The ebb and flow of a pandemic cannot be explained by changes in human behavior
In one of his morning newsletters for the New York Times last week, David Leonhardt had a piece headlined “Not in Control,” in which he asks readers to consider a slew of “COVID-19 mysteries.” Almost all of them involve instances in which the original virus or variants were expected to spread but didn’t, with no reasonable explanation.
In India, for example, where the Delta variant was first identified and caused a major outbreak, cases have dropped precipitously in the past two months. In the US, meanwhile, a rapid drop began in January before vaccination was even widespread nationally. In March and April, the Alpha variant caused a spike in cases in the upper Midwest and Canada, but inexplicably, it never spread to the rest of North America. And in Africa and Asia, large parts of those continents still haven’t had outbreaks on the level of the ones Europe, North America, and South America have experienced.
Leonhardt spoke with Michael Osterholm, director of the infectious disease research center at the University of Minnesota, who “suggests that people keep in mind one overriding idea: humility.” As Dr. Osterholm put it, “We’ve ascribed far too much human authority over the virus.”
Reflecting on what he has learned from these unexplained, albeit happy failures of the virus to spread, Leonhardt writes that
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