There are three moments in the yearlong catastrophe of the pandemic when events might have turned out differently. The first occurred on January 3, 2020, when Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, spoke with George Fu Gao, the head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, which was modelled on the American institution. Redfield had just received a report about an unexplained respiratory virus emerging in the city of Wuhan.The field of public health had long been haunted by the prospect of a widespread respiratory-illness outbreak...…There are three moments in the yearlong catastrophe of the pandemic when events might have turned out differently. The first occurred on January 3, 2020, when Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, spoke with George Fu Gao, the head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, which was modelled on the American institution. Redfield had just received a report about an unexplained respiratory virus emerging in the city of Wuhan.The field of public health had long been haunted by the prospect of a widespread respiratory-illness outbreak...WW…

Great crises tend to bring profound social change, for good or ill. The consequences of wars and economic depressions have been amply studied; the consequences of pandemics, less so. This spring, in order to understand our possible future, I decided to look at the past through the eyes of Gianna Pomata, a retired professor at the Institute of the History of Medicine, at Johns Hopkins University. When we first talked, on Skype, she immediately compared COVID-19 to that struck Europe in the fourteenth century—“not in the number of dead but in terms of shaking up the way people think.” She...…Great crises tend to bring profound social change, for good or ill. The consequences of wars and economic depressions have been amply studied; the consequences of pandemics, less so. This spring, in order to understand our possible future, I decided to look at the past through the eyes of Gianna Pomata, a retired professor at the Institute of the History of Medicine, at Johns Hopkins University. When we first talked, on Skype, she immediately compared COVID-19 to that struck Europe in the fourteenth century—“not in the number of dead but in terms of shaking up the way people think.” She...WW…

There is an ever-expanding group of people who have been infected by the but are no longer symptomatic, if they ever were—the convalescents. Governor Andrew Cuomo, of New York, has advocated for widespread blood tests as a way for restarting the economy in a way that is consistent with a responsible public-health strategy. “I believe, once we get that test, you’re going to find hundreds of thousands of people who have had the coronavirus and resolved. Let the younger people go back to work. Let the recovered people go back to work.” Yet there have been a number of reports, from China and...…There is an ever-expanding group of people who have been infected by the but are no longer symptomatic, if they ever were—the convalescents. Governor Andrew Cuomo, of New York, has advocated for widespread blood tests as a way for restarting the economy in a way that is consistent with a responsible public-health strategy. “I believe, once we get that test, you’re going to find hundreds of thousands of people who have had the coronavirus and resolved. Let the younger people go back to work. Let the recovered people go back to work.” Yet there have been a number of reports, from China and...WW…