The primary results on Tuesday were overshadowed by an escalation in public health responses to the COVID-19 crisis. Biden and Sanders both cancelled their rallies. College athletic conferences -- the MAC and the Big West -- announced they would play their conference tournaments without fans, and the Ivy League canceled their tournament entirely.

The virus story is going to "crowd campaign news out, reducing likelihood of another big shift in race," David Axelrod tweeted.

Joe Trippi told me that anticipated Biden wins on Tuesday in Michigan and a few other states "should close the door on Bernie."

If that's the case, questions will turn to what the campaign will look like for the next few months, and whether the virus will impact the conventions. The Democrats are scheduled to hold theirs in mid-July in Milwaukee, and the GOP is late August in Charlotte.

A few things I've read on COVID that have helped clarify what's at stake in the next few weeks, and why drastic measures are needed now, are here:

• The USA Today Interview with former FDA commish Scott Gottlieb.
• A Washington Post op-ed by Trump's former Homeland Security Adviser, Tom Bossert.
• This piece in Vox on the issue of health care system capacity, which is really the key issue in all of this, and why quarantines and event cancellations are crucial to avoiding a breach in the system's capacity.
• This Yascha Mounk piece in the Atlantic on the need to take drastic action now to prevent community spread, again, to avoid overwhelming the health care system's capacity.

It's obviously an anxious time. But finding purpose in helping others is one way through it, and thinking about how our actions impact the broader picture is one way to be part of the solution.

I helped organize a book party for Yuval Levin over the weekend in Northwest DC. Juleanna Glover was an amazing host, and I can't begin to describe how generous she was in opening up her home and providing everything from food and wine to free valet parking to a coat check run by her teenage daughter.

I'd never organized a book party before, but I really believe in the message of Yuval's book, "A Time to Build," which is this: the way to solve our problems is not by simply sitting on the sidelines and lobbing criticisms, but by investing ourselves in existing institutions and starting new ones, and thinking about how to devote ourselves to a larger purpose than our own personal brand.

Much of my own thinking about institutions -- what are they? what is their purpose? why are they important? -- has been sparked and shaped by Yuval's writing and by our regular conversations over coffee in D.C. And much of my writing about political parties has been an outgrowth of all that.

I have had Yuval on "The Long Game" podcast three times in the last few years.

• January 21, 2020
• June 29, 2018
• July 19, 2017

You can watch video of Yuval's remarks at the book party here. Yuval has been a pretty consistent critic of President Trump, but of the current COVID crisis, he said: "Whatever you might think of Donald Trump, you should want him to succeed in the next few months."

I was glad to see that The Daily Beast named my book "Camelot's End" as one of 5 books that are "essential pre-election reading."

Camelot's End, the Beast wrote, is "an artful depiction of how polarization within a political party (much like the type we are seeing between Biden and Bernie supporters) can effectively lead to implosion, rather than progress."

Of course, whether my book is a primer for the next few months will likely depend on whether Bernie decides to fight a prolonged battle to the convention or whether he drops out in the coming weeks.

MUSIC: Stephen Malkmus is out with a new album, "Traditional Techniques." I will actually have more to say about this album, but for now, I'll just recommend that you have a listen.

@jonward11 // 9292860654 // [email protected]