Ed Wong of the The Atlantic is one of the best science writers covering Covid-19 today. His consistently smart, insightful pieces are deep dives into the complexities and risks of the pandemic.
With the news flow completely dominated by the Bob Woodward book Rage (“Trump says he knew coronavirus was ‘deadly’ and worse than the flu while intentionally misleading Americans,” Washington Post), I want to point you towards Wong’s most recent column that was obviously written before the Woodward buzz, predating that news by hours: America Is Trapped in a Pandemic Spiral.
Instead of finger-pointing or assigning blame, it cooly describes the major errors America made that has led to 200,000 deaths and counting. It is a wonky deep dive into health care policy failures, deeply researched, annotated, and hyperlinked.
Here are the 9 major errors he identifies:
1. A Serial Monogamy of Solutions
2. False Dichotomies
3. The Comfort of Theatricality
4. Personal Blame Over Systemic Fixes
5. The Normality Trap
6. Magical Thinking
7. The Complacency of Inexperience
8. A Reactive Rut
9. The Habituation of Horror
It is free from the usual paywall, and I strongly urge you to read its critical analysis of where we went wrong.
Source:
America Is Trapped in a Pandemic Spiral
Ed Yong
The Atlantic, September 9, 2020
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/pandemic-intuition-nightmare-spiral-winter/616204/
Source: ourworldindata
