March 2020 changed life as we know it.

Over the past several weeks, this editorial piece for The Tablet has covered COVID-19, the novel Coronavirus. Almost every news article in this edition is somehow related to the present pandemic.

As much as we don’t want to cause panic or throw fuel on the fire of hysteria concerning the coronavirus, we need to take it seriously. Medical doctors are very clear that this is a highly contagious virus and is much worse than the seasonal flu.

During the past two months, the coronavirus has affected the lives of millions of people around the world. Some people have become infected, others just inconvenienced by delayed travel, while others, sadly, have died.

Jordan Peterson, a Canadian clinical psychologist and famous YouTuber, is ill. His daughter, Mikhalia, herself an internet sensation, has announced that her father, a professor at the University of Toronto, has been away recuperating.

How do we respond to news stories that we read or hear about? Our world — even within the vastness of the internet — can be pretty small. In the world today, where a growing number of people receive their news from social media, from sites on Facebook and Twitter that they choose, we can control the voices we hear, the information that is passed onto us. That is true for both the religious and the secular news we receive.