National crises have this way of producing national unity and a call for national sacrifice to deal forthrightly with the challenges that arrive at our doorstep.

It is being argued that tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of Americans might lose their jobs as the coronavirus pandemic strikes at us.

The nation has a shortage of testing equipment, of surgical masks, hospital beds, medicine, various household supplies essential to people’s daily lives.

Cities, counties and states are doing what they can to wage war against what Donald Trump has called “an invisible enemy.”

There must be a national response. One is developing, or so it seems, but it is being cobbled together on a piecemeal approach. The president went from dismissing the pandemic as a short-term matter to something vastly different.

National sacrifice? How does that manifest itself?

They’re talking about paying out sums of money to every American household. How do we afford that when our budget has acquired a debt of $22 trillion and when the annual federal budget deficit has zoomed past the trillion-dollar mark?

Here’s a thought: an increase in taxes.

If the nation is going to respond completely to battle this pandemic, then it must be able to pay for it. No one wants to pay more in taxes, but given the alternatives facing us at this moment, there might not be any way for our federal government — for which we already are footing the bill — to avoid leveling a greater tax burden on us all.

Someone has to pay for all that we need. If not us … then who?