Thread by @edyong209

🚨Here's my new piece about our great challenge—control this pandemic while ALSO averting the next. For centuries, the US has been stuck in a Sisyphean cycle of panic & neglect. It can break that loop, but the window of opportunity is already closing. 1/
theatlantic.com/health/archive…

The opening chapter of the next pandemic is being written right now. I know, I know. Next one?! Can’t we get through this one first? No, sadly, we can't. History tells us we don't have time. Learn from the past immediately, or repeat it imminently. 2/
theatlantic.com/health/archive…

In some ways, Delta was an audition for the next pandemic--and one that we flubbed. Many of the actions we took this spring were headlong dives into the neglect phase of the cycle. This is a warning about how swiftly complacency can set in. 3/
theatlantic.com/health/archive…

In the 1930s, public health got just 3.3 cents per medical $; in the 2010s, it got 2.5. For every investment, an equal & opposite disinvestment. The system needs repair. But policy-makers in more than half of states have moved to weaken it further. 4/ theatlantic.com/health/archive…

I look at *why* the panic-neglect cycle exists, including 150 years that led to America’s crumbling public health system & its obsession with biomedical panaceas. That history is vital. It’s why we think about this pandemic the way we do. 5/ theatlantic.com/health/archive…

We need to think about preparedness differently, in terms of not just vaccines & tech solutions, but also social measures like paid sick leave, universal healthcare, and more. Social equity is not a side-quest of preparedness but its foundation. 6/

theatlantic.com/health/archive…

Some of that is happening. Biden’s American Rescue Plan is an incredibly important pandemic-preparedness bill that doesn't look like one. But more needs to happen, and neglect is already setting in. The pull of normal is strong but normal led to this. 7/

theatlantic.com/health/archive…

You can sort of see this piece as the third in a trilogy. I wrote the first in 2018, when I asked if the US was ready for the next pandemic, and tried to work out what "preparedness" even means. 8/ theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

I wrote the second last summer; it explores the many ways in which America's seemingly strong society was exquisitely vulnerable to a pandemic. This piece was much wider than the first, and reflects how my understanding of preparedness changed. 9/

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

Those lessons are codified in this new piece. One of the people I interviewed described this as “the most important piece about the pandemic that had not yet been written.” I hope I did it justice. I hope we can break the cycle. Fin/
theatlantic.com/health/archive…