Now is the time for town and village officials in East Hampton to think about beach season and if existing bonfire policies are adequate. We believe they are not.

In 1918, the word “influenza” did not appear in The East Hampton Star until Sept. 20. On that day, the news from Amagansett led with a short note saying George V. Schellinger had been sick for several days. His was the first of many mentions over the next year and a half for the newspaper, which we have been looking through as a new pandemic looms.

The possibility of housebound quarantine to avoid Covid-19, the coronavirus, took me back to my childhood in Bayonne, N.J., where my family belonged to an orthodox synagogue. Each autumn at Yom Kippur, the holiest Jewish observance, the observant fast between breakfast and dinner. My family did do that when I was very young; and then, after World War II, did not.

You might almost feel bad for Mike Pence. You could almost see the color drain from his cheeks when he was tapped by the boss to lead the United States coronavirus response.