23 Pandemic Decisions That Actually Went Right

A lot went wrong with COVID, but the responses that worked could help guide us in future pandemics.

 COVID-19 has tested us. Will we be ready for the next pandemic?

An infectious disease expert with insider access gives his take on what we did well, what we need to fix, and how to prepare for future outbreaks.

 How do pandemics end? History suggests diseases fade but are almost never truly gone

As a historian who studies disease and public health, I suggest that instead of looking forward for clues, you can look back to see what brought past outbreaks to a close – or didn’t.

 The Long Shadow of the Pandemic: 2024 and Beyond

Even when the world returns to ‘normal,’ the legacy of Covid-19 will transform everything from wages and health care to political attitudes and global supply chains.

 The Pandemic Is Over. What Does That Even Mean?

COVID-19 isn’t a pandemic anymore. It’s just a never-ending nightmare.

A Raging Pandemic Inspires Poetry With Little Bite

A few of these poems evoke the realities of blue-collar life, but mostly they’ve been written as if by comfortable indoor cats.

How risky is air travel in the pandemic?

The airline industry says getting on a plane is safe. But nothing is perfectly safe when it comes to Covid-19.

How to build more resilient countries after the COVID-19 pandemic

Despite the remarkable pace of vaccine development and production, the COVID-19 pandemic makes clear that purely reactive strategies to long-standing risks are insufficient. With greater national preparation and international coordination, some of the worst impacts of the pandemic could have been avoided. It is now clear that there are myriad ways in which global risks can destabilize countries and communities. This is both a challenge and an opportunity. While the risk landscape is more ominous than it was a year ago, there is also greater momentum to build a more inclusive and sustainable society – and one more prepared to confront global risks.

The coronavirus at 1: A year into the pandemic, what scientists know about how it spreads, infects, and sickens

The coronavirus behind the pandemic presents some vexing dualities. It’s dangerous enough that it dispatches patients to hospitals in droves and has killed more than 1.6 million people, but mild enough that most people shrug it off.

The puzzle of the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa

The COVID-19 pandemic has been puzzling to many public health experts because Africa has reported far fewer cases and deaths from COVID-19 than predicted.

‘It’s Starting Again’: Why Filipino Nurses Dread the Second Wave

Indispensable to New York City hospitals, health care workers from the Philippines died in shocking numbers last spring. Will things be different this winter?

Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech is strongly effective, early data from large trial indicate

The Phase 3 study is ongoing and additional data could affect results.

ER Doctor Says He Walks Into A 'War Zone' Every Day

"You can actually die at your job now, and that's never really been an issue before," he says. He has the experience to make the comparison: Gilman served as a combat medic in the Iraq War.

Flu vs. Covid: Ways to Identify Symptoms and Differences

Flu and other seasonal ailments share symptoms with Covid. But there are some ways to help determine what’s wrong.

How Melbourne eradicated Covid-19

Life is almost back to normal in Melbourne, Australia. Here’s how they did it.

'Toxic Individualism': Pandemic Politics Driving Health Care Workers From Small Towns

A wave of departing medical professionals would leave gaping holes in the rural health care system, and small-town economies, triggering a death spiral in some of these areas that may be hard to stop.

A Deadly Coronavirus Was Inevitable. Why Was No One Ready?

Scientists warned of a pandemic for decades, yet when Covid-19 arrived, the world had few resources and little understanding.

A Global Guide To Binge-worthy TV For The Pandemic

What TV are you bingeing these days? It's a question you've probably been asked a lot — and asked others — five months into the pandemic. Movies are shut. Theater is on hold. So there's not much else to do. I myself can't stop watching Korean dramas (just finished Crash Landing On You) and reruns of Gossip Girl on Netflix. Our blog covers the globe, so we were curious — what shows are people in other countries obsessed about in this pandemic? We asked reporters in nine countries to find out.

A Historic Quarantine

China’s attempt to curb a viral outbreak is a radical experiment in authoritarian medicine.  

A Pandemic Benefit: The Expansion of Telemedicine

Medical practice over the internet can result in faster diagnoses and treatments, increase the efficiency of care and reduce patient stress.

A Summer of No-Contact Rescues: How Lifeguards Have Changed Their Ways

Guards have tested positive. After-work parties are frowned upon. The pandemic has upended lifeguarding.

