As America continues to fight the COVID-19 virus it seems increasingly likely that when we look back, the pandemic of 2020 – like 9/11 and the 2008 financial crash – will be a time when the world around us changed in sudden and profound ways. It will affect everything from where we live and work to how we communicate with and relate to others, and even what counts as patriotic service, worthy of the nation’s salute.

That does not mean the post-coronavirus world will be different beyond recognition. The pandemic will not change the basic direction of history so much as accelerate it, according to Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. The importance of the United States to other nations may decline, while that of China increases; but that is happening in some form already. Our screen time may skyrocket along with reliance on Zoom, FaceTime, and other video connectors; but that basic trend preexists. Manufacturers may diversify suppliers to create redundant globalized production chains; but far-sighted managers have pushed this for some time.

Nor are coming changes completely predictable. The influenza epidemic of 1918 turned the world upside down and ravaged the U.S. population. What followed was not a new seriousness of national purpose, but the Roaring ’20s, a free-spending decade remembered today as one of the shallowest eras of American life.

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But crises can shake up the status quo. They override tendencies toward inertia, open room for the consideration of new ideas, and push aside past impediments. The ideas for the big government programs that became the New Deal had been bouncing around U.S. politics for years before Franklin Roosevelt became president, says Margaret O’Mara, a professor of history at the University of Washington in Seattle. It took the shock of the 1929 stock market crash and the onset of the Great Depression to make them law.

“Great crises can change the rules of the game and people’s attitudes about political possibility really fast,” Dr. O’Mara says.

Mark J. Terrill/AP

A cyclist rides with an American flag as the USNS Mercy docks at the Port of Los Angeles. The 1,000-bed Navy hospital ship was brought in to help take the load off Los Angeles area hospitals as they treat coronavirus patients.

Life moves online

If there’s one thing the COVID-19 pandemic is almost certain to shift into hyperdrive, it’s the movement of more and more of our activities online.

The most obvious of these changes are occurring in the midst of the outbreak as tens of millions of people struggle to keep up some semblance of their old routines. Virtual schooling is now part of the curriculum for many of the 124,000-plus U.S. schools affected by a coronavirus shutdown, for instance. In the past, many school systems have resisted widespread online learning or found it difficult to integrate into existing lesson plans. Now they have little choice.

But today’s basic diet of Zoom lectures and student show-and-tells don’t fully reflect what online education can do, say its advocates. For instance, a more sophisticated integration of virtual and live instruction could help high schools match the achievement gains primary education has made in recent years.

Meanwhile, telemedicine is exploding. Right now, doctors are still struggling with such basic questions as how online health care fits into existing billing practices, but in the future it could allow much greater collaboration among diverse team members and health organizations. And of course, online ordering of everything from soup to bolts is for many people the new normal. 

Related to this acceleration of the digital is the increasing importance of big tech to the national welfare. If this moment in history is the moral equivalent of war, are Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Twitter emerging as the new arsenals of democracy, as GM, Ford, and Chrysler did during World War II?

After all Bill Gates, shed of his corporate responsibilities at Microsoft, is increasingly outspoken about fighting all manner of health crises. Amazon is America’s delivery backbone. Facebook is the new radio, the way an isolated society communicates and receives news. President Donald Trump turned to a Google division to construct a website for locating COVID-19 test sites – though that hasn’t progressed much so far.

“The tech companies are really part of this now,” says Dr. O’Mara, author of the recent book “The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America.”

This could mean a significant shift in big tech’s image, Dr. O’Mara notes. Until recent years Silicon Valley has largely ignored politics as well as any concerns about the more unsavory aspects of its impact on society. Then tech itself became a political headline, with Mark Zuckerberg hauled before Congress to defend Facebook policies on issues such as data sharing and election security.

“It became very clear that tech was not only not adequate to address some of our most complicated social problems ... but that it was not changing the world in the right way,” says Dr. O’Mara.

