The Atlantic

The U.S. Has No Plan to Prevent the Next Pandemic

We treat pandemics as inevitable when we could commit to averting them.
Source: Sergio Flores / Getty

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Our institutions are poised to repeat the mistakes of COVID-19.

But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.

Ill-Fated

More than 6 million COVID-19 deaths have been confirmed worldwide, but in many ways that number severely understates the death toll. Experts also look at “excess mortality”—how many more people died as a result of COVID-19 than the number of people who would have died if the coronavirus had never materialized. That means counting people who that between 14 million and 25 million total human beings lost their lives because of the virus.

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