“It was a revival of medical science, which had been dismissed after the fall of ancient Rome, a thousand years earlier. ‘After the Black Death, nothing was the same,’ Pomata said. ‘What I expect now is something as dramatic is going to happen, not so much in medicine but in economy and culture. Because of danger, there’s this wonderful human response, which is to think in a new way.'” Lawrence Wright in The New Yorker: How Pandemics Wreak Havoc—and Open Minds. “The plague marked the end of the Middle Ages and the start of a great cultural renewal. Could the coronavirus, for all its destruction, offer a similar opportunity for radical change?” (You know we’re getting worn out when the most positive spin I can find on the pandemic is an article about Black Death…)