Then America was struck by a grave public health threat whose effect on society is unmatched by any crisis since World War II, and perhaps could surpass even that for its sheer breadth. Leadership at the top of government, with some exceptions, has struggled to meet the challenge. The economic fallout will ripple through every sector of the economy, devastating some, such as airlines, hotels, and restaurants.

“The only sector that may come out of this with more money in the bank is tech,” says Dr. O’Mara.

With their global workforces and global reach, tech firms are uniquely situated to provide moral leadership and a global perspective, she says. Yet their preexisting problems remain: worries about the privacy of personal data and the little-checked spread of false information.

It’s also important to remember that a continuing digital revolution will leave many people behind. Laptops and Wi-Fi connections are expensive; many low-income families can’t reliably connect for telework or virtual education. Some 42 million Americans, and a quarter of all rural residents, don’t have access to broadband internet, according to a recent report from BroadbandNow Research.

JL/SIPA/AP

Jayen, a 13-year-old student in Miramar, Florida, participates in a virtual class from her bedroom. Schools in Florida’s Broward County, like elsewhere across the country, are shut down.

Another urban flight? 

Life in American cities may not be the same after the coronavirus recedes. At the least, things probably won’t return to anything resembling the old normal for a long time.

Many urban areas have been shrinking for decades as their populations migrate to inner-ring suburbs and more distant areas. It’s possible the pandemic will accelerate this movement as people flee to the perceived safety of larger open spaces.

Some wealthy Americans packed up and left New York and other central cities for second homes or hotels in the Hamptons, or the Catskills, or on Cape Cod. A percentage of these may not return if their work and family situations allow. Similar dispersions may happen elsewhere around the globe, say some experts.

“We may now be witnessing the outlines of a new, and necessary, dispersion of population, not only in the wide open spaces of North America and Australia, but even in the megacities of the developing world,” wrote Joel Kotkin, executive director of the Urban Reform Institute, in an article in the publication Quillette in late March.

But this may not mean cities per se are set to wither, or that their attributes will become less attractive to people drawn to the pulse of urban life. The terrible flu pandemic of 1918 did not destroy hard-hit cities, after all. Pittsburgh was ravaged, as was Detroit. Both thrived afterward.

“The point is that no pandemic in history – and many have been worse [than COVID-19] – has been enough to derail the force of urbanization,” says Richard Florida, an urbanist and professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and School of Cities. “The clustering of people, clustering of ideas, and trading with one another have made the world a more productive and innovative place.”

What the coronavirus will do is reshape the way people work and interact in cities at a micro level for a midrange period of time, until a vaccine is able to bring it under control, says Dr. Florida. It’s hard to anticipate exactly what these changes will be, he says. People may be worried about returning to city offices and taking mass transit, so it’s possible they will opt to live in center cities and walk, or resume driving to work, creating more traffic congestion. Small businesses will look different, with restaurant tables placed farther apart, hair salon chairs dispersed or divided from one another, and so forth.

Children will return to very different schools, Dr. Florida predicts, with temperature checks at the door and social distancing in the lunch room. Other changes that he believes will need to take place before cities reopen for business include retrofitting airports, convention centers, and other infrastructure for screenings and personal separation, and financial support for arts and cultural institutions that help provide urban areas with vitality.

“We have to prepare our communities, our playgrounds, our arenas to get up and running safely,” Dr. Florida says.

In the post-pandemic world some types of urban areas might do better than others. Los Angeles, a big world-class city built around the concept of sprawling neighborhoods of single-family homes, could benefit from people’s desire to insulate themselves in a bit of space. So could smallish cities that offer some cultural amenities but are close enough to bigger places to serve as a type of satellite.

One example of this might be Hudson, New York, up the river from New York City. People can experience different degrees of density, despite living in the same city, based on their relative wealth and class, Dr. Florida says.

About a third of the workforce nationwide is wealthy enough to afford extensive deliveries of food and other staples, and to carry out much of their jobs through telework. Another third is composed of blue-collar workers who stock the produce aisles, drive delivery trucks, and otherwise are at risk on the pandemic front lines. The last third are poor people, who have little choice but to hunker down.

