Christopher Sakezles didn’t expect to enter the business of making face-mask respirators in a pandemic. But here he is.  

Last week he decided to tap his Tampa, Florida-based company’s expertise in 3D printing to make protective gear for front-line workers. The first small shipment is now just days away.

“I’m a medical device engineer by vocation. The plan was always to move back into medical device design,” alongside the business of synthetic cadavers for education, Dr. Sakezles says. But not this product. Not this moment in time.

“We’re witnessing firsthand the beauty of the American system right here. We’re all members of the same family. I’m one small part of that,” he says. 

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In fact, the unexpected shift for SynDaver is one piece in a vast mosaic of adaptation by companies across America, and worldwide. While focused on medical and personal protective equipment, which are in desperately short supply nearly everywhere, a kind of “wartime economy” is emerging in the fight against the COVID-19 virus. It’s a “MacGyver” moment for everyone from shop-floor technicians to university students. 

But, as in a time of military conflict, the logistical demands are vast – raising questions about whether the federal government should be playing a stronger role guiding production and distribution of key supplies.

With desperate pleas rising from state governors, the U.S. is entering what may become a period of maximum stress on overloaded health care systems in hard-hit areas like New York, Florida, and Louisiana. Many experts say that, despite efforts by past administrations to prepare for a pandemic, President Donald Trump has failed on many of the basic tasks in an existing playbook that includes coordinating emergency supplies.

“There’s a lot of ingenuity. … Everyone wants to help out, and also wants to keep their business going,” says David Kendall, a health policy expert at the center-left think tank Third Way. But “the federal government needs to be helping organize that supply chain and making sure that everything is getting distributed efficiently and fairly.”

In New York City, 3,200 deaths have already been attributed to COVID-19. In Maryland, Republican Gov. Larry Hogan is decrying a shortage of COVID-19 tests. And many governors are lamenting their need to bid against one another for supplies they have for weeks been urging the federal government to deliver to them. 

Ted Brummond/University of Wyoming/AP

Mechanical engineer Tyler Heckenlively works on making a hospital mask using a 3D printer at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, March 27, 2020. The school's makerspace is contributing to production of face shields as well as surgical masks.

“They call this the Airbridge” to obtain vital supplies, but the Trump administration is using private companies as distributors, J.B. Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois, told “PBS NewsHour” Monday. “We’re bidding, unfortunately, for all of these items of equipment against the federal government and against the other states and against other countries.” 

Some corporations such as Medtronic, a global maker of ventilators used in hospitals, have similarly said they would like federal guidance on where to send their limited supplies in the U.S.

Experts on both ends of the political spectrum argue that a pandemic is a rare and pressing national crisis that calls for a strong federal role, not just state or private marketplace response.

“The president didn’t want to own this. So he didn’t want to be in charge. His instinct at the beginning was this is a state problem,” says Katrina Mulligan, managing director for national and international security at the left-leaning Center for American Progress in Washington.

Mixed signals, frayed trust

President Trump early on downplayed the likely severity of COVID-19’s threat to America. Since February he and his administration have sent mixed signals to corporations as well as the public – often blaming states for failing to have built their own stockpiles of essential items.

Tapping his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to oversee key actions has also frayed public trust in whether a national stockpile of medical equipment is being deployed based on states’ needs or perhaps partly based on political concerns. 

“The federal government should have initiated Defense Production Act (DPA) industrial measures when the virus first surfaced in Wuhan to hedge against the possibility of the medical emergency we now face,” says Mackenzie Eaglen, a security expert at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, by email. Federal responsibilities include assessing supply needs, she adds, and having “purchase agreements put in place for surge production to execute when needed.” 

The DPA, dating from the Korean War in the 1950s, allows the federal government to steer American industry for reasons of national security, such as by requiring companies to prioritize government contracts over those with other customers. 

Mr. Trump has used the act before, including for disaster relief as well as materials for Pentagon weaponry. But in response to the coronavirus, whether because of business lobbying or his own views, he was initially reluctant to deploy that tool. In recent days, he has invoked the act to demand that General Motors produce ventilators for patients in intensive care, and that manufacturer 3M make more N95 masks for hospital workers. 

