Homer's Illiad, 800 BC, Apollo's plague upon the Greeks: "frequent funeral piles of the dead were continually burning"

India 2020 AD: https://t.co/jhWEJZWrQ6

It's awful to contemplate how India will suffer.

Plague is not new to our species. It's just new to us. #ApollosArrow pic.twitter.com/S7AmV2JEFT

— Nicholas A. Christakis (@NAChristakis) April 30, 2021

Do not go gentle
into that good night.
Rage, rage against
the dying of the light. pic.twitter.com/QOd51WECEb

— Mark Pahlow (@mcpheeceo) May 1, 2021

WIDER IMAGE Documenting the death of a COVID patient outside a Delhi hospital https://t.co/0CUazRjUT9 pic.twitter.com/9tg8A5XOy2

— Reuters World (@ReutersWorld) April 26, 2021

Fashion company Richemont confirms death of designer Alber Elbaz from COVID-19 https://t.co/2XplGuWAjv pic.twitter.com/J7ieLzNeRC

— Reuters World (@ReutersWorld) April 25, 2021

If you step out of your own little bubble for a half-second, you’ll discover that around the world this is the WORST period ever for the COVID pandemic, and the second-most devastating in terms of deaths. We apparently don’t care much once it’s not happening to us, directly. pic.twitter.com/tMkbuC21wv

— Horizons One (@JJSingh) May 2, 2021

JUST IN: India reports 362,738 new cases and 3,448 new deaths

— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) May 4, 2021

For this Sunday's @nytimesbooks, I reviewed Michael Lewis' new book on the bungled U.S. Covid response -- which is really a history of how we got here, and why Trump, in the words of one character, was merely "a comorbidity.” https://t.co/ffrly2MT4N

— Nick Confessore (@nickconfessore) May 6, 2021

This is a looping, flashback-heavy account, making the most of Lewis' conceit: That key people, tucked away deep in the dysfunctional U.S. public health bureaucracy, saw the Covid pandemic -- or something like it -- coming. https://t.co/ffrly2MT4N

— Nick Confessore (@nickconfessore) May 6, 2021

In Lewis's account the villain is not Trump but the CDC itself: A butt-covering, badly politicized, wholly ineffective institution that one character compares to a person who has let flattering, but untrue, stories circulate about their glorious high school football career.

— Nick Confessore (@nickconfessore) May 6, 2021

The reflexive tendency to valorize civil servants abused by Trump gave the CDC tons of cover in the early days, Lewis writes, allowing officials there to duck blame. pic.twitter.com/43LN1GLyYZ

— Nick Confessore (@nickconfessore) May 6, 2021

Lewis focuses a lot on California, where the Newsom admin was — at least early in — thought to be a model of a quick-response state.
Not at all, reports Lewis, whose book casts the state’s former top public health official, Sonia Angell, as incompetent. https://t.co/U7DUiwHK9x pic.twitter.com/0mC2Z7bzwt

— Nick Confessore (@nickconfessore) May 6, 2021

We have, over the last year, witnessed a modern version of denying Galileo. “Believe science” ought never be conflated with “believe experts”, who got SARS-CoV-2 transmission completely wrong. From @zeynep:https://t.co/ttWRAbOp0o

— Ben Thompson (@benthompson) May 8, 2021

I am sticking with “increase the reimbursement rates, allow commercial ad campaigns, and let the private sector figure this out.”

This is like the very model of a problem (how do you gin up sales for something) that capitalism was built to solve. https://t.co/6zgGcPSbfS

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) May 9, 2021