Dear graduates: We’re sure the “virtual graduation” video posted to YouTube Friday was not the graduation you’ve been looking forward to for 12 years or more. Hopefully the postponed, in-person commencement ceremony scheduled for July 18 will be more satisfying.

Much might be made of the milestones you’ve missed because of the coronavirus pandemic. Much might also be made of the “opportunity for growth” that this provides you. As the saying goes, experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.

And the last four months have been an experience for all of us.

Pundits on television, in newspapers and even in graduation speeches have called this time “unprecedented,” but that is true only in the details. Diseases of one kind or another have threatened people for as long as there has been a human race. A Google search for “worst pandemics” will turn up crises that make coronavirus look like a summer cold.

The national-scale response has been compared to preparing for war, so even if the United States has never reacted to a disease this way, it is only one step removed from things we have done before.

Perhaps the biggest way in which this time is unprecedented has been the omnipresence of news and information. You are constantly bombarded with information about the virus from the 24-hour news cycle: television, newspapers, radio programs, websites, podcasts and more.

The ready access to information can be a blessing, but the deluge can be a curse. Which says nothing at all of intentional disinformation, accidental misinformation and the simple unknown elements of covering a brand new virus.

But let us counter that with a little bit of comforting history: No pandemic has ever succeeded in destroying us. We have defeated or outlasted every one of them but two — the current coronavirus pandemic, which is only a few months old, and AIDS. And we’ve made a lot of progress against AIDS since it appeared in 1981.

We’ll beat coronavirus too.

In the meantime, our advice to graduates isn’t much different from any other year.

Do what you can do.

Help who you can help.

Love one another.

Respect one another.

Be yourself.

Live your dreams.

Congratulations, Class of 2020.