Coupled with an upwelling of action by the private sector responding to the apparent needs, this means a surge in production is beginning. The “wartime” analogy is being almost universally invoked, yet supplies are ramping up too late to meet some of the needs in hard-hit states, notably in the Northeast. 

Necessity is the mother of invention

Still, the response of private sector companies has been remarkable and widespread. GM was starting to make ventilators even before the DPA was invoked. Other firms are also entering that market. And a contest called the CoVent-19 Challenge, organized with support from Massachusetts General Hospital physicians, aims to stimulate invention of a rapid-fire way of making existing ventilators serve two patients rather than one.  

AJ Mast for General Motors/Reuters

Workers clear furniture from a floor inside a General Motors building in Kokomo, Indiana, March 28, 2020. GM is partnering with Ventec Life Systems to produce ventilators.

Similar actions are happening in the quest for everything from hospital gowns to vaccines. And of course, for respirators or face masks and shields.

“Companies like mine can move quickly to help. … We’re absolutely rising to meet the need,” says Dr. Sakezles.

In some ways, says Chris Edwards of the libertarian Cato Institute, what’s needed from the government now is clear communication and getting out of industry’s way. 

“It’s widely agreed now that the FDA really screwed up by trying to keep a monopoly on coronavirus testing,” Mr. Edwards argues. Now, with the Food and Drug Administration having relaxed its rules, there’s the promise of easing that important shortage as companies respond to the demand, he says.

Wartime pivots

In U.S. history, wartime economies have involved similar dramatic pivots by industry. Still, manufacturers can’t turn on a dime. 

In World War II, it took Ford Motor Co. a year and a half from initial contract to actual production of B-24 bombers. But President Franklin Roosevelt, with an eye on the war in Europe and Asia, had called for a military production drive in May 1940, long before Pearl Harbor. 

“Eight weeks ago, 10 weeks ago,” security expert Ms. Mulligan says, a survey of states could have revealed “exactly what our shortfalls were likely to be and where. And we could have used the Defense Production Act to place a giant government order.” 

Now, instead, the production surge is building in a less orderly fashion. But it is happening. And for many companies, it’s offering a sense of purpose and potential revenue at a time when “stay home” orders have slashed their ordinary business. 

ABC Imaging in Alexandria, Virginia, is a nationwide printing company with a new product line: face shields, alongside books and store displays. 

Public service was the inspiration. As Medi Falsafi, the company’s president tells it, his wife, Luda, suggested they make some face shields and donate them to the local hospital where their son was born 17 years ago.

The orders started rolling in. Now he has an entire COVID-19 line: banners and adhesive “stand here” decals for grocery stores, plexiglass shields for checkout lines, and temporary walls for makeshift hospitals.

The company’s survival still hangs by a thread. After having to lay off 250 employees, the remaining staff of 200 are working at reduced salaries. But “it’s been a rewarding thing” to pivot toward the national emergency, says Mr. Falsafi. “Helping people is wonderful.”

Staff writer Francine Kiefer contributed to this story from Pasadena, California.

Colette Davidson

City-wide, activist-sponsored graffiti meant to draw attention to domestic violence is seen on a wall in the 19th arrondissement of Paris on April 8th, 2020. The graffiti reads “Domestic violence: 80% of complaints are not investigated.”

Jill Bourdais has run a bi-weekly support group for survivors of domestic violence since 2011, and usually receives around five calls per week from her clients. 

But since France’s coronavirus lockdown began, the Paris-based clinical psychologist has gotten fewer calls and emails than ever. She says she hasn’t received a single call since March 27.

“If [women] are not currently living with their abuser and they’re not calling me, maybe there’s no real damage,” says Ms. Bourdais. “But if they’re not calling me and they live with an abuser; it’s too risky … they have much less freedom to reach out.”

The phenomenon that Ms. Bourdais observed is not unique. Many rights groups, as well as France’s free domestic abuse hotline, have noted a reduction in the number of calls they receive since France went into lockdown on March 17 – showing how difficult it is for victims to reach out for advice or resources when trapped inside with their aggressors. Meanwhile, the number of couples who've reached the breaking point has gone up; French police recorded a 36% jump in reports of domestic abuse in Paris during the first week and a 32% rise elsewhere in France.

