"As you've probably heard, we're under attack."

This matter-of-fact sentence started off a very short email I received from my mother on September 11, 2001. I was in France studying for an MBA at INSEAD, about 45 minutes south of Paris. That one sentence has stayed with me as an illustration of how quickly the human mind adjusts to a period of adversity.

A former colleague of mine, Ben Sheppard, has a Ph.D. in terrorism studies, and more specifically, in the public's psychological response to a terrorist attack. He always said that despite political leaders' concern that the public will panic, they very rarely do. The public are generally very resilient in the face of crisis and adversity.

So now we're under a different kind of attack, from the coronavirus (boo! hiss!), and the public is responding in large measure with similar resilience and adaptability. Many of us who can are staying home and keeping our distance from others when we do have to go out. Sure, we've basically hit the on-off switch on the global economy, but each of us is doing what we have to do right now. And in a way, it doesn't feel that weird.

Of course, this kind of response has to be temporary. It's hard to imagine humans accepting this as the "new normal": Start an online business, home-school your kids, never leave the house. That future is just too dystopic to consider as a genuine long-term possibility.

I suspect that at some point many people - especially those aged 5 to 35 and in generally good health - would just roll the dice with coronavirus, assuming of course that recovery brings immunity. (I was once medevac'd from Vietnam with dengue fever, and that's a viral disease that actually gets more severe each time you get it.)

I'm pretty confident though that we'll never get to that point. I suspect this will play out - one way or another - and a few months from now we'll be emerging from our quarantines and vigorously building our lives once more.

As grateful as I am for humanity's tolerance of adversity, I'm also grateful for its limits.