Air pollution has made the COVID-19 pandemic worse

Both attack our lungs and incite a similar response by the immune system.

America Is Trapped in a Pandemic Spiral

As the U.S. heads toward the winter, the country is going round in circles, making the same conceptual errors that have plagued it since spring.

America Should Prepare for a Double Pandemic

COVID-19 has steamrolled the country. What happens if another pandemic starts before this one is over?

Amid the Coronavirus Crisis, a Regimen for Reëntry

Health-care workers have been on the job throughout the pandemic. What can they teach us about the safest way to lift a lockdown?

An AI Epidemiologist Sent the First Warnings of the Wuhan Virus

The BlueDot algorithm scours news reports and airline ticketing data to predict the spread of diseases like those linked to the flu outbreak in China.  

An expert guide to love and sex during a pandemic

Self-quarantine as a single person or a person who lives far from their significant other can be pretty lonely, especially while other folks spend their work-from-home hours snuggled up with the person they love. Still, it can be unnerving to be so close to someone who might’ve bumped into COVID-19 in the outside world. Considering it takes at least five days for the virus’s symptoms to show up, it’s tough to know if your spooning partner is infected, or if you could be putting them at risk.  

Anatomy of a Pandemic

Like major contagions throughout history, the new coronavirus causes fear as well as illness. The remedy for both, it turns out, is the same

Apple and Google have a clever way of encouraging people to install contact-tracing apps for COVID-19

By building contact-tracing into their operating systems, the companies could make a difference in the global pandemic response. 

Bill Gates Has Regrets

Years before the Covid-19 pandemic, the billionaire tried to warn global leaders of the threat from new infectious diseases. Few listened. ‘I feel terrible.’

Bill Gates slams ‘shocking’ U.S. response to Covid-19 pandemic

Philanthropist Bill Gates, who has long warned of the need to prepare for pandemics, is dumbfounded by how poorly the United States has responded to Covid-19.

Bill Gates, the Virus and the Quest to Vaccinate the World

The billionaire is working with the W.H.O., drugmakers and nonprofits to defeat the coronavirus everywhere, including in the world’s poorest nations. Can they do it?

Bill Gates’s vision for life beyond the coronavirus

Bill Gates saw the coronavirus coming. Here’s his plan to beat it.  

Can Smart Thermometers Track the Spread of the Coronavirus?

A company that makes internet-connected thermometers has followed the flu more closely than the C.D.C. can. Now the devices may be turning up cases of Covid-19. 

China’s battle with the Wuhan coronavirus is shackled by a toxic relationship with information

While some international public health experts have commended China’s information sharing as superior to 2003 in the face of a quickly evolving situation, others have expressed doubt that the country is being as transparent as it should be.  

Coronavirus Began Spreading Worldwide Late Last Year, Study Says

Researchers concluded the "pandemic started sometime around Oct. 6, 2019 to Dec. 11, 2019," according to the report.  

Coronavirus: A Twenty-Year Failure

Unheeded warnings and past pandemic preparedness policy failures have left the world vulnerable to COVID-19.

Coronavirus: what a second wave might look like

With the relaxation of the lockdown rules, warnings are being sounded about a possible resurgence of COVID-19 cases – a so-called second wave. The second wave of the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918-20 was particularly devastating, as was the second wave of the H1N1 epidemic in 2009-10. So what can be done to avoid a second wave of COVID-19?  

Covid Will Not Win’: Meet the Force Powering Brooklyn Hospital Center

These portraits of the hospital staff were taken during the grueling first wave. In interviews in recent months, the workers reflected on that period — what they had lived through and how they had coped, what they had learned and how it had changed them.

Did Covid-19 Come From A Lab? Was It Deliberate Bioterrorism? A Biodefense Expert Explores The Clues

Mother nature is a very efficient “bioterrorist.” We have seen this time and time again as new diseases have emerged, like Ebola, SARS, and henipaviruses. During the current pandemic, it’s been alleged that people created a new pathogen in the Wuhan lab - and even that it’s been released as a deliberate act of bioterrorism. So how could we determine definitively if Covid-19 was a naturally occurring or bioengineered outbreak?