Yes, the richest of the rich can jet to their second or third homes, moving to physically distance themselves from any health threat. But could they actually root themselves in their chalets? If they have school-age children, they might not find local educational options attractive. In any case, the isolation they see as a buffer might be illusory. Rural health care options are often limited – and rural counties with attractive recreational amenities, such as the ski slopes of Colorado, have had a high per capita incidence of COVID-19, Dr. Florida points out.

Coronavirus refugees have also sparked fear and resentment among those who live in rural areas full time. In one infamous incident on the Maine island of Vinalhaven, a group of locals cut down a tree on March 27 in an attempt to forcibly barricade several New Jersey residents inside the home they were renting. Dr. Florida says such conflicts could become bitter if they pit states against states. “One of the things that worries me is these border battles in general,” he says.

John Locher/AP

Medical student Claire Chen (right) tests for virus cases at a makeshift camp for the homeless in Las Vegas. Officials opened part of a city parking lot as a temporary homeless shelter.

Not all heroes wear camo 

The nation’s sense of what constitutes patriotic service may enlarge and change after COVID-19. For years many of America’s red-white-and-blue rituals have centered on celebrating the military. There’s the honor guard for the national anthem, the F-22 flyovers for home openers, the line of greeters saying “thank you for your service” to the troops disembarking at airports for leave.

It’s meant to honor people who have agreed to risk their lives to protect the larger community. Some of it derives from the memory of the Vietnam years, when protesters in a bitterly divided U.S. turned their backs on veterans, and worse.

But not all heroes wear camo. In the coronavirus pandemic it is everyday Americans, from doctors and nurses and EMTs to grocery workers and delivery drivers, who are putting their health and lives at risk to protect and provide for everyone else.

“Hopefully we’ll have maybe a more inclusive sense of patriotism” after the pandemic, says Mark Lawrence Schrad, an assistant professor of political science at Villanova University and author of “Vodka Politics: Alcohol, Autocracy, and the Secret History of the Russian State.”

Dr. Schrad says he’s come to this conclusion a roundabout way. One of the things he teaches his students about is nationalism. And a part of nationalism, he says, is constructing the “we” that defines the nation, against the “them” that stand outside it.

Patriotism is one aspect used in building that “we.” But in the current situation, the “them” isn’t the Soviet Union, or Al Qaeda, or humans at all. It’s amorphous and as dangerous to our geopolitical adversaries as it is to us.

Dr. Schrad believes that, if the nation is in such a new place, maybe it needs a new kind of patriotism. Election monitors serve the country – and in Wisconsin recently, working amid the pandemic, bravely so. Teachers serve the community. And now, so do UPS drivers, and postal workers, and agricultural field hands, and hospital orderlies, and a whole range of people whose jobs require them to continue to work with others despite the dangers and lockdowns.

Maybe grocery workers will be honored at halftime during NFL games when the league restarts. Maybe the nurses of community hospitals will march at the front of small town July Fourth parades.

But even before then we can all start thanking them for their service. “They didn’t sign on for this,” Dr. Schrad says.

Alex Gallardo/Reuters

Joseph Alvarado makes deliveries for Amazon in Costa Mesa, California. Shopping online for everything is becoming part of the new normal as much of the world remains on lockdown.

Valuing real connection 

The coronavirus crisis is certainly bringing us closer together, in some ways, but also pushing us apart.

Technology has ensured that everybody remains booked – at least, everybody who has high-speed internet and wants to remain connected to friends and relatives. Zoom this, Zoom that, it’s the book club on Mondays, conversations with grandmother on Tuesdays, then the parents group and the church rummage sale committee. That doesn’t even include all the work-related videoconferencing. Isolation has never seen such togetherness, noted Sherry Turkle, a professor of the social studies of science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in a recent appearance on the public radio show “On Point.”

