More:

Lawmakers from both parties made it clear they were unconvinced the Trump administration was prepared. When Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, pressed for an exact number of people expected to be infected, the acting secretary of the Homeland Security Department, Chad F. Wolf, could not answer.

“I’m all for committees and task forces but you’re the secretary,” Mr. Kennedy responded. “I think you ought to know that answer.

He’s right about that. It’s not like this thing sprung out of nowhere. I don’t expect this or any president to keep a global pandemic out of America. If the Chinese, a dictatorship and one of the world’s most advanced police states, can’t stop it, a democratically elected leader in an open society can’t. Nevertheless, this is exactly the kind of crisis that one worried that a president as incompetent and disengaged as Trump would face. If this is the narrative the president is relying on, we’re in trouble:

“It looks like the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump,” Limbaugh said during his Monday show. “Now, I want to tell you the truth about the coronavirus. … Yeah, I’m dead right on this. The coronavirus is the common cold, folks.”

You’d think Limbaugh, who was just diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer, and whose immune system will be devastated by the chemo he’s about to receive, would be a bit more sober about what a serious respiratory virus would mean for people like him. But no, that’s not how he rolls.

Last week, some people on this blog’s comments section were saying that this really couldn’t be such a big deal, because the stock markets weren’t reacting negatively. This week, so far, the Dow Jones has dropped 1,900 points. And oh, look: experts are predicting that China will use this public health crisis to increase its monitoring of its people. This will happen here too, if we have serious trouble from coronavirus. Watch.

Here’s something interesting: Iran’s deputy health minister, who has been briefing the press, raised eyebrows earlier in the week when he repeatedly mopped his brow as a government spokesman talked. Folks wondered if he might have coronavirus. Today he confirmed that yes, he is infected:

Deputy Health Minister of #Iran Harirchi who is infected with #CoronaVirus had a joint presser along with spokesman of the government Rabiei yesterday among journalists. A footage published earlier had raised suspicion that he might had been infected with the virus. pic.twitter.com/IWKsga06SC

— Abas Aslani (@AbasAslani) February 25, 2020

While I was on the road today, the Doctor wrote from out West to say that at the hospital where he works, they have begun mandatory drills on using P95 masks and hazmat suits. They’re getting ready. When patients ask him how to prepare, he tells them this, and gives them a written version:

It is your civic duty to remain calm. It is your civic duty to prepare yourself if, God forbid, the worst occurs. You must have a month of non-perishable food ready. If the numbers are correct, and if this gets started here, almost 100% of us will have this virus before the next 12-24 months. Ninety percent of us will have a mild, cold-like syndrome, or absolutely nothing at all. I do not believe there is any way to stop that. There is certainly nothing you, I, or anyone else can do.

But you can help yourself and your family and your country by remaining strong — remaining brave — and as hard as it is, do not let panic descend into your psyche. When you see things happening here in the USA, be prepared at a moment’s notice to bug out [Note: he means “head for the hills” — RD] — but do not panic. Pray, take deep breaths, do whatever you need to do. Think about your neighbors, your family members, your church members, and any frail elderly in your sphere of influence. This is going to be an “all for one and one for all” moment in our history — and we will be remembered 100 years from now how we handle this.

And the most important thing: WE CAN DO IT.

Preparing now makes it less likely that you will panic later. Again: top federal health officials said today that this is almost certainly going to hit us. Do not take health advice from Rush Limbaugh. Prepare.

Finally, I want to commend to you Ross Douthat’s column saying that the coronavirus is not just a health crisis, but a “test.” His basic argument is that none of us have been taking this thing seriously enough — and that both liberals and conservatives have particular reasons why they’ve failed at this. Excerpts:

From what we can tell, the coronavirus outbreak in China followed a similar pattern of “all is well” folly and insufficient first response. But in the United States, too, the “we have nothing to fear but fear itself” messaging seems inapt, given that America’s slow internal response, our apparent failure so far to expand testing beyond those who seem most obviously exposed, means that we have no way of knowing whether and how many cases are already circulating here. We may have an Italian scenario on our hands already, disguised as normal flu cases, normal flu deaths; given the still-limited scale of United States testing, there is no way to be sure, and if we escape a major outbreak, it will be more from luck than prudence.

So already, the virus has exposed a clear weak spot in what you might call the liberal-globalist imagination: an overzealous “remain calm” spirit in the face of the real risks of a hyper-connected world.

More:

But before populists crow their vindication, we need to see how our populist president handles any of this. If globalism’s weakness is technocratic naïveté, populism’s faults are ignorance, incompetence and paranoia. Nothing about President Trump’s response so far instills confidence that he’s ready for the kind of crisis that Candidate Trump would have been quick to recognize and politically exploit.

Read it all.

OK, I’m not going to leave you on that note. I’m going to leave you on this one: my pals Susannah Black and Tara Isabella Burton were in Venice for Carnevale when coronavirus struck Italy, even Venice. Read Susannah’s dispatch, and marvel at this amazing old world.