Even Covid-19 tests that aren’t perfect can help control the pandemic

Fortunately, there is a precise way to evaluate the accuracy and interpretation of tests like these. Called Bayes’ Theorem, it can help make sense of the current situation by showing us that the usefulness of a test depends not just on how accurate it is but also on how likely someone is to have the condition it is testing for.

Everything You Need To Know About The Wuhan Coronavirus Outbreak

One thing we do know: like many other illnesses, 2019-nCoV patients are more likely to die if they are old or suffer from other diseases.  

Experts envision two scenarios if the new coronavirus isn’t contained

With the new coronavirus spreading from person to person (possibly including from people without symptoms), reaching four continents, and traveling faster than SARS, driving it out of existence is looking increasingly unlikely.  

Friendships in the Age of Quarantine

How people pull together, even at a moment of social distancing.  

Health experts’ Thanksgiving advice in the time of Covid: plan, plan, plan

The most stress-filled travel holiday of the year has taken on whole new dimensions with the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic. How do you safely get from point A to point B? Does the state you’re traveling to require you to quarantine for two weeks on arrival? Does your home state expect you to quarantine for two weeks on your return? How many generations of family can one safely invite? And what to do about Uncle Frank, who dismisses the disease as a “scamdemic” and won’t wear a mask?

Healthcare workers: Your silence is not your shame

It is my sincere hope that you carry neither guilt nor shame for being forced to choose between wanting to live by your own moral code, and needing to bury your probity for the sake of your survival. It is a burden you should not have to carry. But I know that you do.  

Hospitals Struggle to Contain Covid-19 Spread Inside Their Walls

U.S. medical centers have reported 5,000-plus cases of patients likely catching the coronavirus once admitted for other conditions, adding to the strain of the pandemic itself.  

How do pandemics end?

We are in the grip of a pandemic like none other in living memory. While people are pinning their hopes on a vaccine to wipe it out, the fact is most of the infections faced by our ancestors are still with us.

How Iceland hammered COVID with science

The tiny island nation brought huge scientific heft to its attempts to contain and study the coronavirus. Here’s what it learnt.

How the Pandemic Defeated America

How did it come to this? A virus a thousand times smaller than a dust mote has humbled and humiliated the planet’s most powerful nation. America has failed to protect its people, leaving them with illness and financial ruin. It has lost its status as a global leader. It has careened between inaction and ineptitude. The breadth and magnitude of its errors are difficult, in the moment, to truly fathom.

How to fix the Covid-19 dumpster fire in the U.S.

There’s no point in sugar-coating this. The U.S. response to the Covid-19 pandemic is a raging dumpster fire. Where a number of countries in Asia and Europe have managed to dampen spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus to the point where they can consider returning to a semblance of normalcy — friends from Paris just emailed me pictures from their Sicilian vacation — many international borders remain closed to Americans. 

How to reopen society using medical science and logic

We now have an even greater urgency, due to the severe and single-minded policies already implemented. Treating COVID-19 “at all costs” is severely restricting other medical care and instilling fear in the public, creating a massive health disaster, separate from a potential world poverty crisis with almost incalculable consequences.  

How Will We Know When It’s Time to Reopen the Nation?

Experts offer four benchmarks that can serve as a guide for cities and states, eliminating some of the guesswork.  

Human Rights and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Governments have an obligation to guarantee the continued protection of the public's rights during and after a pandemic.

In Harm's Way

As countries ease restrictions on public life, health care workers around the world continue to risk their lives — and those of their families — to fight the coronavirus pandemic. Despite their stoic selfies, they feel scared, grief-stricken, guilty they can’t do more. In submissions and interviews, they reflect on what they have witnessed, the decisions they have made and how the pandemic has changed them.  

Is America Ready for Another Outbreak?

No. But there are clear steps the government needs to take.  

It’s been so, so surreal.’ Critics of Sweden’s lax pandemic policies face fierce backlash

Sweden’s approach to the coronavirus pandemic is out of step with much of the world. The government never ordered a “shutdown” and kept day care centers and primary schools open. While cities worldwide turned into ghost towns, Swedes could be seen chatting in cafés and working out at the gym. The contrast evoked both admiration and alarm in other countries, with journalists and experts debating whether the strategy was brilliant—or whether Tegnell, its main architect, had lost the plot.

Keeping the Coronavirus from Infecting Health-Care Workers

What Singapore’s and Hong Kong’s success is teaching us about the pandemic.  

