In recent years, Beyoncé has prefaced her musical homecomings with a glimpse of the final destination. She released the song “Formation” well ahead of her 2016 visual album, Lemonade, which contained lessons in ballads and rock anthems alike about how to go through despair and return to oneself again.

During the past five months, many prognosticators have prognosticated about how the coronavirus pandemic will transform politics, work, travel, education, and other domains. Less sweepingly, but just as powerfully, it will also transform the people who are living through it, rearranging the furniture of their inner life. When this is all over—and perhaps even long after that—how will we be different?For one thing, we’ll better understand the importance of washing our hands.

My husband and I are both public defenders in Maryland. Last week, he attended his first scheduled bench trial since the courts were closed in March. The client, witnesses, court staff, and attorneys were all expected to appear in court and potentially be exposed to COVID-19. And for what? To adjudicate a misdemeanor charge of malicious destruction of property worth less than $1,000.

State and local officials across the country are unleashing a new weapon in America’s war against the coronavirus: the cops. Citing parties as the cause of recent clusters of infections in Massachusetts, Governor Charlie Baker recently authorized state and local police to crack down on public and private gatherings that violate social-distancing guidelines. The sheriff’s office in New York City took on new coronavirus duties, including the enforcement of party bans.

So many simple pleasures are gone, casualties of the pandemic. Baseball games. Live concerts. Summertime parades. One civic ritual that’s neither simple nor necessarily pleasurable is also withering under the virus’s spread: the presidential nominating convention as we know it. Starting next week, the parties will hold stripped-down versions of the quadrennial gatherings to formalize the Donald Trump–Joe Biden matchup, creating, perhaps, a template for the future.