God knows I hope I’m wrong, but all of this stuff with the Diamond Princess seems frighteningly disorganized and like things could get out of hand. The Japan Ministry of Health says that even on the first day of the quarantine, there were 10 cases on board, and by February 22, there were 634 cases on the ship.[1] How can we be sure that the people who left weren’t sick? It isn’t like everyone who was going to get the virus got it on the first day of the quarantine. If people can carry this virus and be contagious with no symptoms, then has this virus just been dispersed around the world? Maintaining public health is a lot like maintaining a nuclear reactor—the details matter.

The stories of this ordeal make me think of an article that I just read in the journal, Antiquity, about British archaeologists who have discovered a mass grave dating to the Black Death. Forty-eight men, women, and children show signs of death by plague. What’s extraordinary about it is that it is the first such mass grave found in a rural site in England. People have imagined that the plague was an urban phenomenon, and then here it is, this country site of mass sorrow and death. [2] The worst viruses bank on us underestimating them. In the 14^th century, they went to the countryside and assumed they were safe. In the 21^st century, we lean into our technology and assume we are safe. I hope that I am a Chicken Little and not a Cassandra.