July 26, 2020 | View In Browser

Illustration: Keith Negley

“This pandemic is probably not ‘the Big One,’ the prospect of which haunts the nightmares of epidemiologists and public health officials everywhere,” Michael T. Osterholm and Mark Olshaker recently wrote in the pages of Foreign Affairs. If the current crisis is a warning of outbreaks to come, then the world can learn from its mistakes and begin to prepare. Policy and lifestyle changes can limit the spread of new pathogens. Governments can develop more effective methods for tracking epidemics, no matter where in the world they emerge. And national and international health systems can be better equipped to fight the next deadly virus when it arrives.