It’s a trend seen across Europe since lockdowns began. Britain’s National Domestic Abuse helpline has seen a 25% rise in calls and online reporting, while Spain’s emergency number for domestic violence noted 18% more calls during the first two weeks of lockdown than the same period one month prior. The numbers prompted United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres to tweet on Apr. 5: “I urge all governments to put women’s safety first as they respond to the pandemic.”

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The lockdown has highlighted the vulnerability of many women in France – where in recent years, one woman has been killed due to domestic violence every three days. And as a result, it could change just how high a priority domestic abuse is for the state.

“There’s been a real awareness since the #MeToo movement that this type of violence is not a private affair, that it’s unacceptable and a real societal problem,” says Olivia Mons, the spokesperson for victims’ rights group France Victimes. “But the state still needs to work on better coordination between different actors and invest more money to help victims – it’s a very good investment for the victim and the state.”

A serious problem even before the pandemic

France has one of the highest rates of domestic violence in Europe, according to EU figures from 2017. Each year, around 200,000 women suffer physical or sexual abuse by a partner. In 2019, 149 women died at the hands of their partners – up from 121 the year before – and 950 violent partners were held in police custody.

Responding to increasing public pressure, the French government unveiled a nationwide action plan, dubbed “Grenelle,” against domestic violence in September 2019, promising more wide-scale use of electronic bracelets for offenders and the creation of 1,000 places in shelters for victims.

Christian Hartmann/Reuters

Domestic violence has been a major issue in France even before the pandemic, as this Nov. 23, 2019 demonstration against femicide and violence against women in Paris indicates.

And amid the pandemic lockdown, the government ramped up its efforts further. Following on the heels of a Spanish program where women can speak the code words “mask 19” in pharmacies to indicate they have suffered domestic abuse, the French government announced that French women should utilize their local pharmacies for similar reporting.

The French government will also open around 20 pop-up counseling centers in stores across Paris and in the northern city of Lille, where women can drop in while shopping. It has designated 1 million euros to help domestic abuse organizations, and said it will pay for up to 20,000 hotel rooms for victims.

But the measures haven’t gone far enough, say campaigners. In 2018, France’s High Council for Gender Equality said that 11,000 additional places in shelters were in fact needed, and rights groups say that at least 500 million euros must be dedicated to the cause.

Many anti-domestic abuse groups say too often, it’s the woman who must change her daily life to accommodate her abuser, and not the other way around. The Observatory for Violence Against Women for the Seine-Saint-Denis region, just outside Paris, announced at the end of March that it would work with a local tribunal to finance hotel rooms during the lockdown period – not for female victims, but for their violent offenders.

“When women leave for a hotel, often with their children, they don’t have their beds, their toys, they can’t cook. It’s unbearable,” says Ernestine Ronai, the director of the Observatory for Violence Against Women for the Seine-Saint-Denis region. “The violent man is the one who absolutely needs to leave.”

Campaigners also say that the French justice system favors offenders instead of victims of abuse. A November 2019 report by weekly Le Journal du Dimanche showed that officials did not follow through on domestic violence complaints 80% of the time.

Eléonore, a Toulouse-based woman who asked that her last name not be printed, says she was raped by her boyfriend in Paris in September 2016. With the help of friends, she finally reported the incident to police, only to have the situation turned around on her. The officer who took her case pressured Eléonore to sign a main courante, which records an offense but doesn’t take the complaint any further. He convinced her that doing otherwise would have grave consequences for her partner.

“They put the blame on me, saying that my boyfriend was just expressing desire and pleasure to see me,” says Eléonore, whose boyfriend had just returned from a long trip when the event took place. “I wasn’t allowed to have any emotions about it.”

Eléonore tried to take her case to another police station, but despite her efforts the case was never pursued and her boyfriend never received any punishment.

Neighbors and police

As French people are increasingly confined to their homes during lockdown, solidarity between neighbors has taken on greater importance – whether it’s to lend a helping hand or simply wave across an apartment complex. For domestic violence victims, neighbors can save lives.

Kate LeBlanc says she called the police last August when she heard a couple yelling in a neighboring building, in the Paris suburb of Puteaux. Although the police showed up in five minutes, Ms. LeBlanc says she’s not sure if they would be as reactive now, amid the pressures of the current lockdown situation. More police have been tasked to patrol the streets for potential rule-breakers, and answering house calls entails a public health risk.

