The coronavirus could not defeat the security line at Terminal A of Newark Airport. This realization was, on a surreal day in New Jersey and around the world, oddly comforting.

Universities have shuttered their classrooms. The NBA has suspended its season indefinitely. The entire nation -- schools, businesses, government, you name it -- is preparing for a day when doors will be sealed shut until further notice.

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But here, at America’s worst security checkpoint, at least three dozen people are jammed in the narrow corridor with plexiglass barriers on each side and chicken wire along the top. The impatient woman behind me had pushed so close that she could have climbed into the carryon that was hanging over my shoulder.

And that's when I felt the itching in my nose.

It was mild at first, and I tried to convince myself that it would pass. I held my breath. I folded my arms over my chest and squeezed my eyes closed, but I knew that itching was about to turn into the one thing that people here had feared more than ---

ACHOOOOO!

It happened. I was that guy, during the great coronavirus scare of 2020, sneezing at the airport. I turned to the now-horrified woman behind me and tried to explain that I have had season allergies my entire life, but before I could finish that sentence, the next one was on its way. I stifled it, kept my head down, and shuffled forward.

My editors knew I was flying to the Big Ten Tournament on Wednesday, so they asked me to write about what it was like traveling as the pandemic panic continued to spread across the country. I’ll be honest: I expected something far closer to utopia than discomfort.

I’m a frequent traveler. If you told me the crowds at EWR would be cut in half (or more) in 2020, I wouldn’t have asked any questions. Well, maybe just one: “Where do I sign?”

But the reality was a stressful experience that people should avoid if at all possible. I felt acutely aware of everything and everyone. The man coughing as he shuffled from gate to gate. The dirty conveyor belt at the X-ray machine. The old woman in a wheelchair. The airport bathrooms that, on the best days, are germ factories.

I couldn’t shake this dark thought: Was I going to bring this thing home to my family?

I had seen countless photos on social media of empty airports, so that was the expectation when I was dropped off at the curb at Terminal A. The reality was, well, normalcy. The roads leading to the terminal were clogged with cars, as usual, including a couple of school buses.

Inside, however, the scene was unfamiliar. No one was waiting to show their IDs and boarding passes at the TSA checkpoint. “Lighter crowd than usual?” I asked the woman scanning my driver’s license. She smiled, clearly not hearing this question for the first time. “You’ve seen the news,” she responded, and then I walked down that corridor from hell to the frustrating line that I did not expect to see.

The line, however, was just EWR being EWR. It only had one security station open. The neon-green piece of paper they handed me because I'm a TSA pre-check customer -- talk about a germ spreader -- was useless. We waited 10 minutes until, finally, another station was open and we were led to another X-ray machine.

Once inside the ancient terminal, the impact of the coronavirus was noticeable immediately. An occasional traveler might not have seen the differences, but anyone who takes regular flights out of gates A20-28 would have spotted it right away.

Seats were available. So were toilets. The woman sweeping up crumbs from the concourse floor was wearing a facemark, as were several travelers. The crowd felt appropriate for the amount of space, which to be clear, it never, ever is.

This is an observation that only a few frequent fliers will understand, but here goes: The bar at the Earl of Sandwich, the only place where someone can buy a drink before boarding their flight and therefore the toughest place to find a seat in all of EWR, was almost empty.

I sat on one of the tall chairs and talked to the bartender for a few minutes, and during this short conversation, the biggest differences crystalized for me. She explained that her No. 1 concern is not the coronavirus itself, but the constant stress of talking to frightened travelers about it.

“People sit here, they look up at TVs, and they freak out,” she told me. Those TVs were all turned to CNN, and at that moment, they were all carrying the breaking news that President Trump would address the nation from the Oval Office later that night.

People in airports are always on edge -- a 20-minute delay might elicit a string of F bombs from an already weary traveler. Now, add in the uncertainty of this virus, and you've got an extra level of stress that impacts everyone from the fliers to other passengers to people trying to do their jobs.

Smart companies won’t only restrict business travel because they fear the disease. They’ll also do it because of the psychological toll on their employees. It’s just not worth it.

No one wants to be in a flying cylindrical germ factory while people in their neighborhoods are stockpiling toilet paper and preparing for school cancelations. We have no idea what’s going to happen next, and that, more than catching COVID-19, is the scary part.

The flight, as almost always is the case, was uneventful. One plane had mechanical issues, so I switched to another -- the lack of change fees is one weird benefit of this ordeal. A handful of Rutgers fans and officials were on board, and without wireless on board, we all wondered how the world would look when we landed.

When the flight landed in Indianapolis, I was greeted with the news that the event I had traveled to see would be played without fans. For now, at least. Tomorrow? Who knows. I was grateful to inhale the fresh air when the sliding doors opened at the terminal.

Then I was hit with the reality: I have to fly back.

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Steve Politi may be reached at spoliti@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @StevePoliti. Find NJ.com on Facebook.