Reflections on a terrible year

Albert on global health and Taiwan; Michelle on togetherness and a year of separations

Happy New Year, friends! We hope yours is off to a promising start.

Photo from April, when Taiwan first reported zero cases of COVID. Photo: Sam Yeh/AFP/Getty Images

Albert on the cold comfort of Taiwan’s pandemic success story

If for whatever reason you want to get your blood boiling, I recommend Lawrence Wright’s incredible New Yorker piece on how the United States botched its response to the COVID pandemic. Wright channels his anger with precision, detailing how the Trump administration, beset by denialism, actively downplayed the severity of the situation at every possible moment.

Wright also takes aim at the Chinese government, which did not allow investigators from the Centers for Disease Control to visit and assess the situation at a crucial juncture. As reports from the summer confirmed, officials from the World Health Organization repeatedly ran up against the Chinese government’s recalcitrance and secrecy during the early stages of the pandemic. Publicly, WHO officials praise…