In my isolation, confined to my flat for another 10 long days, I inhabit the world-wide-web.

And it's easy to get gloomy about human beings: fights over toilet paper; queues to buy guns in America; verbal abuse of health workers in Canberra; an angry man who pushed his shopping trolley into supermarket staff in frustration at shortages.

But slowly a picture is also emerging of ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

Think of Fabiano Di Marco, a doctor in a hospital in northern Italy, the epicentre of the coronavirus plague. His voice, cracking with emotion, rings from the podcast in what feels like my cell of confinement.

He is keen to warn the world about the damage this virus causes, damage heading our way if we don't change our ways quickly.

His hospital has 1000 beds. Every day, it gets 50 to 70 new coronavirus patients. Half the hospital now deals with them. Other treatments get cancelled.

He makes me wonder if the plight of his hospital, swamped by a tidal wave of patients with this accursed virus, is on its way to our hospitals.

He is treating infected colleagues - 460 nurses are ill. Relatives can't visit the sick in hospital because there aren't enough protective gowns so people die alone. Sometimes in the chaos, family aren't even told.

And yet Dr Di Marco keeps going, soldiering on against the virus, risking his own life.

Medical staff here do the same.

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As cases mount, the head of the doctors' association in Canberra, Dr Antonio Di Dio, said on the phone: "Emotionally, it's very challenging and difficult for my family. On the other hand, doing something which makes you proud is a wonderful feeling."

He is disappointed by some human beings, saying: "The number of people who behave poorly is a significant minority. But the majority of people are incredibly decent. There's a lot of unselfishness in their daily lives."

He doesn't quite know if the Australian system will cope. If 20 per cent of the population get the virus, and of those, 2 per cent die, there will be immense pressure.

But if there are fewer cases, he reckons the system will creak but not break.

Either way, mass death will shake us in ways we can't imagine. It may dent our faith in humanity or whatever god we each worship.

One of Canberra's religious leaders, David Campbell, pastor of St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, said he was angered at some of the things people do, like turning on staff in supermarkets.

"I find it appalling that human nature can sink to such low depths," he said.

But neither the plague nor the reaction to it have shaken his belief. "The whole pandemic makes me more dependent on God," he said. "Without that I'm utterly lost."

On Thursday morning, he made a point of thanking the check-out woman at the shopping centre in Belconnen in the ACT.

"I took the opportunity of saying to the lady, 'Thank you for all you are doing at this difficult time'," he said.

Shop workers, doctors, dentists, taxi drivers, hair dressers, police and a host of other people who deal with the rest of us face-to-face put themselves in the way of the virus.

We owe them the good side of our nature.

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