Coronaviruses

The U.S. has only four percent of the world's population — and yet it accounts for 20 percent of all COVID deaths. New Yorker writer Lawrence Wright discusses America's pandemic year.

Science writer Ed Yong of The Atlantic says the coming months will usher in the most complicated immunization program the U.S. has ever attempted. Yong has been covering the pandemic since it began, writing about nearly every aspect.

Apollo's Arrow author Nicholas Christakis says we're likely to be living with pandemic-related social restrictions into 2022 — even if an effective vaccine is developed.

In his new book, Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World, Zakaria looks ahead to the ways that COVID-19 might fundamentally change our relationships to work, technology and government. He says Americans in particular have some important decisions to make about the role of government in our lives.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shuttered schools and businesses and altered life across the globe, but journalist Alexis Madrigal says comprehensive, rapid testing might be the key to a safe reopening. For his latest article for the Atlantic, Madrigal talked with public health experts, including Harvard epidemiologist Michael Mina, who cite the potential benefits of widespread testing for the virus with a simple, at-home saliva test that uses a paper strip similar to a home pregnancy test.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shuttered schools and businesses and altered life across the globe, but journalist Alexis Madrigal says comprehensive, rapid testing might be the key to a safe reopening. For his latest article for the Atlantic, Madrigal talked with public health experts, including Harvard epidemiologist Michael Mina, who cite the potential benefits of widespread testing for the virus with a simple, at-home saliva test that uses a paper strip similar to a home pregnancy test.

"Since the very first day of this pandemic, I don't think [we've been] in a more confused position about what's happening," epidemiologist Michael Osterholm says. "We just aren't quite sure what [the coronavirus is] going to do next."
Osterholm is the founder and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

As millions of people remain socially isolated and anxious about COVID-19, several U.S. governors are at least making plans to relax controls in their states and revive economic activity — against the advice of many public health professionals.

New York Times science and health reporter Donald G. McNeil Jr. warns that the push to reopen is premature. "We're nowhere near getting on top of this virus," he says.

Of the roughly 100,000 Americans included in the official COVID-19 death count, 20,000 died in New York City in a period of two months. Time magazine reporter W.J. Hennigan recently spent several weeks looking into the practical challenge of how a city deals with so many bodies suffused with a deadly pathogen.

John Barry, author of the 2004 book, The Great Influenza, draws parallels between today's pandemic and the flu of 1918. In both cases, he says, "the outbreak was trivialized for a long time."