David Byrne has penned an essay on coronavirus and how we should be responding to it for Reasons To Be Cheerful, the online magazine he started last year. In the piece, entitled “The World Is Changing — So Can We,” Byrne shares thoughts about connectivity and looks to other countries like Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore that have successfully contained the COVID-19 outbreak to find a possible way forward.

“What can we learn from their success?” Byrne asks. “For one, many of these countries didn’t hesitate. They began testing as many people as possible almost as soon as the virus appeared. Many of them tested even those who didn’t show symptoms. If someone tested positive they were quarantined, and using GPS and phone data the people they had recent physical contact with were found and isolated as well. Meanwhile, other folks went about their lives while submitting to screenings like mandatory temperature checks before entering public spaces.”

The question, Byrne says, is how much we’re willing to make sacrifices and surrender our personal freedom for the greater good. “Some might find the measures taken to halt the spread of the infection to be intrusive,” he writes. “But the outcome they led to — THAT is freedom. To be able to return to one’s life, with a job, healthy and safe — THAT is national security. If those places can do it, why can’t the rest of us? And what kind of change in our thinking would it take?”

“In emergencies, citizens can suddenly cooperate and collaborate,” Byrne concludes. “Change can happen. We’re going to need to work together as the effects of climate change ramp up. In order for capitalism to survive in any form, we will have to be a little more socialist. Here is an opportunity for us to see things differently — to see that we really are all connected — and adjust our behavior accordingly.”

Read the full essay here.