World’s Failure to Wipe Out Covid Bodes Badly for Next Pandemic

For much of the past century, a strategy known as elimination was the gold standard for dealing with deadly new viruses. But China’s abrupt reversal of its Covid Zero policy, which took it to an extreme, has cast doubts over the approach and left a gaping hole in the world’s game plan for the next pandemic.

Even outside China, elimination measures like stay-at-home orders proved politically unpopular and difficult to carry out. With some medical experts doubting whether airborne respiratory pathogens can be suppressed, global public health officials are now without a consensus on how best to contain new infectious ...