The Pestilential Imagination: Albert Camus and Why Americans Finally Got Serious about COVID-19

“Our townsfolk were not more to blame than others; they forgot to be modest, that was all, and thought that everything still was possible for them; which presupposed that pestilences were impossible. They went on doing business, arranged for journeys, and formed views. How should they have given a thought to anything like plague, which rules out any future, cancels journeys, silences the exchange of views. They fancied themselves free, and no one wll ever be free so long as there are pestilences.” — Albert Camus, The Plague

“What do you think the chances are that we will close down?” a colleague asked me last Tuesday, just four days ago.

“Slim to none,” I said. “But we have to prepare for any possible outcome.”

As an administrator of a small, private college, I had been leading our Coronavirus Task Force for the last several weeks and was responsible for fielding questions like this from students and faculty. Our small task force had been tracking the spread of the virus in Europe and Asia — and cancelling university-sponsored travel — for several weeks. But I still didn’t think it would reach epidemic proportions in the United States. Rationally I knew it would, but viscerally I just couldn’t imagine it happening.