Pandemic Perspectives

Three coronavirus stories from around the web

3 Stories We’re Reading

• As Covid-19 slows in Asia and surges in Europe and North America, Africa — initially spared by early spread of the disease — is bracing for its “break the glass” moment, writes Philip Obaji Jr. at the Daily Beast.
• The New Yorker interviewed (and fact-checked) Richard A. Epstein, the author of an article strongly downplaying the Covid-19 pandemic that is thought to have influenced President Donald Trump’s initial call to reopen the country by Easter. “Admit to it,” Epstein says to his interviewer. “You’re saying I’m a crackpot.”
• At the New York Times, celebrated travel writer Paul Theroux draws parallels between life in the time of Covid-19 and his experience of the violence and nationwide curfews enforced in Uganda in 1966. Keep a journal, he says. Any crisis “ought to be an occasion to bear witness, even if it means leaving the safety of home.”