LONDON, U.K. -- For those of us still scratching off the days here, we are at the end of week three of our collective, voluntary internment. Only week three.

It is worth noting that the city of Wuhan, China—where the pandemic started—was under quarantine for 76 days.

Take a deep breath, friends.

It is understandable, I suppose, that on this day, Easter Monday, some of Britain’s newspapers would depict Boris Johnson’s recovery from coronavirus as a near-resurrection. His Messiah moment.

The prime minister himself, just scant hours after being released from hospital, told the nation in a video: “Things could have gone either way.” He was re-baptized, “Battler Boris” and his survival portrayed as “an epic symbol of our national ordeal.”

Now that he’s recuperating nicely at the prime minister’s country estate, shall we indulge in a quick review of that ordeal?

We knew it was serious when Boris closed the nation’s pubs at 5 p.m. on a Friday—just as hundreds of thousands of people were enjoying a post-work pint. His timing could have been better.

Three days later he ordered a full national lockdown, reluctantly, and under pressure from worried members of his own party. By then, the virus was spreading quickly across the U.K.

And where are we now? By this weekend, the country had recorded more than 10,000 hospital deaths from coronavirus.

We’re all looking for a big historic comparison, and war comes closest. It feels to many what London must have been like during the Blitz.

Today it’s panic buying, and scrambling for a food delivery. Then, it was rationing, and hiding in bomb shelters.

Want to hear a good story? In the fall of 1940, the King of England organized hush-hush shipments of Bromo soft toilet paper through the British embassy in Washington. (I owe that little info-gem to Erik Larson’s “The Splendid and the Vile.”)

In today’s war, all the shops and pubs and schools and theatres are closed. At the height of the Battle of Britain, shops were wide open. Hyde Park was full of sunbathers confident the Germans wouldn’t attack until nightfall. Last week, the British government banned sunbathing.

There is talk now of easing the lockdown on May 8. Think of the symbolism: On the 75th anniversary of Germany’s surrender in 1945—VE Day—when the streets of London and Paris went into wild celebration.

For Germany’s President, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the war analogy goes too far. He had some sensible things to say over the weekend.

“No, this pandemic is not a war,” he told the country in a rare TV address. “Nations do not stand against nations, nor soldiers against soldiers. Rather it is a test of our humanity.”

Just as lockdown is a test of our patience and mental endurance.

A viewer wrote to me last week with a striking description of what he and his wife are going through. They are retired and do not leave the house without wearing gloves and facemask.

“The unknown is a scary, scary place,” he wrote, “and we are looking into the haze of the abyss right now.”

“Deep down, most of us assume that we will pop out the other side into sunshine again, but we know the pain to get there is real and the fear is palpable.”

He ended this way:

“My wife thinks she gets a temperature every single night.”