What we’re living through right now is a nightmare. But it is not remotely a worst-case scenario
The kids aren’t alright. But they could be much worse. Photo: Jens Schlueter/AFP via Getty Images The COVID-19 pandemic is a world-historic disaster. The emergence of a novel strain of coronavirus — that spreads easily in the asymptomatic and kills the infected at ten times the rate of seasonal flu — is a catastrophe for humanity. Although the ailment’s official death toll remains under 10,000, the virus still threatens to kill millions before a vaccine is ready for mass dispersal.
In reality, we are profoundly lucky that this pandemic isn’t worse than it is. A viral outbreak of this scale has long been inevitable. For decades now, public-health experts and advocates have been warning of scenarios nearly identical to that which has played out with COVID-19.
By all appearances, voters and policymakers were never going to recognize that increasing spending on pandemic prevention and preparation by an order of magnitude was a money- saving proposition until we learned the hard way. Which is to say, the first “once-in-century” pandemic was always likely to catch us underprepared .
There is a coherent theoretical basis for why young coronavirus patients have such low fatality rates. As Anthony King of The Scientist reports:
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