETAIN/GETTY

P13COR8A.indd 42 FINAL 3/17/20 3:37 AM