Everything seems normal until, suddenly, it isn’t. The global crisis caused by the coronavirus outbreak has transformed life as we know it and will continue to do so. With hundreds of thousands of deaths likely and countries across the world in lockdown, the impact of coronavirus is as upsetting to consider as it mind-boggling to grasp.
In this week’s special edition of the magazine, we first look at the science of the virus. To begin, Laura Spinney, author of Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World, unpicks the complicated race to discover an effective vaccine that can be mass-produced. Then, Graham Readfearn looks at what the virus does to our bodies, while health editor Sarah Boseley and science correspondent Hannah Devlin lay out the facts we know so far about the virus.
After that, we consider the global response beginning with Simon Tisdall’s analysis of how world leaders – autocrats and democrats alike – have been caught in the headlights. Then, David Smith, our man in Washington, looks at how Donald Trump has been found more wanting than most. Sarah Boseley analyses why the UK made a dramatic shift in its virus strategy on Monday.
We then head to northern Italy where the writer Tobias Jones and his family have been living under lockdown for a fortnight in Parma, and Barney Ronay wonders what we will do without sport, one of life’s great distractions. There is more on the crisis throughout the magazine.
