The Case for a Pandemic Moonshot
We cannot accept the same awful options when the next virus comes. Instead, let’s build our way out of the problem.
Special Series
Our articles on the Covid-19 pandemic are collected here. Start at the bottom of the list, with our first article, on March 17, 2020, and scroll up to see how our coverage unfolded.
See also our Winter 2022 symposium, “Beyond the State of Exception,” for more on governance during the Covid crisis; the special online series “The Natural Immunity Debate”; and related articles from before the pandemic, shown at the very bottom of the page.
We cannot accept the same awful options when the next virus comes. Instead, let’s build our way out of the problem.
We let the precautionary principle run wild during Covid. We needed proportionality too.
As with 9/11, we cannot sustain crisis politics for years after a moment of unity passes.
Covid doesn’t care how hard we fight it — only about what works.
How feckless Covid leadership turned us against each other
Building a politics of connection where fanatical certainty fails
In an emergency, the “gold” standard of evidence may not be the wise one.
The triumph of the economic in the vaccine priority debate
A Q&A for the frazzled — and a case for action
In its quest to meet the “gold standard,” academic medicine has put Covid patients at risk.
Our pandemic decisions should be about defending the dignity of suffering people, not choosing between lives and money.
On Covid-19, America’s political leaders need to stop acting like spectators and get in the game.
Why the swamp and its drainers were both blind to the threat
Why we need an option that will be morally acceptable to all Americans
Can our polarized country act on provisional knowledge?
How centralization created a single point of failure in our Covid-19 response
Why fighting about Covid-19’s fatality rate is a distraction
Comparing Covid-19 to leading causes of death, state by state
It’s about the spike.
Restrained action in a crisis is no wiser than panic in normal times.
Is there a formula for deciding which patients doctors try to save?
Covid-19’s low death rate conceals bigger dangers.
A six-point plan to end the Covid-19 crisis and prepare for recovery
The problem isn’t just testing — we still know far too little about what we already know.
Yes, the Covid-19 shutdown is necessary — but it won’t work without a vision of how it ends.
Online Exclusive | March 17, 2020
March 17, 2020
An interview on the state of the pandemic with the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy
October 20, 2015