Some have also suggested that the deadly virus could bring about long-lasting shifts in carbon-intensive behaviors, if people remain fearful of flying and cruise ships, or come to prefer remote working and virtual conferences. Or that our rapid responses in the face of an acute danger show that we can make the sorts of societal changes demanded by the climate change.

But Gernot Wagner, a clinical associate professor at New York University’s Department of Environmental Studies, says most of the risks run against progress on climate change right now—and that we should be very careful about any larger lessons we draw from this moment.

“Emissions in China are down because the economy has stopped and people are dying, and because poor people are not able to get medicine and food,” he says. “This is not an analogy for how we want to decrease emissions from climate change.”

Indeed, the whole point of addressing global warming is to avoid widespread suffering and death. So it’s important to keep in mind, as we game out the long-term consequences of the coronavirus outbreak, that the short-term impacts are clear: many, many people are going to become ill and die.

That’s an unequivocally bad thing. And slowing the outbreak and providing proper care needs to be our highest priority right now.