2020-04-04 The Week Magazine

NEWS

4 Main stories

Coronavirus cases surge

in U.S.; Joe Biden speeds

ahead of Bernie Sanders in

Democratic race

6 Controversy of the week

Can Trump recover from

his bungled response to

the pandemic?

7 The U.S. at a glance

San Francisco orders

residents to “shelter in

place”; a pardon for

Michael Flynn?

10 People

Sheryl Sandberg on

learning to love again;

Aaron Sorkin’s idealism

16 Talking points

America goes into

lockdown; the coming

hospital bed shortage

ARTS

22 Books

My Dark Vanessa is

more than a Lolita for

the #MeToo era

24 Film, Stage & Music

How the coronavirus

shutdown could reshape

the entertainment industry

BUSINESS

32 Main stories

Unemployment claims

rocket across U.S.; Black

Monday 2020

34 Best columns

Can the Fed save the

economy?

A doctor goes to work in locked-down San Francisco. (p.4)

Ge

tty

When the doors of my commuter train whooshed open at Grand

Central Terminal on my last day in the office, about 20 strag-

glers emerged one by one from the long line of cars, rather than

the usual hundreds. The terminal’s Main Concourse was a vast,

nearly empty cave. As people passed each other there and on the

eerily quiet streets, we glanced at each other with a paradoxical

mixture of fear and kinship. In this plague year, we are all poten-

tial disease vectors—threats to each other’s well-being. And yet

we are all in this together. To minimize the number of deaths and

the damage Covid-19 will inflict, we will need to cooperate, sac-

rifice for the greater good, and take care of those who lose their

jobs or become sick. We are each other’s keepers. Deeper truths

often are delivered in the envelope of crisis.

“No man is an island,” John Donne wrote in 1624, as he lay ill

with a persistent fever, fearing death. “Every man is a piece of

the continent, a part of the main.” In the solitude and delirium

imposed by his illness, his connection to all others became man-

ifest. Americans have always viewed the communitarian ethos

with some ambivalence; our founding ideals are rooted in a re-

bellion against authority and duty, and reverence for individ-

ual liberty. Epidemics, Anne Applebaum recently pointed out in

The Atlantic, “have a way of revealing underlying truths about

the societies they impact.” This one has caught us in a moment

of profound weakness. Faith in science, government, media, and

all our institutions has badly eroded, and we are deeply divided

politically and culturally, viewing each other as enemy tribes,

not countrymen. The coronavirus cares nothing for these dis-

tinctions; it is a reminder that our separateness is an illusion. We

Americans, and all of humanity, are at war with a common foe.

We can only defeat it together.

Editor’s letter

Contents 3

William Falk

Editor-in-chief

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Editor-in-chief: William Falk

Managing editors: Theunis Bates,

Mark Gimein

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Senior editors: Chris Erikson, Danny Funt,

Michael Jaccarino, Dale Obbie,

Zach Schonbrun, Hallie Stiller

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Contributing editors: Ryan Devlin,

Bruno Maddox

Chief sales and marketing officer:

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SVP, marketing: Lisa Boyars

Executive account director: Sara Schiano

Midwest sales director: John Goldrick

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Director, direct response: Alexandra Riera

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advertising: Andy Price

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Addicks

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Kevin E. Morgan

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HR manager: Joy Hart

Operations manager: Cassandra Mondonedo

Chairman: Jack Griffin

Dennis Group CEO: James Tye

U.K. founding editor: Jolyon Connell

Company founder: Felix Dennis

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