There Won’t Be a Clear End to the Pandemic

Politics article by Joe Pinsker, online at The Atlantic , September 16, 2020.

Do you, like me, find yourself fantasizing about what you will do when all this is over? You are not alone. For me, it’s movies in the cinema and live music in small venues. The reality is that we may not find a clear and discernible end. Instead, SARS-CoV-2 is likely to become, like influenza, a permanent fixture of our ecology. As the Columbia epidemiologist Stephen Morse says (from the article) “You can’t sign a treaty with a virus, so we have to settle for a kind of cease-fire…” This article covers some of the psychological and cultural aspects of this unfolding pandemic and gently walks us toward a more realistic set of expectations.

Today’s bite-sized, handpicked selection of important news, information or science for all who want to know where this epidemic is going and what we should do.