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28 Oct, 5 tweets, 2 min read
🚨I wrote about the upcoming election, and what the stakes are in terms of the pandemic.

The piece is short, and its gist is simple: Next week, Americans will choose whether to try and bring COVID-19 under control.

theatlantic.com/health/archive…
Four true statements:

➡️Trump has epically mishandled the pandemic.

➡️He does not learn from his mistakes.

➡️COVID-19 will still be raging in 2021.

➡️Historical patterns suggest another major epidemic is likely in the next 4 years.

theatlantic.com/health/archive…
The third surge is upon us. Hospitals are once again filling up. Healthcare workers are exhausted. Vaccines are still
far away.

But COVID-19 is not uncontrollable.

The playbook is clear. The US just needs a leader willing to implement it.

theatlantic.com/health/archive…
Trump was never going to be that leader. Here’s a piece that I wrote in Dec 2016, before he was even inaugurated,
about how he would deal with a pandemic. His future failings were abundantly clear, even then.

theatlantic.com/science/archiv…
One of the few small mercies about the pandemic: it happened at the twilight of this term, not the dawn.

There's a chance to turn things around.

theatlantic.com/health/archive…
election/616884/

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More from @edyong209

Ed Yong Profile picture
19 Oct
October surprise: my laptop died.
Janky replacement laptop is operational, but it just downloaded six months worth of updates, so let's just give it some space to process.
It's like that scene in the Matrix except instead of suddenly knowing kung-fu, Neo just starts openly weeping.
Read 4 tweets
Ed Yong Profile picture
9 Oct
🚨I wrote about the rampant use of "strength" and "fighting" metaphors following Trump's COVID-19 diagnosis, the history of such language when talking about disease, and why it misleads, distracts, and makes things worse. 1/

theatlantic.com/health/archive…
I spoke to doctors, immunologists, linguists, anthropologists, and psychologists about what we're really talking about when we talk about "strength" in the context of "beating" disease, and whether there's any truth to that (very common) idea. 2/ theatlantic.com/health/archive…
On Trump specifically, what he & his supporters are calling "strength" is really 2 things:
- the performance of a specific toxic version of masculinity that prizes aggression, volume, stubbornness, overconfidence, & mockery
- *enormous* privilege
3/
theatlantic.com/health/archive…
Read 5 tweets
Ed Yong Profile picture
10 Sep
🥳A nice thing happened! Huge thanks to the NPCJI for this incredible honour. Ironically, I'm a little lost for words. The previous awardees are incredible; I never expected to be counted among reporters of their caliber, and it means so very much.
As always, any plaudits I get must be shared with my editors @slaskow @PaulBisceglio @andersen @thebanderson who’ve sharpened and polished my work, and our leaders @SwatiGauri @AdrienneLaF @JeffreyGoldberg who’ve created space and time for us to take our biggest swings.
As before, my intention is to donate the prize money from this. I only just found out about this yesterday and need a little time to work out a plan. More, as they say, tk.
Read 4 tweets
Ed Yong Profile picture
9 Sep
🚨I wrote a new piece about the 9 errors of intuition that people keep making during the pandemic, trapping us in a spiral of bad decisions & policies. This is a guide to thinking about the crisis & breaking free from that endless loop. 1/

theatlantic.com/health/archive…
Beating COVID-19 isn't just about more tests/masks. Many of the problems that have tripped us up are conceptual. Magical thinking. False dichotomies. Conflating imperfect with useless. Blaming individuals over fixing systems. I've listed 9. 2/

theatlantic.com/health/archive…
These errors of intuition cropped up in debates over masks, social-distancing, ventilation, colleges. They’ll appear again when we have a vaccine. Winter is coming. We must reset, and "adjust our thinking to match the problem before us.” 3/

theatlantic.com/health/archive…
Read 8 tweets
Ed Yong Profile picture
24 Aug
🥳As they say, some personal news: I won the 2020 Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting!

I’m chuffed to bits. The prize honours writers for a 5-year body of work. By coincidence, I'm a week away from my 5-yr Atlanticiversary (1/7)
casw.org/casw/victor-co…
I'm very grateful to the CASW and the judges. This announcement release is hitting me squarely in the feels. 😭 I’m especially proud that it not only talks about the work, but The Work. (2/7)

casw.org/casw/announcem…
Huge thanks & credit must go to all my incredible Atlantic editors: @slaskow @andersen @PaulBisceglio @rachgutman @julieebeck @thebanderson and Don Peck. I’ve learned so much from them & my colleagues. @JeffreyGoldberg & @slaskow also wrote *the nicest* nominating letters. (3/7)
Read 7 tweets
Ed Yong Profile picture
24 Aug
In this immunology explainer, I noted that some anecdotal accounts of COVID-19 reinfections exist, but to confirm them, you'd need to sequence the genes of the virus from both infections and show they were subtly different.

theatlantic.com/health/archive…
A HK team has apparently done that. If true, this would be the first *confirmed* case of reinfection. (Note: there's a press release, and someone has posted screengrabs of parts of the paper, but the whole thing isn't online 😡)

BUT...

As I wrote, it's not surprising/worrying if reinfections *can happen*. More important Qs are:

- How common are they? (Not addressed in this study)
- Is the 2nd time more/less severe than the 1st? (2nd infection was asymptomatic here, but that's 1 case.)

theatlantic.com/health/archive…
Read 5 tweets

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