The good doctor hopes in vain for one of the anticipated positive consequences of the Chinese pandemic—the end of mass tourism—in his weekly Takimag column.

I have always found mass tourism a little puzzling. To go to the effort of traveling, which is increasingly onerous and unpleasant, and then to demand the same kind of food as you have at home seems distinctly odd to me. Cultural tourism is a bit odd too. People who don’t give a moment’s thought to the visual arts for, say, three hundred and fifty days a year suddenly experience an urge to join a procession, a bit like those caterpillars that congregate by the million and devastate the countryside, through a famous art gallery, say the Louvre.