“I would call the police as quickly now, but I’m not sure what kind of response I would get,” says Ms. LeBlanc. “I could speculate that it wouldn’t be as quick.”

Ms. Mons, of France Victimes, says that even if the police are under “extreme pressure,” victims shouldn’t hesitate to contact them about domestic abuse incidents. France Victimes has trained police forces in how to handle complaints and the official directive is to be especially proactive when it comes to such domestic violence.

France must go further, she says, to dedicate resources and money to help victims – in order to take the burden off the health and social services sectors now and in the future. But she adds that the #MeToo movement, coupled with France’s Grenelle action plan, have better prepared France to handle domestic abuse complaints during the lockdown period, which could potentially last beyond these early days in confinement.

It is news such as this that makes Eléonore, in Toulouse, consider whether she should reopen her rape case. But this time, she says, she would bring a lawsuit against not only the officer who dismissed her case the second time back in 2017, but against the French state.

“In my head, it’s still a possibility but I haven’t made up my mind about it,” says Eléonore. “I do have hope that things have changed since then.”

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It was one of the most grueling marathons that Wojciech Machnik had completed – and that was saying something. Mr. Machnik has run marathons that zigzag up mountain peaks. He has finished 26.2 miles in 90 degree heat and 95% humidity. One week last June, he ran six marathons in six Caribbean countries, just to see if he could.

But even Mr. Machnik had never run a marathon quite like this. On a quiet Sunday morning last month in Warsaw, Poland, he rounded his bed for the 5,626th time, and then plopped down on top of it.

“It was a crazy thing to do to commemorate a crazy moment in time,” he says. “So I thought, why not?”

Around the world, government restrictions to fight the novel coronavirus have changed the way we exercise. For many, that’s meant brushing off dusty home gym equipment or streaming blocky feeds of trainers in their living rooms. But for a dedicated few, it’s given rise to a new kind of challenge: to run ever-longer distances in ever-smaller spaces.

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In China in February, an ultramarathon runner named Pan Shancu set the tone when he ran 31 miles through his small apartment, slurping noodles and taking videos of his stocking feet. In March in the south of France, furloughed restaurant manager Elisha Nochomovitz ran the length of his 23-foot balcony – with its sweeping view of the Pyrenees Mountains – 6,000 times to complete his own self-isolation marathon. And then, a week later, he did it again.

Courtesy photos

Rossyle Ayuro (left), a Filipino hospital administrator in Doha, Qatar, runs a loop of her apartment marathon last month. An app (center) tracks Shahieda Thungo running loops of her postage-stamp yard in Johannesburg, and Wojciech Machnik (right) completes a marathon around a bed in Warsaw, Poland.

“This is literally a way to keep moving through this crisis,” says Rossyle Ayuro, a Filipino hospital administrator in Doha, Qatar, who recently ran a marathon from her kitchen, down her hallway, out the door, to the elevator and back – 1,400 times.

At-home marathons come with their own set of challenges, namely extreme boredom. But their adherents also see unusual upsides: no race-day jitters, and smooth-as-butter logistics. For runners like these, then, lockdown restrictions are less a limitation than a kind of extreme dare.

“Isn’t that what life is about, finding different challenges and conquering them?” says Shahieda Thungo, a South African ultramarathoner who’s been running 10 kilometer loops around her postage-stamp backyard in Soweto, near Johannesburg, ducking under her washing line on every loop. “We run marathons, we run ultras, but maybe it’s only by running in tiny circles that we can really test our minds and find our breaking point.”

Three weeks ago, Ms. Thungo was at the peak of her training for the Comrades, the world’s largest ultramarathon, which is run in South Africa each June. She was taking on weekly marathons like they were casual jogs.

And then the world around her started to shrink. As South Africa’s coronavirus cases ticked upward, the president called for restrictions on how many people could gather in one place. Races were canceled. Gyms closed their doors.

Courtesy of Stuart Mann

Stuart Mann, a hobby marathoner in Johannesburg, takes on the biking leg of his at-home Ironman triathlon, which he completed in 13 1/2 hours on April 4, 2020.

Ms. Thungo kept running, logging 20 mile jogs with just one or two friends, or solo runs at dawn near her house. But on March 23, South Africa announced a 21-day lockdown: no leaving home for anything except food or medicine.