Online communication has long meant trying to present our best selves – pictures cropped and filtered, subjects curated to make our lives look as exciting as possible. But the new online look is more of a human experience, all of us striving to maintain the authentic connections developed in real life, according to Dr. Turkle, author of “Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age.” 

But online meetups can be exhausting. It’s hard to say no – excuses to avoid online chats are more limited than for getting together in real life. And there’s something about them that is just more restrictive. They can’t really duplicate the full experience of personal connection.

And real-life conversation has more to it. There are things you can’t duplicate via video screen. There are subtle pauses, looks, being quiet together without saying anything. Dr. Turkle calls these communication extras “friction.” In this sense, friction refers to the “messiness of politics, of the dinner table, the intimate conversation, the playground, the public square.” 

When the pandemic is over, we may come out of it, not hooked on the ease of transferring all our conversations to the infosphere, but missing and honoring the small glitches and unspoken connections that real life entails.

“Empathy requires conversations with friction,” says Dr. Turkle.

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His political foes on the left labeled him “Donald Trump of the North.” Not entirely accurate, but Ontario Premier Doug Ford has been known as a brawler.

The government spent most of this academic year battling with teachers over cuts to public education. It cut Toronto’s City Council in half during municipal elections, which was decried as undemocratic. Mr. Ford has raged noisily against the federal government’s carbon tax to address climate change.

In March, his government didn’t appear to take the coronavirus seriously. Before spring break, he told Ontario families to travel and “have fun.”

But as the risks of the pandemic grew, Mr. Ford shifted his stance. He still rails, but now it’s not against political rivals, but at price gougers or at no one in particular – saying “the buck stops here” – about Ontario’s lagging behind on testing, for example. 

At daily press conferences, he speaks plainly and defers to the health experts on the stage – surprising critics, and prompting their praise in return.

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Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government, told the Toronto Star that she and Mr. Ford have “come to describe one another as each other’s therapists.” 

Andrew Weaver, former Green Party leader of British Columbia, tweeted: “While I can’t say I have historically been a fan of @fordnation, I have to say he is doing an incredible job on the COVID-19 file. He has shown strong, decisive and compassionate leadership at a critical moment in Ontario’s history.”

The media, arguably his biggest foe, have earned his praise – and they’ve given it right back.

While the pandemic has generated a bitterly partisan divide in the United States, with protests over lockdowns that President Donald Trump has appeared to endorse, Canada has strived for consensus. That unity is not immutable, and stressors have already built up. But many Canadian politicians have put aside politics to address the threat of COVID-19, and no relationship demonstrates that better than that of Mr. Ford to his opponents.

“His government came into office being completely obtuse about criticism, just completely unwilling to listen to people and doing things almost belligerently because they could,” says Tim Abray, a political communications expert in Ottawa, “and I think that tone has disappeared.”

Mr. Abray says Premier Ford has always been a street-level politician with a skill for talking to people, even if foes failed to see it. “The thing I’m pleasantly surprised about is that he’s making the most of his grassroots, ground-level political instincts, while at the same time, paying attention to expert advice.”

As citizens rally around leaders, approval ratings generally go up in a time of crisis, and this pandemic is no different (although President Trump’s approval has gone down to 43%, according to a Gallup poll). An Angus Reid Institute poll in March showed 74% of respondents in Ontario saying the provincial government was handling the crisis well.

Over the weekend, Canadian protesters calling for an end to lockdowns in Toronto did get a scathing rebuke from Mr. Ford, when he called them “a bunch of yahoos.”

Marie Henein, a defense lawyer in Toronto, has not been a fan. But in the April 9 opinion pages of The Globe and Mail, she penned a piece describing her new “uncomfortable reality.” “It is not easy to heap praise in his direction,” she wrote.

In fact, 18 months earlier she wrote a warning to the Ontario premier about bullying. “So here is your final lesson: Mr. Trump is not a good example to follow. Do not forget, Premier Ford, we are Canadian and inherently decent to a fault. The rough-and-tumble populist appeal to which you, apparently, aspire has long-term, negative consequences for the country.”

