The paradox of contemporary life is crystal clear at this time of crisis.

The hyper-connectivity to which we are accustomed also seems to distance us from the realities lived in other extremes of the planet. While the citizens in China were receiving the New Year locked up in their homes and seeing their economy slowly shut down, the rest of the world believed that it was a distant affair, that it would have nothing to do with their future.

Then Korea, then Italy, then Spain... the networks began to be populated with videos of people from other countries, with other cultures and other languages surviving what seemed like a post-apocalyptic scenario, and on this side of the Atlantic, we saw everything as a very bad taste trailer.

Until it hit home, and the first cases showed how the country was not prepared for an epidemic of such a dimension.

While Italians and Spaniards sang from balcony to balcony to try to deal with the isolation, Americans hoarded toilet paper and guns alike; while the French president announced that "we are at war," and the American president played down the first cases.

This new chapter in world history is nothing but a challenge to our humanity. Our ability to put ourselves in someone else's shoes has been challenged by our panicked selfishness, and even the crystal clear waters of Venice show what it could be like if we took responsibility for the privilege of being alive.

But knowing that what hurts human beings most is their pockets, our edition this week talks about just that: how the Coronavirus pandemic will affect the country's economy, and how it will be reflected in our daily lives.

Our editorial decision has not been, under any circumstances, a blind reductionism, much less a priority dissection. On the contrary, we wanted to talk responsibly about one of the few aspects that doesn’t change every minute but, perhaps, every 24 hours.

The economic measures taken by the Donald Trump government to deal with what appears to be the most serious pandemic in recent years will bring to light the profound flaws in the country's economic and health system. Of that we are certain. But the resilience of our species and our responsibility to communicate information will, for the moment, be the two pieces of good news this week.