The Centers for Disease Control should spend its money and time fighting disease, not playing politics.

Disease epidemics are messy, fast and frightening, and they’ll keep coming. To prepare for the future, the least we can do at the end of one is to use the benefit of hindsight to assess how well we conducted ourselves.

John Adams could teach 21st-century Americans a thing or two about persevering in the midst of a crisis. Above all, we should think twice before abandoning our freedom of association.

If some politicians can’t or won’t address pressing questions in order to prepare America for the next “worst-case scenario,” then vote out the bums who put politics ahead of the public health; and put more responsible public servants in their seats to meet the people’s needs.

If this is the new normal, where incomplete data and media-fueled panic rule the day, that is an even more frightening prospect than what’s happening right now.

This isn’t the time to change our leadership in the White House. It’s time to change the government the person in the White House oversees. The American people deserve better.

Reexamining the community eligibility program, which has created a middle-class entitlement program while teaching kids all the wrong lessons, should be on the administration’s to-do list. Its deep reach is just one more flawed government approach now exposed by the current public health threat.

Social distancing is nothing compared to a crisis that leads to mass casualties, economic collapse, and a legacy of bad policies that leaves the country weaker than ever before.

For the good of the country, and especially for the good of our leaders, we must prorogue Congress. We must do it today! And since we do not know how long this plague will last, we must do it indefinitely.

The restrictions being imposed around the country may be justified. But let’s apply them with caution, with perspective, and with an awareness of what we’re sacrificing.

As the weather warms, we have reason to hope for a respite. Yes, ironically, the key to humanity’s salvation (not doom) might be in global warming. 

Are we witnessing the beginning of a new plague? Will we, in years to come, need our Daniel Defoe to provide a chronicle of a deadly scourge?

With more than two-dozen cases of the virus in the Bay Area, we may soon see what San Francisco values most.