Gazette-Journal headline, March 12, 2020: “Concerns grow as virus continues to spread.”

Headline, March 19, 2020: “A New Normal,” describing how life would go on under shutdowns and mask orders.

There was nothing normal about the novel coronavirus, and not much as yet known. How did it spread? How long was a person contagious? How could medicine fight it?

As of March 10, four years ago, the paper said Virginia had eight “presumptive positive” cases of Covid-19. Not many, but enough, given the new virus’s apparent strength and humans’ lack of natural resistance to it, to shut everything down—which happened two days later.

The politicians and medical officials who erred on the side of caution came in for a lot of Monday-morning quarterbacking: that closings were not necessary, that masks were not required, that vaccinations (after the miracle of a quick development and deployment) did more harm than good.

We contend that we are still on the near side of this big story and...