Tom Hanks Is the Absolute Best, Even Mid-Pandemic

Tom Hanks. Photo: Getty

Coronavirus anxiety is at an all-time high with US President Donald Trump suspending travel from Europe for 30 days and the N.B.A. suspending its season after a player tested positive for the disease. (And that’s just tonight’s news.)

Nobody has more of a God-given right to freak out than Tom Hanks, who tested positive for coronavirus along with his wife Rita Wilson. But somehow, Hanks managed to post an Instagram with a caption that was calm, level-headed, and almost soothing.

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Hello, folks. Rita and I are down here in Australia. We felt a bit tired, like we had colds, and some body aches. Rita had some chills that came and went. Slight fevers too. To play things right, as is needed in the world right now, we were tested for the Coronavirus, and were found to be positive. Well, now. What to do next? The Medical Officials have protocols that must be followed. We Hanks’ will be tested, observed, and isolated for as long as public health and safety requires. Not much more to it than a one-day-at-a-time approach, no? We’ll keep the world posted and updated. Take care of yourselves! Hanx!

A post shared by Tom Hanks (@tomhanks) on Mar 11, 2020 at 6:08pm PDT

In the caption, Hanks described the nature of their symptoms, explaining that the two were found positive for coronavirus while shooting on location in Australia. “We Hanks’ will be tested, observed, and isolated for as long as public health and safety requires. Not much more to it than a one-day-at-a-time approach, no?” Hanks wrote on Instagram. It’s as though he’s channeling his gruff-but-kind softball coach character from A League of Their Own, or the sweet single dad he played in Sleepless in Seattle; how does Hanks always know just what to say?

In a moment when our president refuses to acknowledge the severity of what the World Health Organization has officially termed a pandemic, it’s quite comforting to hear some words of wisdom from a trusted public figure, even though Hanks is an actor, not a government official (and of course, it just had to be this actor, America’s beloved stand-in dad, didn’t it?). Even his signoff—”Take care of yourselves! Hanx!” is painfully adorable, and I think I speak for the nation when I say we can withstand a lot of things, but we draw the line at Tom Hanks’s suffering.

It’s like it picked the celebrity we cared the most about to make a point

— Whitney Cummings (@WhitneyCummings) March 12, 2020

Tom Hanks has Coronavirus. I think we are done as a species.

— Jack Pattillo (@jack_p) March 12, 2020

When you mess with Tom Hanks, you mess with all of us.

— Touré (@Toure) March 12, 2020

Originally published on Vogue.com

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