A few weeks ago, I told Utah Public Radio: “…we cannot really just go around saying that this thing [fire] is not my problem. It's everyone's problem. If you live in the West, this is directly your problem. If you live in the East, this is indirectly your problem [smoke]”
If you are on the U.S. east coast right now and have never lived anywhere with truly bad air pollution you're getting a taste of what hundreds of millions of people deal with every day.