Kenya Braced For The Worst. The Worst Didn't Happen. Why?

Just weeks ago, Kenya was girding for the worst. As the country reported hundreds of cases daily, the health minister asked schools to prepare rooms to isolate all the people hospitals wouldn't be able to treat. Cemeteries dug mass graves. But then, just as quickly as the cases rose, they plummeted. They went from a peak of more than 600 cases a day in August to fewer than 100 the past three days. The first wave of COVID-19 has seemingly come and gone with fewer than expected deaths — just over 600 — leaving many baffled.

Learning from Taiwan about responding to Covid-19 — and using electronic health records

Taiwan could easily have had a Covid-19 disaster. It is situated less than 100 miles from China, and more than 1 million Taiwanese work in China. There is frequent travel between the two countries. As a result, Taiwan is at high risk of exposure to any novel infection that arises in China. So why didn’t it get slammed by SARS-Cov-2?  

Learning from Taiwan about responding to Covid-19 — and using electronic health records

Taiwan could easily have had a Covid-19 disaster. It is situated less than 100 miles from China, and more than 1 million Taiwanese work in China. There is frequent travel between the two countries. As a result, Taiwan is at high risk of exposure to any novel infection that arises in China. So why didn’t it get slammed by SARS-Cov-2?

Look back and learn: How past pandemics and epidemics inform COVID-19 response

The COVID-19 pandemic is unprecedented in many ways, but some issues raised in the global health crisis are all too familiar. We dug through The New Humanitarian’s 25-year archive of reporting on pandemics and epidemics for eight takeaways to inform today’s response.

Our Pandemic Summer

The fight against the coronavirus won’t be over when the U.S. reopens. Here’s how the nation must prepare itself.  

Pandemics wreak devastation — but spark biomedical innovation

There are no “silver linings” in the dark cloud of Covid-19. Yet if history repeats itself, substantial biomedical innovation will emerge from this pandemic, as necessity fosters innovation.

Practising mindfulness can help us through the coronavirus pandemic

We seem to have mastered the perfect recipe for chaos: a global ecological emergency, humanitarian crises and to top it off, a pandemic of epic proportions. Where do we begin to make sense of the current times? Or more importantly, how can we move towards a positive systemic shift that leaves no one behind? How about taking a breath? Mindfulness, a once-traditional Buddhist practice has become a normalized part of secular society and is lauded by many health and wellness authorities. It is now found in many public spaces such as schools, politics, military units and hospitals.

Preparing for the Next Pandemic

The Covid-19 crisis has clear lessons for what we can do now to stop a future global health emergency.

Quarantine for coronavirus? Let’s make that unnecessary

Do you trust the government to protect you and your family from the novel coronavirus causing Covid-19? Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials say more cases are inevitable in the United States, although they can’t predict how many and when they will appear. President Trump says the risk is low and “We’re very, very ready for this.” But what does it mean to be ready?  

Tech That Scans People For Fever In Big Demand Amid Coronavirus Crisis, Boosting Wuhan Company

First fielded during the 2003 SARS epidemic, thermal fever screening systems use cameras that detect the infrared energy invisible to the human eye that people and objects emit. 

Telemedicine Is a Safety Valve for a Strained Health Care System

“Virtual visits” can be an effective way to decide who needs to be tested for Covid-19. But remote doctors can't diagnose or treat illness.  

The data is in — stop the panic and end the total isolation

Vital population immunity is prevented by total isolation policies, prolonging the problem. 

The enormous privilege of choosing to travel during a pandemic

The holidays are going to look very different this year. As the US approaches the Thanksgiving holiday at the end of November, and the world anticipates a swirl of end-of-year celebrations, Covid-19 cases are reaching an all-time high. There are safer ways to celebrate with loved ones: The safest, of course, is to keep the party within your household. But several public health organizations, including the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), have put out guidance on traveling and eating together, if you absolutely can’t imagine a Thanksgiving without extended family and friends.

The first modern pandemic

The scientific advances we need to stop COVID-19.

The lessons we’ve learned from the Covid-19 response, according to Anthony Fauci

You’ve just got to be humble enough to realize that we don’t know it all from the get-go and even as we get into it.

The New Coronavirus Is a Truly Modern Epidemic

New diseases are mirrors that reflect how a society works—and where it fails. 

