Epidemics Reveal the Truth About the Societies They Hit

BOLOGNA, Italy—I am sitting in the middle of this northern Italian city, two hours’ drive from the Lombardian towns that have been quarantined. At this precise moment in time, Bologna has not produced a single instance of the new coronavirus. One or two people with the disease, known as COVID-19, have been moved into the hospital here from other regions, but nobody around me, or anywhere near me, is ill. Yet at the American university where I am a guest lecturer, we speak of little else.

Perhaps this is because we don’t know what to think: Most of us have never grappled with a swift-moving, incurable disease, even one that is not very lethal. We aren’t old enough to remember the Spanish flu. We have become used to the idea that there are always vaccines, or medicines that have been tested. Now we are told—on train announcements, on signs, in emails—to wash our hands, a precaution that feels neither sufficient nor reassuring. Meanwhile, the University of Bologna, the oldest academic institution in Europe, has been shut. Museums are