“So do they then hurl themselves into the East River? What??”
It’s not quite that bad. It’s more about, you have to accept the notion that everything you ever knew is gone. All of your social world is gone, all of the history, and all of the rules that were meant to protect us, and they aren’t coming back.
So you go through the stages of grieving. Depression is a big part of that. But then comes acceptance, and looking at the world more as what can we build now, starting from where we are, rather than trying to hold onto the old corrupt institutions.