Americans are adopting new rituals in the coronavirus era: obsessive handwashing, Zoom video calls and watching New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s daily briefing.
From the US epicentre for the pandemic, Mr Cuomo delivers a sermon each day in which he is, by turns, sober, informative, rousing and unexpectedly vulnerable as he updates viewers on the progress of the current war. At times he is profane, as when he urged soldiers to go out and “kick coronavirus’s ass!”
In just a few weeks, Mr Cuomo, a 62-year-old divorced dad known for a domineering — at times bullying — persona, has transformed himself into an unlikely father of the nation as it faces one of its gravest modern moments.