I ought to be drawing illuminating parallels between these troubled times and the fourteenth-century Black Death, Defoe’s Plague Year (London, 1665), or the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918-20. But I am not an epidemiologist and have nothing of interest to say about these things – or any other of the great pestilences that have afflicted humanity in the past, except to say that I certainly hope that the COVID-19 plague of 2020 doesn’t turn into a rerun of what happened under Marcus Aurelius or Justinian. I do find it notable how this one has triggered such a public-health reaction – much greater than the more recent outbreaks of SARS, MERS, Ebola, Zika, West Nile, or just the seasonal flu, which as everyone has been saying has killed more people than the current pandemic. I suppose it is better to be safe than sorry, and I sure hope that the economy bounces back from whatever disruption this quarantining will cause.