How will covid-19 change the world?

Apollo’s Arrow. By Nicholas Christakis.Little, Brown Spark; 368 pages; $29 and £20.

Is It Tomorrow Yet? By Ivan Krastev.Penguin; 80 pages; £10.99. 

Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World. By Fareed Zakaria.W.W. Norton; 320 pages; $26.95. Allen Lane; £20. 

Post Corona. By Scott Galloway.Portfolio; 256 pages; $25. Bantam Press; £18.99.

IN “THE SEVENTH SEAL”, a film by Ingmar Bergman, a knight returns from the crusades to find his homeland ravaged by the plague. Suffering and devastation have shaken his faith in God. When Death comes for him, the crusader proposes a game of chess in order to eke out enough time to commit one act—any act—that might bring meaning amid the pestilence.

In the teeth of a scourge on the scale of covid-19, the impulse to draw significance from suffering is again strong. However, as is clear from the first of what will surely be shelf-loads of books about the coronavirus, in a secular age a pandemic is principally seen not as a question of inscrutable divine will, but as a test of earthly powers.

All these books have to grapple with the problem that they were written amid great uncertainty. Even now much about covid-19 is still unknown—not...