“Just as there are many ways for microbes to infect a body, there are many ways for epidemics to play out in the body politic. Epidemics can be short-lived or protracted, or, like the Justinianic plague, recurrent.” The New Yorker’s Elizabeth Kolbert: Pandemics and the Shape of Human History. “Outbreaks have sparked riots and propelled public-health innovations, prefigured revolutions and redrawn maps.”

+ “The greatest error that geopolitical analysts can make may be believing that the crisis will be over in three to four months.” Thomas Wright in The Atlantic: Stretching the International Order to Its Breaking Point.

+ Ryan Broderick: “Before the pandemic began, the systems that govern our world were brittle. Today, they are broken. When we emerge, the world will be different, and so will we.” After The Coronavirus Passes, Your World Will Not Go Back To Normal.