I have never seen the night. I have never seen the stars. I have never seen spring, fall or winter. I was born as the Braking Era ended, just as the Earth stopped turning.
— “The Wandering Earth” by Liu Cixin

I remember an eerie, haunting feeling as I read the opening lines of Liu Cixin’s short story “The Wandering Earth.” The story, filled with vivid images and feelings, is about the actions humans take after they learn they have roughly four hundred years left before the sun’s core explodes in a helium flash, vaporizing the earth and most of the solar system’s planets.

The parallels between the story and today are not only those of lost experiences. Though there are certainly those—high school and college seniors that won’t have a graduation; couples that won’t be able to celebrate their weddings as they had dreamed; even those that will say goodbye to loved ones without the catharsis of a funeral with friends and family. Gathering with friends and family is a fundamental part of our humanity. The inability to celebrate and mourn properly will stay with people for the remainder of their lives.

The more urgent parallel is that of collective action. The actions humans take in the story to prevent their extinction are breathtaking and on a bigger scale than anything I could have imagined. On a more comprehensible scale but still awe-inspiring, the historian Margaret O’Mara describes collective actions during World War II (emphasis mine):

In a period of eight months, Henry Ford built a mile-long assembly line on a patch of Michigan prairie that could produce one B-24 bomber every 63 minutes. The shipbuilder Henry Kaiser was nicknamed Sir Launchalot thanks to the rate at which the workers in his Richmond, California, shipyard managed to build battleships, once completing and launching a vessel in less than five days.

As I read the Imperial College of London’s report on the coronavirus’s projected impact on the UK and US, it became clear to me that the COVID-19 pandemic may be a defining life event for those alive today, similar to what the Great Depression and the World Wars were for the generations alive then.

And it’s clear we need the same grand collective actions along multiple fronts:

Manufacturing: mass producing the critical items we need—ventilators, masks, eye masks, gloves, etc.
Economic: taking bold fiscal action to support people and business as the economy convulses by, for example, having the government pay salaries as Denmark is doing
Financial: having the Federal Reserve (at the right time and in the right sequence) unleash the full set of tools at its disposal to support banks, businesses, and the economy
Scientific: scaling and speeding testing while coordinating and funding the development of a vaccine
Operational: effectively executing social distancing while minimizing harm to the economy through, for example, the designation of “green” and “red” zones through comprehensive testing
Communication: explaining to people what is happening and why in a frank manner while giving them hope and convincing them to take the appropriate actions

The playbook is straightforward but far from easy to execute. What we need is leadership. It’s clear the White House isn’t up to the task, but I’m hoping Congress is—that a real leader can step forward and guide us through this.