Forget the world that came before. The author of American Vertigo serves up an incisive look at how COVID-19 reveals the dangerous fault lines of contemporary society. With medical mysteries, rising death tolls, and conspiracy theories beamed minute by minute through the vast web universe, the coronavirus pandemic has irrevocably altered societies around the world.

In this sharp essay, world-renowned philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy interrogates the many meanings and metaphors we have assigned to the pandemic-and what they tell us about ourselves. Drawing on the...