Ed Yong Profile picture
3 Aug, 13 tweets, 5 min read
🚨🚨Here’s the big piece I’ve been promising: an Atlantic cover story about the US’s catastrophic mishandling of the pandemic. It’s a full autopsy of what went wrong, every unattended weakness & unheeded warning, every festering wound & reopened scar. 1/

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
I know these times are hard, that we’ve frayed and maxed out on bad news. If you’re wondering if you can cope with a big piece on this topic, I don’t know. But fwiw, I don’t write these to stoke fear or drain hope. I hope to clarify and embolden. 2/

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
Across these months, I’ve been repeatedly struck by how foreseeable everything seemed—how every vulnerability that the pandemic tore open was predictable & preventable. We had built a world “ever more prone to a pandemic but ever less ready for one.” 3/

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
This is about Trump, obviously, but also America’s legacy of racism, neglect of public health, devaluation of expertise, & devotion to individualism. “COVID‐19 is an assault on America’s body, and a referendum on the ideas that animate its culture.” 4/

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
This story, then, is about prisons & hospitals, social media & supply chains. It's about virology, psychology, sociology, architecture. It's about how we built a world "ever more prone to a pandemic but ever less ready for one.” 5/

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
We long to return to normal, but **normal led to this**. To avert the future pandemics we know are coming, we MUST grapple with all the ways normal failed us. We have to build something better. I hope this piece, in showing what went wrong, helps. 6/

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
This is the culmination of months of reporting, those other big pieces, & 100+ interviews. I hope even people who’ve followed the pandemic closely will find fresh perspectives here, and a sense of coherence. I hope it provides clarity and purpose. 7/

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
This is one of 2 cover stories for this month’s issue & Ibram X. Kendi's piece on America’s racial reckoning will be out Wed. For now, check out this stunning cover.

HOW DID IT COME TO THIS?

Well, here’s how:
theatlantic.com/magazine/archi… 8/
(For those who pointed out that the piece was behind the paywall, that was a technical glitch that has now been rectified; it's now free for everyone to read.)
Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who's reading & sharing the cover story. I know these are trying times but if this work has been valuable to you, and if you have the means, subscriptions (or gift subscriptions) help us do our best possible journalism. accounts.theatlantic.com/products/
Some thanks are in order.
- @andersen edited; Don Peck top-edited; @JaniceWolly copy-edited
- Michelle Ciarrocca fact-checked
- Luise Strauss, @arshraziuddin and Christine Walsh handled art/photos
- @jeffreygoldberg told me to do the cover
- 100+ experts spoke to me!
And finally, huge thanks to the semi-colon; it's the real hero here.
Just stapling these two threads together:

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More from @edyong209

14 Dec
🚨I wrote the Atlantic’s next cover story on the COVIDization of science. No other disease has been scrutinized so intensely, by so much combined intellect, in so brief a time. This piece is about both the victories achieved & the weaknesses exposed. 1/

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
A year ago, zero scientists were studying COVID‑19. Since then, the COVID-19 papers submitted to 1 journal (NEJM) outnumber all Ebola papers ever published. Researchers worked wonders at a time when research was harder than ever to do. 2/

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
We have effective vaccines against a virus that, a year ago, was still unknown. That is an *astonishing* feat, not least because it validates technologies that will make it easier to build vaccines against future pandemics, too. 3/

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
Read 10 tweets
5 Dec
Well, rewatching Lord of the Rings this year was... different.

Consider BILBO: just wants to finish his damn book; “butter spread over too much bread”; ages dramatically Bilbo Baggins
GANDALF: would rather be doing pretty fireworks; instead has to ride around shouting policy advice at inexplicably reluctant leaders; can’t get a day off even when dead Gandalf the Annoyed
THEODEN: “What can men do against such reckless hate? A THREAD 1/“ Theoden
Read 19 tweets
4 Dec
At the Atlantic, the peerless @sarahzhang has been leading our coverage of COVID-19 vaccines. Here's a thread of her amazing work.

1) A great big-picture look at the Moderna & Pfizer vaccines, which also explains mRNA vaccines are. theatlantic.com/health/archive…
2) Here, Sarah looks at the results from the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine trial and why they're a little weirder and more confusing than those from the other two.
theatlantic.com/health/archive…
3) Here, Sarah looks at the challenges posed by the transition between two administrations, and the problems that Biden may face as a result.

theatlantic.com/health/archive…
Read 7 tweets
22 Nov
It has been too long since I’ve done this, but here are some great pandemic-related pieces from the last month or so, from people whose work I respect.

If you’ve liked my work, perhaps you’ll also like the work that I like.
.@rkhamsi, who's consistently been one of the best pandemic reporters, wrote about the absurd policies that are doing the rounds: wired.com/story/a-lack-o…

and about whey we need to SEE what COVID-19 is doing to people. wired.com/story/this-pan…
.@CarolineYLChen wrote this searing piece about how frustrated health-care workers are. They "don’t need patronizing praise. They need resources, federal support, and for us to stay healthy and out of their hospitals."

propublica.org/article/the-en…
Read 16 tweets
20 Nov
🚨I wrote about UNMC--the hospital that, perhaps more than any other in the US, had prepared for a pandemic. It has amazing facilities. Its staff anticipated, planned, drilled.

And now?

“I don’t see how we avoid becoming overwhelmed,” one doc said. 1/

theatlantic.com/health/archive…
Here’s what the current surge is doing to the best-prepared hospital:
➡️One building is now a COVID tower.
➡️10 COVID units; 1 solely for patients to die.
➡️Some days, they’re short 45-60 nurses.
➡️“We’re watching a system breaking in front of us." 2/

theatlantic.com/health/archive…
Hospital staff are *exhausted*. A nurse who normally works in oncology told me she can barely comprehend the amount of death she has seen in recent weeks.

Work "follows me everywhere I go. It’s all I see when I come home, when I look at my kids.” 3/

theatlantic.com/health/archive…
Read 10 tweets
17 Nov
The coronavirus bursts into a bar at 10.01pm but it's empty. It sulks off, thwarted.

The coronavirus enters a room to find only 14 people. "Curses," it says, "foiled again."

The coronavirus finds *15* people but they leave after 14 minutes. "DAMMIT."

iowapublicradio.org/ipr-news/2020-…
This is a good time to read the latest piece from stellar reporter @rkhamsi on absurd pandemic polices. wired.com/story/a-lack-o…
And then read @rachgutman on how to think about safety. theatlantic.com/health/archive…
Read 5 tweets

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