COVID-19

It says something profoundly troubling about the times in which we live that Americans are using a genuine public health crisis to sow division, stir animosity, and score political points. But that's where we find ourselves in 2020.

Perhaps other than virologists, few people would have predicted that a tiny microbe would dominate global headlines for several months in 2020. It goes without saying that the coronavirus has kept us quite busy.

This article was originally published at Geopolitical Futures.

David Gura, an MSNBC anchor I've never heard of, apparently has a TV show called "Up." And, like most cable TV show hosts, he has opinions.

"China produces and exports a large amount of pharmaceuticals to the U.S., including 97 percent of all antibiotics and 80 percent of the active ingredients used to make drugs here.

Why do microbes kill some people but not others? This is the hardest question in all of medical microbiology. The reason it's so hard is because the answer depends not just on the microbe in question but also on the person.

It's unclear what planet World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is inhabiting, but it's certainly not this one.

If a new BBC Persian report is accurate, the death toll from coronavirus in Iran is far higher than the official numbers.

"When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"