Today she says that as Mr. Ford has listened to experts, speaking authentically and with empathy in a crisis, she has come to gradually shift her view – and sees his change as an antidote to a larger problem with politics, in North America and beyond. “Somehow acting without evidence and acting contrary to information is viewed as being authentic. … And I think what is important is really to remember that that is very much contrary to what effective leadership is,” she says. “Evidence-based leadership is not contrary to strong, powerful, and decisive leadership.”

Mr. Ford has been a voice for cooperation across the political aisle. In the Ontario legislature he told politicians in March: “Now is the time to put politics aside. No matter what our political stripe, we must all be Team Ontario and Team Canada.”

A survey by the Media Ecosystem Observatory reflected consensus at the national level, showing no differences along party lines in views on distancing measures or the seriousness of the threat of COVID-19. While Mr. Abray cautions that politics will return and break some of the consensus, he says that Canada still has room for bipartisan friendships, like that of Mr. Ford and Ms. Freeland – even if in recent years more partisanship has crept into Canada’s system.

Cristine de Clercy, a political science professor at Western University in Ontario, says that Canada is smaller than the U.S. and has a unique political structure that marries federalism to a parliamentary system. “Because the premier or the prime minister sits among the legislators with the cabinet, that creates a very top-heavy executive-dominant political system, which in normal times we complain about, but in times of crisis can act quickly and efficiently.”

She is cautious about defining Mr. Ford’s leadership at this early stage. Mr. Ford released a roadmap Monday for Ontario’s economic reopening to mixed reviews. Still grappling with among the nation’s highest infection rates, Ontario is currently under a spotlight for funding cuts and low wages that have made long-term care facilities particularly vulnerable. Along with Quebec, Ontario requested that Canada’s armed forces be sent into nursing homes to reinforce care. Mr. Ford choked up last week during a daily press conference, saying “we can do better” when it comes to COVID-19 hitting long-term care homes. He also revealed that his mother-in-law, who is 95 and lives in a home, has tested positive.

“But what I would credit him for is that he followed the lead of other leaders like Mr. Trudeau … in terms of accepting input from his science and health policy advisers and paying rapt attention to their predictions about the seriousness of COVID,” says Professor de Clercy.

Is that a low bar? “On the normative question, ‘Should he listen to his scientific advisers?’ Of course. One presumes political leaders ought to, especially in the case of a pandemic. But empirically, we know that many have chosen not to,” she says. “Many American governors still are refusing to listen to their scientific advisers to force citizens to isolate, to shut down key industries.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated Tuesday morning, April 28. 

As concern about the coronavirus spreads, falsehoods pass from person to person, too. A Nigerian newspaper told men to keep safe by shaving their beards, while black tea has been touted as a cure in Kenya. Across Europe, arsonists torched dozens of cellphone towers, after conspiracy theories linked 5G technology to the pandemic. In India, rumors spread that cheering for health workers had caused sound waves that weakened the virus.

It’s an “infodemic” that public health experts warn could compound the medical crisis, as social media and gossip spread unfounded tips and rumors. And late last month, one of the most famous men in Uganda decided to do something about it. 

He wrote a song.

Popstar-turned-political-opposition-leader Bobi Wine swapped his trademark red beret for a colorful cap, and dispensed some practical advice in a catchy Afrobeat melody. 

“The bad news is that everyone is a potential victim, but the good news is that everyone is a potential solution,” sings Mr. Wine, teaming up with fellow musician Nubian Li. “Sensitize the masses to sanitize, keep a social distance and quarantine.”

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The song became a sensation. Days after releasing his explosive hit, Mr. Wine announced that anyone was welcome to cover it, launching the #DontGoViral campaign. 

Sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Innovation for Policy Foundation (i4Policy), #DontGoViral mobilizes African artists to combat misinformation with creativity.  