“I thought, OK, well that might be an opportunity to try something completely different,” says Stuart Mann, who lives in Johannesburg and has run over 240 marathons and ultramarathons.

He took stock of his options: There was an exercise bike gathering dust in his garage. Sure, he hadn’t swum for exercise in 15 years, but he had a pool in his backyard. And his driveway was pretty long.  

Why not try an Ironman triathlon? He could get out his lockdown jitters, and raise money for a favorite education charity.

So last Saturday, that’s exactly what he did. As cold rain lashed his shoulders, he swam 2.4 miles across his 36-foot-long pool. When he finished, he popped out, had a cup of tea, and headed for the bike on his veranda. For the next 5 1/2 hours, he chatted with friends online and read his 8-year-old daughter a chapter of “Harry Potter” as his feet spun through the miles – 112 of them, to be exact.

Then it was time for his driveway marathon, full of constant, sharp turns that pounded his knees.

“Not quite Comrades pain,” he says, referring to the 56 mile ultramarathon he’s completed 10 times, “but definitely getting there.”

For some runners, however, the tediousness of running back and forth across a tiny space has also been a way to trick their brains into thinking of something other than the colossal human crisis unfolding around them.

“There are no real answers for why this is happening, and this is a way to take my mind off of all that,” says Walter Tarello, an Italian veterinarian living in Dubai, who watched the horror in his home country unfold from afar. Last month, he ran a marathon through the eighth floor corridor of his apartment building, turning his head every loop to catch a glimpse of the skyscrapers arching into the dusty sky outside.

For Mr. Machnik, on the other hand, his bedroom marathon provided little in the way of scenic distractions. In fact, he’d clocked only a few loops before the room began to spin.

But he was determined to finish. For two years, Mr. Machnik, who runs a small adventure tour company, has been on a dogged mission – to run 100 marathons in 100 countries in a world record time.  

A week and a half before, he’d finished marathon No. 97, on the island of Socotra in Yemen. He caught the last flight off the island. When he arrived back in Poland, he was put into a 14-day quarantine, confined to a small rented room.

There, he watched as the dates for marathons 98 and 99 passed by. Canceled. Finally, March 29 arrived: the day he was meant to run marathon 100.

“I wanted something to celebrate,” he says. And that something, he decided, would be 5,000 spins around a queen-size bed.

“Look, today this is what I can do. And this is probably my one chance in my life to do this,” he says. “You either take it or you don’t. You either say yes or you say no. And I said yes.”

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Courtesy of Daniel Kraft

Friends and family gather at the home of Michael and Lisa Kraft for Passover Seder in Silver Spring, Maryland, April 2019.

If the world had not been upended by the plague of the coronavirus, right about now I’d be unfurling embroidered white tablecloths as I set the Passover Seder table at my parents’ home in Maryland.

I’d be enjoying the view of azaleas and daffodils and the sound of my mother giving pointers to my kids rolling matzo balls.

Instead I’m an ocean, two continents, and 6,000 miles away in Tel Aviv, where I live with my husband and two children. We are preparing for what seems like the unfathomable task of hosting a Seder meal for the first time – and just for the four of us.

Usually we are back in Maryland with extended family and friends. There are upwards of 40 of us some years, three generations crammed together in joyous mayhem, families who have been celebrating Passover together in the same spot for 50 years.

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This year was to have marked the 51st Kraft Family and Friends Seder. It’s still happening in abbreviated form – not in person, but over four time zones via the technology of Zoom.

Passover is the Jewish holiday that commemorates the children of Israel’s exodus from slavery in Egypt to new lives as free people. It is called the Festival of Freedom, one that this year is being held while most of the planet is under de-facto house arrest.

Here in Israel a three-day curfew has just begun, Tuesday night, that will lift only Friday morning. There is no public transportation and no travel by car between neighborhoods or towns. And at its height – Wednesday night until Thursday morning – people won’t be able to roam more than 100 meters from home “for any reason at all.”

The goal is to ensure that people don’t break the rules of sheltering at home to join each other for the Seder as they traditionally do. This year bursting intergenerational tables of family and loved ones could spell a health disaster just as Israel is beginning to – as we can all recite together almost as if in prayer – “flatten the curve.”

