I suspect this will seem, in retrospect, as the last “normal” week. The one in which there was other news.

This doesn’t mean everything will be actually horrible. It means the news will be horrible, in that it gives a sense of a rapidly escalating catastrophe that produces mass unease and uncertainty.

A few weeks ago, I think, I mused about some previous pandemic about which I’d forgotten, except that I bought masks, and noted a run on rice at Costco, That was the Swine Flu pandemic, of course. It was declared by the WHO to be A Thing in June 2009. I decided to go back to the StarTribune archives to see how it played out. From what I recalled, there was concern, but nothing like we’re seeing today. See if you recall any of this, or your local variant…