This pandemic will expose who we are as a country

“We’re bumping up against the limits of excessive American individualism and market society.”

As the coronavirus sweeps across the US, a term you’ve probably heard a lot is “social distancing”: a way to flatten the epidemic curve by asking people to stay home and limit their nonessential travel.

While social distancing is our best tool for slowing the spread of this virus, it’s also likely to create what my Vox colleague Ezra Klein has called a “loneliness epidemic.” In a fragmented society like ours, asking people to isolate themselves for...