Dan Williams/Reuters

Three siblings in Mevasseret Zion, near Jerusalem, wave to their their grandmother in Haifa as she joins their Passover Seder via Zoom as Israel takes stringent steps to contain the coronavirus, April 8, 2020

The ceremonial meal marking the beginning of the seven-day holiday is a festive song- and food-filled night. During the meal we are commanded to retell the story of leaving Egypt, as if we ourselves had made the journey out, so that the next generation should know who they are, where they came from, and that in every generation there is a Promised Land that awaits.

I find comfort in that sentiment now, that we will be free again. This shall pass, and we will emerge – hopefully changed for the better, wiser, more compassionate for the suffering of others, and aware in ways that only hardship can remind us of how connected and dependent on one another we truly are.

Seder in Hebrew means “order,” and there is a prescribed order to the ceremony – just after the ceremonial pouring of the first ritual glass of wine comes the ritual hand-washing, certainly even more meaningful today. For thousands of years, that act of purification, we are told, has helped keep illness and disease, even plagues at bay.

And I find comfort in this too – in the ordered ceremony and in the wisdom of our ancestors – of some things fixed constant and true when everything else feels so out of order.

Even though our Zoom Seder will stretch from San Francisco Bay to the edge of the Mediterranean, we will together embark on the rituals we know so well and give us a sense of continuity and calm. We will sing the same familiar songs, some whose words will no doubt feel extra poignant: “Let My People Go,” and, in the youngest child’s singing of “The Four Questions,” the hallmark line of: “What makes this night different from all other nights?”

And this year, as every year, the outside world will intrude to make us ask ourselves the hard questions, this year made extra hard, but also extra meaningful.

So often at large Seders we let others do the leading, the thinking for us. But having these meals at individual families’ homes makes each of us more responsible for the meaning we bring to them. And I hope it prepares us all to bring extra meaning and thought to our lives once we can emerge from our homes and into the wider world again.

Seders are for asking questions, and this seems like one of the most important we should be asking: After our own exodus from everyday life, how will we go back into the world the better for our time out of it?

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As the bighearted, surprise hit comedy “Schitt’s Creek” ended its run this week, viewers could be forgiven for never fully realizing it’s set in small-town Ontario. 

Schitt’s Creek, where the cosmopolitan Rose family ends up after losing its money, resembles the rural communities that Canadians know well. The cast is Canadian, led by national icons Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara. But there are no Canadian flags, no hammed-up accents, or over-the-top tropes. 

Yet as the sitcom bows after its sixth season – leaving devastated fans across North America in its wake – it closes a curtain on a community that reflects the very values of openness, whether over class or identity, that are so often associated with Canada today.

Daniel Levy, who co-created the show with his father, Eugene, gave a nod to its Canadian ethos in an article published Tuesday – the day of the show’s finale – in Toronto’s NOW magazine. “We shot the show in Canada, it was a Canadian cast and crew. And I feel like the show embodies the Canadian identity and the philosophy of acceptance, love, compassion, and empathy,” he said in the interview. 

The sitcom first aired on the CBC, becoming a hit in its home country and eventually across the border in the United States, where it earned four Emmy nominations. It begins when the gaudy Rose parents lose everything and are forced to move with their adult children to Schitt’s Creek, a town they once bought as a joke. 

Pop TV/AP

(From left) Annie Murphy, Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, and Daniel Levy from the series "Schitt's Creek." After six seasons, the sitcom is coming to a close.

The humor in the first few episodes is more caustic – many of today’s fans actively disliked the Roses and some even the show itself.

Throughout the seasons, storylines and jokes rely on the Rose family’s hard go at adapting to life with no luxuries, but beyond the comedic punches – “Oh, I’d kill for a good coma right now,” says family matriarch Moira Rose – the family stays in and becomes an integral part of the town.  

As the characters develop and transform, the sitcom softens and becomes sweeter, at the exact moment many viewers just wanted a half-hour of relief. “Schitt’s Creek” came of age through the rise of the Islamic State and its spate of terrorist attacks, the Brexit vote, the unexpected election of U.S. President Donald Trump, and now a global pandemic. 