The New York Times

The Coronavirus outbreak.

The Other Way Covid Will Kill: Hunger

Worldwide, the population facing life-threatening levels of food insecurity is expected to double, to more than a quarter of a billion people.

The Pandemic in Six-Word Memoirs

Since 2006, I’ve been challenging people to describe their lives in six words, a form I call the six-word memoir — a personal twist on the legendary six-word story attributed to Ernest Hemingway: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” I’ve found that some of the most memorable six-word stories arise in the extremes — during our toughest and most joyous moments. So over the past several months, I’ve asked adults and children around the country to use the form to make sense of this moment in history: one person, one story, and six words at a time.

The Perfect Pandemic Playlist

Take a break and tune out with these 13 songs, selected by three of our music critics. 

The Plan That Could Give Us Our Lives Back

The U.S. has never had enough coronavirus tests. Now a group of epidemiologists, economists, and dreamers is plotting a new strategy to defeat the virus, even before a vaccine is found.

The Rising Heroes of the Coronavirus Era? Nations’ Top Scientists

The new celebrities emerging across Europe as the coronavirus burns a deadly path through the continent are not actors or singers or politicians. Instead, they are epidemiologists and virologists who have become household names after spending most of their lives in virtual anonymity.  

The Road Ahead: Charting the coronavirus pandemic over the next 12 months — and beyond

Now — with health authorities saying it may not be until at least the end of 2021 before there’s a degree of post-Covid normalcy in our lives — look forward. Imagine the next 15 months and what life will be like.

The Swedish COVID-19 Response Is a Disaster. It Shouldn’t Be a Model for the Rest of the World

The Swedish COVID-19 experiment of not implementing early and strong measures to safeguard the population has been hotly debated around the world, but at this point we can predict it is almost certain to result in a net failure in terms of death and suffering.

There is no emergency in a pandemic

I was asked to repost this with the news of 13 Italian doctors dying from COVID-19. If you do not have proper PPE, do not go in. No matter what. This post is for my healthcare workers, docs, surgeons, Nurses, aids, and EMS, and all staff. There is no emergency in a pandemic.  

This biologist helped trace SARS to bats. Now, he's working to uncover the origins of COVID-19

By pure chance, Linfa Wang, one of the world’s foremost experts on emerging viruses, was in the Chinese city of Wuhan in January. The biologist was visiting collaborators at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) just as SARS-CoV-2 was starting to spread from the city to the rest of the world. Even among those experts there was little fear then. “I was mixing with all the lab people,” Wang says. “We would go to a restaurant every night.”

This Overlooked Variable Is the Key to the Pandemic

There’s something strange about this coronavirus pandemic. Even after months of extensive research by the global scientific community, many questions remain open.

Three Scenarios for How This Ends

The question on everyone’s mind is this: When will things go back to normal? My answer is never. The world is changed forever: No matter how deeply affected you are—medically, financially, emotionally, or otherwise—there is no going back. But the decisions we make about how to proceed now are extremely consequential, and the potential outcomes before us are vastly different.  

U.S. has only a fraction of the medical supplies it needs to combat coronavirus

The country could require seven billion respirators and face masks over the course of the outbreak.  

U.S. Hospitals Aren’t Ready for the Coronavirus

No one knows whether the coronavirus will substantially threaten the U.S., where it has already been detected, but one thing is certain: American hospitals aren’t ready for the deadly virus or a future global contagion. Travelers from China’s Wuhan region are being diverted to five U.S. airports, where they can be screened. That’s sensible, but it’s no substitute for improving hospital readiness.  

We Can Lick This Pandemic

A sideways twist on everything you’ve heard, read, and seen on the global pandemic COVID-19 threat - Shilo Zylbergold  

We Should Have Treated COVID as a Natural Disaster, Not a Public Health Emergency

After six months working in an ER during a pandemic, I have some thoughts about how this went.

What It Will Take to Make the Indoors Feel Safe Again

Technologies new and old will soon be appearing in offices, airports, schools, restaurants, retail spaces and sports arenas to arrest the spread of Covid-19 and prevent future pandemics. 

What the 1918 flu pandemic can teach us about COVID-19, in four charts

One of the biggest pandemics in recent history shows the importance of social distancing.

