No individual can stop the coronavirus from spreading. But we can make crucial changes — big and small — to protect and help the people around us.

John Moore / Getty Images Amazon headquarters sits virtually empty downtown Seattle, March 10.

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Peter Aldhous / BuzzFeed News / Via Johns Hopkins University CSSE This map shows confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the US, state by state.

At this point, there’s still some hope of “containing” the virus, as both South Korea and China have through extensive testing and quarantine orders. As individuals, we can’t control whether or not that happens. But we can collectively work to mitigate the speed and scope of that spread — to “flatten the epidemic curve” so that not everyone gets sick at once and completely overwhelms the medical system, making it difficult or impossible for people with COVID-19 or unrelated illnesses and emergencies (heart attacks, pregnancy complications, allergic reactions, etc.) to receive care. As Zeynep Tufekci put it in a recent piece for Scientific American: We should prepare, not because we may feel personally at risk, but so that we can help lessen the risk for everyone. We should prepare not because we are facing a doomsday scenario out of our control, but because we can alter every aspect of this risk we face as a society [....] you should prepare because your neighbors need you to prepare — especially your elderly neighbors, your neighbors who work at hospitals, your neighbors with chronic illnesses, and your neighbors who may not have the means or the time to prepare because of lack of resources or time. The problem is that most of us, at least based on the conversations I’ve had and observed in the past few days, are still conceiving of “preparedness” in terms of how we can amass the goods necessary to live in isolation for a few weeks — toilet paper, pasta, hand sanitizer (if you can find any). That’s certainly the main way I’ve been thinking about preparing, in part because it’s the most straightforward — and, as Americans, we’ve been trained that the best way to make ourselves feel better about vague fear is to buy things. But that mindset is the opposite of what Tufekci is trying to ultimately cultivate. It’s the deeply flawed idea, again, that so long as I am fine, then everything is fine. This mindset is, quite simply, contagion fuel. And it’s hardest to combat in moments like this one, when the most important actions are preventative ones. Buying toilet paper — but not so much that no one else can get any — sure. Obsessively and thoroughly washing your hands, of course. But we also have to start thinking about how our habits, our compulsions, and our desire to keep living life completely as usual — because there’s (seemingly) nothing wrong with us — will have ripple effects that will almost certainly lead to other people’s deaths or significant illnesses. Does that mean canceling daily life? In most places in the United States, not yet — although there’s a very strong argument for canceling any public gatherings. Right now, every single action has to be weighed against its larger ramifications, and some decisions that might help prevent the spread of the coronavirus have a cost that’s still too high to offset. In New York City, for example, so many children rely on food provided by their schools that canceling school, at least right now, would create a massive hunger problem.

Can you understand how making the next few months better for as many people as possible will also, by extension, make it better for you?