They’re calling our national response to the coronavirus pandemic a fight against an “invisible enemy.”

Donald Trump calls himself a “wartime president.” So, if we’re going to war against this enemy, I am left to wonder how we’re going to know when the war is over. When or how do we declare victory? Will we even be able to declare victory?

These questions rise the way they rose when we went to war against international terrorism immediately after 9/11. I have posed the question myself: Will we be able to declare victory in the global war on terror? 

If we can eradicate the disease, what will happen to the way we behave, the way we interact with our friends — or even our family, the folks who live elsewhere?

It well might be that this pandemic is going to have lasting — possibly permanent — impact on the way we lead our daily lives.

My wife and I already are wiping down door handles, fuel pumps, shopping carts with antiseptic wipes. We already are washing our hands with far more frequency than before the coronavirus changed the world. We’re keeping our safe “social distance” from those we see in our quiet Princeton, Texas neighborhood.

Is this the way it will be, um, forever? Man, I hope not. Then again, I don’t know when or how we’ll be able to declare an end to this “war against an invisible enemy.”