Canadian values

While the comedy is built around the clash of cultures, from the beginning the townspeople accept the artifice and eccentricities of siblings David and Alexis Rose, and the overdone lexicon of Moira. (Ms. O’Hara said in a live Instagram session recently that “Foyle’s Philavery: A Treasury of Unusual Words” and “Mrs. Byrne’s Dictionary” inspired her script.) It exemplifies tolerance that reflects Canadian culture generally, says Greg David, a Canadian television critic and owner of “TV, eh?,” a site that covers Canadian TV.

“There’s values in there, and maybe some things that we as Canadians like to think are more Canadian than in other countries around the world, when it comes to acceptance,” says Mr. David. “I think we’re more laid-back, have a ‘live and let live’ type of attitude.”

That openness is best illustrated in Daniel Levy’s portrayal of David Rose, who is pansexual and develops one of the most cherished relationships on the show with Patrick Brewer, played by Noah Reid. But their sexuality is not central to the storyline. It’s simply a loving relationship like any other – and there is an utter lack of homophobia to be found anywhere around them. That’s aspirational, but it’s been a watershed for LGBTQ communities. Mr. Levy has said he created a world in which he would want to live. 

A sense of community

Laura Grindstaff, a sociologist at the University of California, Davis, who is from Canada and looks at cultural issues through media, says that she sees a show intentionally transcending particularism – whether that’s in nation or gender. “It’s working against categorization, and against labels,” she says.

Yet she does see hints of Canada, beyond its cast and production, in its central theme of collectivity. “This is about getting to where you are by forming community and working together collectively. That is not quintessentially American,” she says, “where you’ve got the rugged individualism, ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ stuff. For the Rose family, she says, “they don’t arrive in this sort of new space geographically, or more importantly emotionally, without being part of a community in a collective.”

That’s a message that has inspired fans across North America, and helped them form their own communities. Louise Downs, a superfan in Nova Scotia who runs the fan club “Schitt’s Creek Fans Shoot the Schitt,” says her Facebook group grew from a few hundred in the first weeks she started it in 2017 to more than 23,000 members today. The majority are Americans.

She says she, and legions of others, are “devastated,” especially while much of North America is in lockdown over the coronavirus. “It’s like, jeez, couldn’t we have a few more episodes? Because it’s such a highlight for us to be able to watch this every Tuesday night, and we’re in the middle of a pandemic, and it’s over,” she says. “It feels so silly, but it really does feel like I’m losing a best friend. I can’t even imagine life without Moira Rose.”

Reuters

Christians practice social distancing as they pray at a church in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, April 1.

One of the world’s most powerful figures, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, has been laid low by the coronavirus. News of his hospitalization would be compelling enough. Yet the public response is just as newsworthy. It hints at a spiritual revival of concern for the weakest during this health crisis, no matter what their station in life. 

Across Britain, people have placed signs outside houses saying “Pray for Boris.” Muslim, Jewish, and Christian leaders in Britain have offered prayers or asked for God’s blessing for the prime minister and his loved ones.

Abroad, Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo said he had prayed for Mr. Johnson’s “swift recovery.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “The people of Israel pray for the speedy and full recovery of our friend.” President Donald Trump said both he and the American people were praying for a “good friend.”

The COVID-19 emergency has magnified a common religious practice to look after the desolate, the poor, and the weak with healing, prayer, and justice. Right now, the wealthy countries that already have a jump on the virus are turning their attention to poor countries to help them stamp out the disease and stop a deepening of the global economic collapse. Many countries are debating how to fix inequities exposed during the outbreak, such as the low quality of health care for minorities.

A good example of a spiritual leader helping the faithful navigate these times is Iraq’s most prominent Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. He triggered a mass campaign of volunteers after calling on Iraqis to support those in need during the crisis, regardless of their faith or ethnicity. He also asked them to get closer to God to end the “plague” while “adhering to professional health guidelines.”

It is still unclear if the global trauma will lead to a renewed, long-term interest in spirituality. Yet in the United States, a Gallup poll found 19% of Americans said their faith or spirituality has gotten better as a result of the crisis. In sharp contrast, other aspects of the lives of Americans – relationships, diet, mental health, and exercise – had not changed nearly as much. Another poll, by Pew, found more than half had prayed for an end to the coronavirus outbreak.

These polls help explain the outpouring of prayers for the British prime minister and, along with it, the outpouring of aid and comfort for those most in need in this pandemic. Such human compassion is surely a sign of a deeper understanding of its spiritual origin.