I was starting to worry about David Brooks, who's been filing his copy on time ever since he got married but didn't seem to have shown up last night the last time I looked, but my phone says his column went online by 8:00 PM, and he seems to have recovered from the sense of dread he was showing last week, of the world relapsing into Hobbesian savagery; now he's as jaunty as Mrs. Miniver getting the family ready for an air raid ("Screw This Virus!"):
While we’re at it, screw certainty. Over the past few weeks I’ve been bingeing on commentary from people predicting how long this is going to last and how bad it’s going to be. The authors seem really smart and their data sets seem really terrible.
I’m beginning to appreciate the wisdom that cancer patients share: We just can’t know. Don’t expect life to be predictable or fair. Don’t try to tame the situation with some feel-good lie or confident prediction. Embrace the uncertainty of this whole life-or-death deal.Screw the grim data sets and the feel-good lies. Make it a threesome!
