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Ed Yong

29 Dec, 8 tweets, 3 min read

🚨In my final piece of 2020, I look ahead to Pandemic Year 2--the vaccination rollout, how the virus will react, the lingering societal scars, and the larger lessons we must learn (but risk forgetting) from this horrendous year. 1/

theatlantic.com/health/archive…

Things are dark now. Hope is on the horizon but so are obstacles.

As one expert said: “Think about next summer as a marker for when we might be able to breathe again. But there’s almost a year’s worth of work that needs to happen in those 6 months.” 2/

theatlantic.com/health/archive…

Part 1 of this piece is about the challenges of rolling out the most complicated vaccination campaign in US history.

Part 2 looks at the new patchwork that will arise, when some parts of the US are heavily immunized & others aren’t. 3/
theatlantic.com/health/archive…

Part 3 is about the virus’s next move—how long the immunity from vaccination might last, whether/how the virus might evolve in response, and what happens next. 4/

theatlantic.com/health/archive…

Parts 4 & 5 are about the enduring scars that a year of pandemic failure will leave even as vaccinations restore a sense of normalcy—a tattered health-care system, millions of long-haulers, and widened inequities that will last a generation. 5/

theatlantic.com/health/archive…

Finally, Part 6 is about how we’ll think about the pandemic in hindsight, the lessons that will make us better prepared next time, and the risk that "we're trying to get through this with a vaccine without truly exploring our soul.” 6/

theatlantic.com/health/archive…

"There is a likely future in which America’s immune system learns lessons from COVID-19 but its collective consciousness does not."

But as 2021 progresses, we can choose to reject that future, and truly prepare ourselves for the next pandemic. 7/

theatlantic.com/health/archive…

I hope this piece steel us for the next year by laying out what we might dare hope for & what to be wary of.

I hope it reminds us to grapple with what happened in 2020 and with the high price of forgetting what “normal” cost us. 8/

theatlantic.com/health/archive…

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More from @edyong209

Ed Yong

@edyong209

30 Dec

I’m stepping away from pandemic reporting for a few months to finish the book I paused in March. This year has been the most professionally meaningful of my life, but it has also shredded me. It’s been months of continually staring straight into the sun, and I need to blink. 1/

I talked more about this on the Longform podcast: longform.org/posts/longform…

It says something about this year that the prospect of finishing a book now feels like a radical act of self-care. Book-writing: a famously relaxing and restorative activity! A “break”! 😬😬2/

A necessary decision, but not an easy one: Obviously the pandemic is still going on, and will be for some time. I’ll be back in the spring to cover it.

In the meantime, here’s my look at 2021, what it will likely bring & the lessons we need to learn. 3/

theatlantic.com/health/archive…

Read 4 tweets

Ed Yong

@edyong209

30 Dec

I always knew I wanted to end the pandemic year with a deep look ahead to the next one. But this ended up being about more than vaccines and viruses, and as much about memory, forgetting, and how we make sense of and learn from disasters.

theatlantic.com/health/archive…

A running theme of my work this year has been the devastating consequences of underfunding and neglecting public health. Which turns out to be a problem when you want to, y’know, vaccinate a country.

theatlantic.com/health/archive…

Other countries have done MUCH better at this with a fraction of the resources that the US has. This should prompt a wholesale reevaluation of what preparedness and exceptionalism actually mean.
theatlantic.com/health/archive…

Read 4 tweets

Ed Yong

@edyong209

24 Dec

Here are 10 pandemic pieces that I'm especially proud of.

1) On how it came to this.

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

2) This one from March--the first of the really big pieces, about the likely near- and long-term future of the pandemic.

theatlantic.com/health/archive…

3) On why everything has been so confusing. theatlantic.com/health/archive…

Read 13 tweets

Ed Yong

@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

Ed Yong

@edyong209

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

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

THEODEN: “What can men do against such reckless hate? A THREAD 1/“

Read 19 tweets

Ed Yong

@edyong209

4 Dec

@sarahzhang

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

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