What the 1918 flu pandemic can teach us about COVID-19, in four charts

One of the biggest pandemics in recent history shows the importance of social distancing.  

What you need to know as we get closer to a COVID-19 vaccine

The potential for a vaccine brings with it hope that the pandemic will end, but naturally raises questions.

What's Coming This Winter? Here's How Many More Could Die In The Pandemic

Even places that have already come back from devastating outbreaks remain vulnerable to a resurgence over the winter, says Lauren Ancel Meyers, a professor at the University of Texas, Austin who directs the University of Texas COVID-19 Modeling Consortium.

Why we should be careful comparing the Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak to the 1918 Spanish flu

Why we should be careful comparing the Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak to the 1918 Spanish flu.

Bright side of the moonshots

Covid-19 has brought together biomedical technologies that will transform human health.

Making sense of the recent Covid-19 spike

The World Health Organization said this week that most vaccinated people who do contract the delta variant experience no symptoms. They may also be less likely to spread the virus, as they appear to shed less of it, CDC Deputy Director Jay Butler told reporters at the Infectious Diseases Society of America briefing.

The U.S. Is Getting a Crash Course in Scientific Uncertainty

The road ahead will be difficult. The virus has more surprises in store, and the myths that have already become entrenched will be hard to erase.

We’re Not at Endemicity Yet

Too many people still have no protection against the coronavirus.

Will the Coronavirus Pandemic Ever End?

I sometimes think of this period as a subacute phase of the pandemic. covid-19 is no longer an acute emergency, but it’s not yet clear how it will become an endemic disease that we are ready to live with. Public weariness, highly transmissible variants that evade some of our immunity—these factors may condemn us to intermittent surges long into the future.

For Better Health During the Pandemic, Is Two Hours Outdoors the New 10,000 Steps?

The physical and mental damage inflicted by Covid has doctors, researchers and others racing to tap into nature’s therapeutic effects.

How COVID-19 Is Revolutionizing Health Care Around the World

COVID-19 has been the deadliest pandemic in a hundred years. One in three Americans has lost someone to the coronavirus, and India is the next epicenter. The scars will be enduring. But the pandemic has also catalyzed innovations in science and health care delivery, pushed rich nations to learn from poorer ones, forced us to turn back a tide of misinformation, pushed health higher up global and national agendas and made us better teachers. Out of crisis comes opportunity.

How the Pandemic Now Ends

Pandemics end. But this one is not yet over, and especially not globally. Just 16 percent of the world’s population is fully vaccinated.

Local writer's COVID-19 poem goes viral

As the COVID-19 pandemic sheltered humankind in place, a prose poem penned by a Jefferson County woman went viral, capturing a glimmer of hope during this uncertain time and painting an idealistic outcome toward which all the world should strive.

Scientists Knew More About Covid-19 Than We Think. And They Still Do

In “Breathless,” David Quammen explores the predictable lead-up to the global Covid pandemic, and the frantic, belated attempts to stop it.

The Pandemic’s Soft Closing

The CDC’s latest COVID guidelines are the closest the nation’s leaders have come to saying the coronavirus crisis is done..

The year global health went local

The world has an important opportunity to turn the hard-won lessons of this pandemic into a healthier, more equal future for all.

The ‘End’ of COVID Is Still Far Worse Than We Imagined

When is the pandemic “over”? In the early days of 2020, we envisioned it ending with the novel coronavirus going away entirely. When this became impossible, we hoped instead for elimination: If enough people got vaccinated, herd immunity might largely stop the virus from spreading. When this too became impossible, we accepted that the virus would still circulate but imagined that it could become, optimistically, like one of the four coronaviruses that cause common colds or, pessimistically, like something more severe, akin to the flu. Instead, COVID has settled into something far worse than the flu.

Where Year Two of the Pandemic Will Take Us

Many of the 30 epidemiologists, physicians, immunologists, sociologists, and historians whom I interviewed for this piece are cautiously optimistic that the U.S. is headed for a better summer. But they emphasized that such a world, though plausible, is not inevitable. Its realization hinges on successfully executing the most complicated vaccination program in U.S. history, on persuading a frayed and fractured nation to continue using masks and avoiding indoor crowds, on countering the growing quagmire of misinformation, and on successfully monitoring and countering changes in the virus itself.

