If You Can Break It There, You Can Break It Anywhere

You've all seen the movie. Pardon me, the movies where New York City was destroyed by monsters. It's pretty easy to point at the Eighth Wonder of the World, King Kong, who started this trend. Giant beasts stomping down Fifth Avenue have been a pretty regular occurrence since 1933. The Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, Times Square and a passel of anonymous skyscrapers have all taken a beating from big lizards and space aliens and the occasional giant ape. Twenty-five years before 9/11, Dino De Laurentiis sent a rebooted Kong up the side of the World Trade Center bashing windows and doors and those interloping helicopters. Sure, you could tear up Poughkeepsie or Ithaca, but if you really want to be known as a gargantuan anything, you had better set your sights on the city so nice they named it twice: New York, New York.
As alluded to earlier, real life intruded profoundly in 2001 when the Twin Towers came tumbling down and we all watched. Only this time it was the airplanes that got him. It wasn't beauty that killed the beast. And then it was time to rebuild. Which reminds me of the limited series of comic books Marvel put out called Damage Control detailing the adventures of an elite group that exists primarily to put things back together after super hero battles tear them up. All those lasers and rockets and Hulks can do some pretty significant destruction, and then you throw in some giant robots and a beast from twenty thousand fathoms and you've got quite a mess.
A mess that everyone can relate to, judging by the way Hollywood has made it the backdrop of so much Armageddon. But here's the cool thing about giant robots and lizards and apes: you can see them. Even if it takes a couple hours to figure out how to lure that bad beastie up to the top of some building that reminds them of the mountains on their home planet or jungle or whatever or an extra few seconds to develop the freeze ray that allows them to be dropped into a medically induced coma long enough to be shipped off to some desolate ice floe somewhere. The good guys will win.
We can't see the virus. It's not smashing buildings, but the havoc it is wreaking is very real. Our "president" seems to think we're at war. Perhaps it makes him feel more in control. If only this was one giant farm animal, bent on the destruction of some major metropolitan area, then maybe his approach would make sense.
We aren't at war. We are trying to survive. There will not come a moment when a bullet-riddled COVID-19 will come toppling down off of the Freedom Tower. Tony Stark will not be sending the last microbes back through a cosmic vortex just before it closes. This is a time for thinking. It is a time for science, and not the kind of science that builds exothermic blasters. It is a time to solve puzzles. Not to race to the fight, but to shy away. Make room. Make good choices. Wash our hands. This won't make a great movie, which is probably more than just fine with the folks in NYC.