WELL, THE PUBLIC HEALTH COMMUNITY HAS SQUANDERED ITS PUBLIC TRUST ON THIS ONE, SO THEY WON’T HAVE MUCH TO WORK WITH NEXT TIME AROUND: Why Stephen Emmott fears the next pandemic could kill a billion people. And Covid-19 is a very mild pandemic disease by comparison with others that might occur. They’ve oversold it — understandable in the beginning when all we knew was that the Chinese were panicking, but not by now — and people will discount what they say next time. And yet it could be much, much worse next time.

Squandered trust is very destructive, yet such squandering is the hallmark of pretty much all of our institutions these days, worldwide. That says something unfortunate about the people who are running those institutions.