Musicians, dancers, and visual artists can share public health messages that comply with World Health Organization guidelines, uploading submissions to an online forum and sharing them with the hashtag. All art must be openly licensed, meaning anyone can use, remix, or translate it – and that its messages can jump over boundaries like language and culture. “Corona Virus Alert,” Mr. Wine’s rallying cry, has already been covered in Acholi, which is spoken in northern Uganda, and by Kampala children, joined by young actress Nattembo Racheal Monicah.

“In situations like this one we have to use every tool at our disposal, and music is one of them,” says Mr. Wine. 

It can be an effective one, says Carlos Chirinos, a New York University professor who studies music’s role in public health and collaborated with West African musicians to produce “Africa Stop Ebola” in 2014. In times of crisis, songs are easy to repeat and remember, help defuse panic, and “pack health information into three minutes.”

Many voices, one message

While the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases is relatively low on the continent, experts fear that skeletal health systems could soon be overwhelmed.

“The first step to fighting the pandemic is fighting the infodemic, by providing the right information to communities,” says Eva Sow Ebion, a co-founder and director of community at i4Policy. 

But most educational materials are in languages primarily spoken in North American and Europe, according to Sasha Rubel, who leads UNESCO’s collaboration on the project. “Our hope is to create a massive movement to push artists to create openly licensed content that is accessible and locally adapted, in terms of both format and language, to marginalized and rural communities in Africa most at risk,” she says. 

Already, more than 400 artists from 36 African countries have participated, according to i4Policy. #DontGoViral submissions are promoted on the campaign’s website, as well as on YouTube and social media. Songs are also played on local radio stations and via the BBC World Service, in a joint advocacy initiative.

Nigerien composer Omar Adam Goumour, frontman of the band Ezza, croons about the coronavirus in Tamashek, which is spoken across parts of Algeria, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. “Corona exists. It is a reality and not a lie,” he intones, joined by other local singers. “Whatever you touch, wash your hands with soap.” 

In another video, dancers from Compagnie Tcheza in Comoros demonstrate the importance of social distancing by spinning away from each other in a series of impressive flips and high-energy turns. 

Jon Stever, co-founder and CEO of i4Policy, hopes the campaign creates a dialogue that transcends borders. “It is not just about telling people to wash their hands; it’s about engaging people in a discourse so they can understand why hand-washing is important [and] become agents of response and recovery,” he says.

Artists “help us to touch the soul of our interconnectedness” and mobilize us for the common good, he adds. 

Many performers focus on harmony and compassion in their #DontGoViral submissions. “Don’t you worry, don’t you be scared,” members of Kenya’s Mukuru Youth Initiative sing in Swahili. “Together we shall fight. We shall overcome.” 

“This song should be playing back to back on all the radio stations,” a comment on the video reads. 

Listeners aren’t the only ones learning from #DontGoViral. “I hope #DontGoViral can give artists a new awareness of their societal importance,” says Islam Elbeiti, a radio DJ, jazz bassist, and activist who works with i4Policy. 

Team effort

Contradictory and confusing perspectives on COVID-19 aren’t just coming from chain emails and Facebook feeds. World leaders have also spouted unscientific claims. Soldiers in Madagascar went door to door last week distributing an untested herbal cure promoted by President Andry Rajoelina. U.S. President Donald Trump has suggested that people could be treated with disinfectant injections and ultraviolet light.  

In mid-April, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres announced an initiative to counter misinformation, calling it “a poison that is putting even more lives at risk.”

“Together, let’s reject the lies and nonsense out there,” he said.

That message seems to be catching on. African megastars, including Grammy Award winner Youssou N’Dour and Senegalese rapper Didier Awadi, have also joined the #DontGoViral campaign. Mr. Wine’s original video now has more than 1 million views on YouTube. 

“This motivates me to know that whatever little I do is not in vain,” Mr. Wine says. “It adds on to other people’s efforts to fight against the pandemic.” 

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The morning started with the cries of a pair of courting osprey wheeling and diving overhead.

