What an honor. HUGE thanks to my editors @slaskow@andersen & @thebanderson; @PaulBisceglio for leading our pandemic coverage; our fact-checkers & copy-editors; & the Atlantic's entire sci/tech/health team for constant inspiration. Truly couldn't have done it without you all
Also it is so thrilling to see some of the best being recognized for their incredible work last year. This, for example, makes me very, very happy. "Polk Award-winner @HelenBranswell" has a great ring to it. Congrats, Helen. You set the standard.
I'm still meant to be on a Twitter break so pls excuse the impersonal nature of this, but THANK YOU to everyone for the kind messages. I'm chuffed to bits.
Hello! I'm briefly resurfacing from a glorious Twitter hiatus (to accompany an equally glorious book leave) to plug a few things.
First, I'm really proud to announce that I am guest-editing the next edition of the Best American Science and Nature Writing anthology, out in Oct. The choices are done, and it was hard to narrow them down, but I'm very happy with the selection. hmhbooks.com/shop/books/the…
The Atlantic launched a wonderful new podcast called The Experiment. Huge congrats to @hooliwho, @katlwells, @AMelathe, & the rest of the team. The first ep features a cameo by me, throwing shade at amendments. theatlantic.com/podcasts/exper…
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/
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/
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.
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.
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…
🚨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/
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/
🚨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/
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/
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/