Of course, we were warned that something like this was looming on the horizon. It was long the subject of board games, movies and conspiracy theories. And now here we are, many of us are confined to our homes for the foreseeable future while heroes are called upon to care for the sick and deliver supplies to the isolated. It is quite extraordinary. In the UK, if this week were a chapter of the story of the time of COVID, it would be titled “The Scramble.” It is the period of gathering supplies, fretting over school closures and transitioning large portions of the workforce from offices to homes while figuring out what to do about all the people doomed to lose their livelihoods while we hibernate from the invisible enemy.

However, there is hope. There is always a light at the end of the tunnel. Dr Larry Brilliant, an epidemiologist who helped eradicate smallpox recently said in an interview, this is an opportunity for humanity. It is ok to be afraid, but perhaps this is the giant push we need as a species to realise that there is more that unites us than divides us. Maybe this is our big opportunity to put profits and personal opinions aside and come together. Maybe, in the wake of the crisis, we will emerge to a world that is better than the one we are leaving behind.