Like many others, I find my desire rising for tales of unstoppable viruses, frustrated medical professionals, and politicians faced with decisions no one can confidently make with such shifting, inconclusive information. True, what we witness and learn through these stories, fictional or otherwise, is harrowing, but even though we lost millions of people in the Great Influenza, for instance, somehow we—as an arguably prosperous human race—are still here. There has to be a way out. There can be comfort in witnessing the ways that families, cities, and governments failed and sometimes succeeded in previous crises as we peer into the unknowable future.