Why The Pandemic Is 10 Times Worse Than You Think

"There are a lot of people walking around with this virus who never know they have it," says Shaman. "Even the people who are ultimately swabbed and confirmed, they were contagious before they even had their symptoms."

Citizen science is booming during the pandemic

From backyard astronomy to birding, amateurs have been busy collecting data — and making real discoveries.

Covid-19: Five days that shaped the outbreak

For weeks beforehand officials had maintained that the outbreak was under control - just a few dozen cases linked to a live animal market. But in fact the virus had been spreading throughout the city and around China. This is the story of five critical days early in the outbreak.

How the Covid-19 Pandemic Changed Americans’ Health for the Worse

Heart disease and drug overdoses are among afflictions exacting a higher toll than before.

The Pandemic Is Heading Toward a Strange In-Between Time

Americans can plan for the pandemic’s end in the fall. What happens between now and then?

Why some labs work on making viruses deadlier — and why they should stop

The pandemic should make us question the value of gain-of-function research.

A Year Later, Wuhan, The First Post Coronavirus Pandemic City

Wuhan has emerged from hibernation, reviving the city’s glitzy fashion shows, restaurants, music clubs and karaoke bars.

Coming to terms with the real bioterrorist behind Covid-19: nature

It’s imperative that we return to a fact-based consideration of the origins of Covid-19. One day this pandemic will end. But as we and several colleague wrote recently in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, another one could soon begin if we don’t start focusing on what we know about the source of this and other potentially emerging viruses, and use these insights to prepare for the many other formidable threats brewing in nature.

COVID-19 Is a Symptom of a Planet That's Been Pushed Past a Tipping Point

The pandemic could signal that we've passed a series of civilizational tipping points that will usher in a new era of ecological emergencies.

Covid-19 is likely to fade away in 2022

But the taming of the coronavirus conceals failures in public health.

Experts warned of a pandemic decades ago. Why weren't we ready?

In a rueful look back at her prescient book, an author wrestles with why we shrugged at the nightmare warnings and hopes this time will be different.

Five key milestones in the Covid-19 pandemic that we’re anticipating in 2021

If 2020 was defined by the explosion of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, 2021 could be about its dwindling. But how many people will fall ill, and die, as that happens is dependent on our leaders, individuals, vaccine makers, and public campaigns to encourage people to get the Covid-19 shots developed with unprecedented speed.

How Science Beat the Virus

In fall of 2019, exactly zero scientists were studying COVID‑19, because no one knew the disease existed. The coronavirus that causes it, SARS‑CoV‑2, had only recently jumped into humans and had been neither identified nor named. But by the end of March 2020, it had spread to more than 170 countries, sickened more than 750,000 people, and triggered the biggest pivot in the history of modern science.

How the Covid pandemic ends: Scientists look to the past to see the future

There may have been a fleeting chance humans could have halted spread of SARS-2 and driven it back into nature, as happened with its cousin, SARS-1. But that door was firmly shut long ago. It also seems that another option — vaccinating our way out of the pandemic — is an expensive toll highway that few countries will be able to access in the near term. That probably sounds bleak, but don’t despair. The truth of the matter is that pandemics always end.

How the world learns to live with covid-19

From pandemic to epidemic.

How the World Will Look After the Coronavirus Pandemic

The pandemic will change the world forever. We asked 12 leading global thinkers for their predictions.

How We Can Deal with 'Pandemic Fatigue'

The first step is to understand that it’s not just about exhaustion or tiredness or depleting a mental resource.

I Can’t Wait Out the Pandemic Any Longer

COVID still threatens to hospitalize or disable me, but I’m done putting my life on pause.

Nine Pandemic Words That Almost No One Gets Right

We’ve had to assimilate a whole slew of terms from public health, immunology, and medicine, some of them totally foreign (cytokines, positive predictive value, R-naught), others more familiar but with colloquial and academic meanings that at least partially conflict (bubbles, breakthroughs, boosters). The transition doesn’t always go smoothly, and confusion and misunderstandings, much like contagion, are very hard to rein in once they’ve started to spread.

The coronavirus pandemic explained, one year on

We've learned so much about the coronavirus in the more than 365 days since our first guide was published.

Will public trust in science survive the pandemic?

The confluence of rapidly evolving science, mixed messaging, misinformation, and flagrant politicization in the US is creating a perfect storm for eroding trust in science.