An important day in history will coincide with one of our darker days this month,* and President Trump should be ready to link the lessons of the past with our current condition. On April 11, 1970, Americans saw the increasingly mundane sight of yet another Apollo mission rocketing towards the Moon. There were no grand new tricks promised to amaze the global audience. Just two missions after “one giant leap for mankind,” Americans had a false sense of security about an extremely dangerous enterprise in the most unforgiving conditions. Then, on the third day of the Apollo 13 mission, we were given a giant bucket of ice water in the face: “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” That was 50 years ago this month, and what an auspicious time to celebrate America!

President Trump’s team must seize the opportunity now, preparing a video presentation and live link-up of the surviving key players, to remind the nation, at our likely Chinese coronavirus nadir, that there was another very dark week in which all seemed lost but Americans refused to lose. Get on Jim Lovell, who said “Houston, we’ve had a problem,” and Gene Kranz, the NASA chief flight director on duty when the threat unfolded, whose autobiography is Failure Is Not An Option. Celebrate our ingenuity, our resolve, our resilience, and link it all with our current troubles and responses.

Link the disasters of Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia. In each case, we were not expecting catastrophe. In each case, we mourned our losses, solved the problems, and advanced with greater safety preparedness. So too, we will now really learn from our response to the latest pandemic, because we know it will not be our last great challenge by a disease.