Alexis C. Madrigal
He is the author of Powering the Dream and the forthcoming The Pacific Circuit. He created the podcast Containers and the television show Real Future. He previously worked at Wired, at Univision, and in various editorial roles at The Atlantic.
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Getty / The Atlantic A Dire Warning From COVID-19 Test Providers
U.S. coronavirus testing could fail again, as surging demand creates new backlogs and delays.
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The Atlantic A Devastating New Stage of the Pandemic
The U.S. has seen more cases in the past week than in any week since the pandemic began.
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Mel D. Cole / Getty / The Atlantic America Is Giving Up on the Pandemic
Businesses are reopening. Protests are erupting nationwide. But the virus isn’t done with us.
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Getty / The Atlantic ‘How Could the CDC Make That Mistake?’
The government’s disease-fighting agency is conflating viral and antibody tests, compromising a few crucial metrics that governors depend on to reopen their economies. Pennsylvania, Georgia, Texas, and other states are doing the same.
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The Atlantic State and Federal Data on COVID-19 Testing Don’t Match Up
The CDC has quietly started releasing nationwide numbers. But they contradict what states themselves are reporting.
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Getty / The Atlantic How Virginia Juked Its COVID-19 Data
The state is combining results from viral and antibody tests in the same statistic. This threatens to confound America’s understanding of the pandemic.
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How Facebook Works for Trump
Donald Trump won the presidency by using the social network’s advertising machinery in exactly the way the company wanted. He’s poised to do it again.
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Adam Maida A New Statistic Reveals Why America’s COVID-19 Numbers Are Flat
Few figures tell you anything useful about how the coronavirus has spread through the U.S. Here’s one that does.
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Steve Pfost / Newsday RM via Getty Private Labs Are Fueling a New Coronavirus Testing Crisis
Backlogs at private laboratories have ballooned, making it difficult to treat suffering patients and contain the pandemic.
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Hanna Barczyk and Franziska Barczyk How the Coronavirus Became an American Catastrophe
The death and economic damage sweeping the United States could have been avoided—if only we had started testing for the virus sooner.
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Eduardo Munoz / VIEWpress via Getty How to Understand Your State’s Coronavirus Numbers
As the outbreak spreads, state websites are still some of the best sources of information on how many people have been tested.
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Martin Bergsma / shutterstock / Getty / The … The Dangerous Delays in U.S. Coronavirus Testing Haven’t Stopped
Without adequate testing, people with coronavirus symptoms are left to agonize over the right course of action on their own.
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Getty / The Atlantic Exclusive: The Strongest Evidence Yet That America Is Botching Coronavirus Testing
“I don’t know what went wrong,” a former CDC chief told The Atlantic.
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The Atlantic The Official Coronavirus Numbers Are Wrong, and Everyone Knows It
Because the U.S. data on coronavirus infections are so deeply flawed, the quantification of the outbreak obscures more than it illuminates.
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David Paul Morris / Bloomberg / Getty / … The Gig Economy Has Never Been Tested by a Pandemic
Companies such as Uber and Instacart have transformed the urban experience, but would they hold up if the coronavirus spread across America?
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The Atlantic The Hard Drive With 68 Billion Melodies
Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-re, do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-mi … you get the picture.
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David McNew / Newsmaker / Getty Tech Experts Are Pessimistic About Their Industry
Silicon Valley has hit a midlife crisis.
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Paul Taylor / Getty / Katie Martin / … The Coronavirus Is a Data Time Bomb
It will be a long time before we understand what the outbreak did to the global economy.
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Jordan Gale / The New York Times The Company That Botched the Iowa Caucus Was Formed Only Months Ago
Its app didn’t solve much, but it did reveal a lot.
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Carlos Garcia Rawlins / Reuters How to Misinform Yourself About the Coronavirus
Even if you avoid the conspiracy theories, tweeting through a global emergency is messy, context-free, and disorienting.
