As expected this afternoon, President Trump officially declared the Covid-19 pandemic to be a "national emergency." This has particularly helpful legal implications enabling the government to act more decisively to ramp up treatment, prevention, and economic backstops for all of it.
The President appeared with a collection of CEOs of major companies - Walmart, Target, CVS, Walgreens - who are all onboard to cooperate in the effort. I don't believe our society has been this united in purpose since the 9-11 attacks.
I find it ironic our society is normally fractured into interest groups which only pull together when we are attacked by some outside actor. That's what it takes to put all of us on one side, fighting together against some external enemy, in this case a virus.
The upside is that when we do coalesce against an external enemy, we experience some of our finest hours, borrowing a felicitous phrase from Winston Churchill.
