What do we do now?

It’s a big question — as a matter of policy, national purpose and social cohesion it’s the big question — made up of a knot of local, individual, practical decisions. What actions can each of us take to stay healthy, connected and sane, to fight the dangerous secondary infections of boredom, selfishness and panic? How are we going to stay busy? How are we going to keep ourselves entertained?

That last one may seem like a trivial problem with an easy solution. Lives and livelihoods are at stake, and there’s still plenty to watch on television. Maybe the lamentations about the closing of restaurants, bars, nightclubs, theaters and museums represent the displacement of deeper fears about the wholesale collapse of civilization. But it’s also true that the suspension of those amusements — of every form of cultural activity that involves the presence of other people — is a grievous loss, and a cause for real grief.

We console ourselves with stopgaps and substitutes. There’s so much music and television to stream. There are stacks of books we never got around to reading, and games of meme-tag to play on social media. There are jokes to make about writing the next “King Lear.”