When the going gets tough, the tough get a cartoonist, as they didn't say - but there's an element of truth to it.
In the big national crises over more than a century, cartoonists have been the people the authorities call in to help get a message across.
David Pope's cartoon on the front page sits well in this honourable tradition.
It's witty - Masking for a Friend is a nice play on words. And endearing, with the mischievous platypus masking up.
It's informative - did you spot the reference to social distancing in the emu's "hand" and the sanitizer in the pouch of the kangaroo?
Above all, it's striking.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many must a cartoon be worth, particularly on crowded social media where everything competes for a nanosecond of our attention?
Cartoons reach people whom words pass by. They are easily and instantly understood. They speak a common language. Even if you don't understand the words, the picture tells the story - as it does with David Pope's creation.
In times of war and plague, the cartoon comes into its own.
Think of the illustration by the children's author May Gibbs for a poster during the Spanish flu epidemic in 1919.
It appeals to both adults and children and has all those hallmarks of being informative, witty and striking.
It struck a chord across the classes. "The illustration uses the popular icon created by May Gibbs, the 'gumnut baby', one of the bush babies series that made her famous," as the National Archives of Australia description puts it.
"Gibbs used distinctly Australian motifs at a time when the Australian bush was an important symbol of national identity."
David Pope's work uses the same sort of images, popular, uniquely Australian animals.
Twenty years after the outbreak in 1919, flu was still rampant and again the cartoon was used to educate without lecturing.
Cartoons of the day gently suggested that homespun treatments were doing more harm than good and that fresh air would be better than any of the more outlandish remedies.