The Philippine Department of Transportation got into a bit of a fix recently for publicly thanking the coronavirus. In an attempt to “provide an enlightening and awakening narrative” that might cause people to see a silver lining in the viral cloud over their heads, the DOT instead found itself facing an online mob and had to issue a public apology.

I’m not about to thank the coronavirus, but I will say it has offered a valuable and nearly unprecedented learning opportunity. Just as the historical anomalies of Europe’s Iron Curtain and Korea’s DMZ created an unintentional economic experiment—revealing that people with the same culture, history, and natural resources thrive under one type of system (capitalism) and writhe under another (communism)—a global pandemic sets the stage for a rare, universal object lesson: Risk cuts both ways. Unavoidably and indisputably.

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