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Schram: Can we cure pandemic politics?

This undated electron microscope image made available by the U.S. National Institutes of Health in February 2020 shows the Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, yellow, emerging from the surface of cells, pink, cultured in the lab. Also known as 2019-nCoV, the virus causes COVID-19. The sample was isolated from a patient in the U.S. (NIAID-RML via AP)
This undated electron microscope image made available by the U.S. National Institutes of Health in February 2020 shows the Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, yellow, emerging from the surface of cells, pink, cultured in the lab. Also known as 2019-nCoV, the virus causes COVID-19. The sample was isolated from a patient in the U.S. (NIAID-RML via AP) This undated electron microscope image made available by the U.S. National Institutes of Health in February 2020 shows the Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, yellow, emerging from the surface of cells, pink, cultured in the lab. Also known as 2019-nCoV, the virus causes COVID-19. The sample was isolated from a patient in the U.S. (NIAID-RML via AP)

By Martin Schram / Tribune Content Agency 4 min read

For answers to frequently asked questions about the coronavirus, click here.

It is a cliché of our times to hail something as a tipping point – a happening that will change something forever.

And what Americans experienced last week really didn’t happen in a way that felt like we’d been through a suddenly sensational tipping point. What it felt like, by Wednesday’s end, was a more subtle sensation of change that built slowly throughout the day. By nighttime, we began to individually sense that what we had just seen and sensed was a day in which we felt our world tipping, just a bit more, on its axis. And we may never again feel quite as secure – and confident in our ability to keep ourselves and our families safe.

Our first tip that we might be tipping came in midday. The World Health Organization proclaimed that our planet is officially engulfed in a “pandemic” caused by a highly communicable disease called “coronavirus” (or “COVID-19”).

Then our news screens poured over us a steady stream of newsbreaks that seemed to turn upside down our nonessential, just everyday enjoyable, wide, wide world of sports and entertainment.