Our species was in the throes of the coronavirus pandemic but here was nature heralding a new day.

Tide pools glittered with the golden shards of the rising sun. Last night’s winds had rolled the dunes 30 feet back, burying the boardwalk under four feet of new sand. The storm had also flattened the beach, which was gullied and strewn with piles of straw lifted off the neighboring marshes by the night’s 10-foot high tides.

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But the beach is now tranquil and the tide pools reflect a more cobalt sky, noticeably lacking the contrails of aircraft thundering toward the achingly empty Logan airport.

A smattering of people walk along the shore in quiet awe of nature’s power to rework the land during a single storm.

It is shocking to look across the sound and see no one walking on Sandy Point. Massachusetts has closed its parks and beaches to ensure social distancing, and the storm has undermined another stalwart house farther up on Plum Island.

Waves had kicked surf clams out of the offshore sediments and strewn them on the shore, where seagulls were trying to figure out how to fly off with such heavy larder. I was happy to relieve them of their burden. I would add it to my stash of oysters and mussels untouched by human hands. This was my new coronavirus shopping. 

Gradually I noticed the quiet whistles of a pair of piping plover, exuberant they had survived the ravages of last night’s storm. They picked through the piles of wrack line and explored the new runnels gullying the beach as their ancestors had done for hundreds of thousands of years.  

Suddenly it dawned on me. Now it is these fragile piping plover who seem so resilient and well adapted to their environment. And it is we humans who seem so ill-equipped to survive this viral storm. Are we the more endangered species?

Perhaps if we learn how to mend our ways and live more lightly on the land we too may survive for another 10,000 years.

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Reuters

A man walks in front of a currency exchange bureau in Cairo, Egypt, April 20.

The COVID-19 pandemic is certainly global but so has been the economic fallout. An estimated 81% of the world’s workforce has been idled. The response to both crises has largely been led by each nation’s government. People naturally look to their civic leaders for solutions. In the United States, that is true – except for one institution that has had to do far more.

Starting in mid-March, the Federal Reserve decided to go beyond its mandate as America’s central bank in ensuring adequate job growth and safe inflation. With its ability to take on debt – more than $4 trillion in recent weeks – it launched unprecedented programs to rescue both Wall Street and Main Street from the loss of customers and investments caused by the mass lockdown.

The Fed’s motive was clear: “People are undertaking these sacrifices for the common good. We need to make them whole,” said Fed Chairman Jerome Powell in early April.

“We should be doing that, as a society. They didn’t cause this. Their business isn’t closed because of anything they did wrong. They didn’t lose their job because of anything they did wrong.”

It turned out, however, that the Fed’s sentiment toward making Americans whole led to a decision to help others achieve the same.

With much of the world reliant on the U.S. dollar for international commerce, the Fed also had to deal with a panic in global financial markets. All at once in March, both individuals and governments were seeking economic safety by trying to buy greenbacks, long the world’s most stable currency.

The panic was like a bank run, one with potential blowback on the American economy. The global dash for cash hit a record, according to the Institute of International Finance. In addition, the financial consequences also threatened to hurt the struggle against the coronavirus in many countries that couldn’t pay their bills.

On the world stage, the Federal Reserve was suddenly seen as indispensable. On March 15, it opened up “swap lines” with 14 foreign central banks. This allowed them to inject additional dollars into their economies, allowing a currency liquidity that would help quell financial fears.

But that was not enough. Later, nine more countries were given access to dollars. By March 31, many more countries were included in a special program to let them “repurchase” dollars. With its great advantage as keeper of the preferred currency, the U.S. had to recognize its responsibility to the rest of the world.

Today, much of the world economy still faces a severe slowdown. Yet the financial panic is largely gone. The Fed’s decision to be an emergency backstop for the world, not just for the U.S., was critical. By lifting up others abroad, it prevented a worse situation for Americans.

When so many nations were looking inward during the crisis, the Fed’s actions are a reminder of a universal call to make people “whole.”