It is difficult sometimes to believe just a few short months ago most of the world never heard of the COVID-19 virus.

I vaguely remember hearing something about it, but I certainly did not know much about it in December. I didn’t know exactly where Wuhan, China, was either. I did not know much about how the virus worked — other than it makes you sick — and wasn’t too dialed in on the possibility of a pandemic.

A few short months ago, the news cycle delivered stories on fires in Australia, U.S. drone strikes in Iran, the downing of a Ukranian flight that killed all 176 passengers, the impeachment trial of the president, the death of Kobe Bryant, and seven others, in a helicopter crash in Southern California, and the upcoming presidential election.

However, with all of these stories, my focus as editor was an intensely local one. In February and into early March, the flooding of the Umatilla River and its fallout dominated the pages in the East Oregonian. Pendleton, Hermiston, Umatilla, Weston and Milton-Freewater occupied my world view. What happened there mattered. What happened on a foreign shore didn’t. I kept abreast of the state and national news, and watched the coverage of Brexit in England closely. Those were places and names and events that mattered.

Just a few short months ago, the specter of a pandemic was a dim possibility. The possibility of some event in China — other than an impact of commodities — was simply not on my radar screen. I, like most Americans, lived in a bubble of ignorance about virology.

I think Americans are like that. We are an inwardly looking people. There is the famous saying — by Europeans — that God invented war to teach Americans geography. We don’t, as a society, spend a whole lot of time focused on what goes on in China or Brazil unless it carries the possibility of affecting commodity prices. Overseas prices for wheat matter. Same with the price of beef and export markets in Vietnam or China or Russia.

But a virus? That can skip across the world and paralyze the American economy? Five months ago, that very sentiment would have seemed the stuff of science fiction. The heart, perhaps, of a blockbuster novel or a good movie where we watch until the end, and then the lights come back up and we go home. The momentary threat splashed across the screen fades.

Since February, that science fiction-like scenario has played out right before our eyes. Now I know more about viruses than I ever expected. I understand the meaning of quarantine. I now look at life through a prism of caution I never thought possible. I have a mask. When I go into a store, I immediately think about social distancing.

An event far away from Umatilla County has impacted every one of us. More than anything — for better or worse — the COVID-19 epidemic shows how interconnected the world is now. An event in Brazil can impact Main Street America. For me, it means I will study events in faraway places with a little bit more attention than I did in the past.

The COVID-19 virus outbreak is a very sharp “heads up” for Americans. We can’t ignore what happens on foreign shores or shrug it off. We can’t simply say “it doesn’t matter to us” because it may just very well matter — and matter in ways that we can’t even begin to fathom.