Sarah Zhang
In 2021, she was a Livingston Award finalist for her reporting on Down syndrome. Before joining The Atlantic, she was a staff writer at Wired. She covers science and health.
The Myopia Generation
Why do so many kids need glasses now?
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The Atlantic The Puzzling Virus That Infects Almost Everyone
For many people, Epstein-Barr virus causes mild initial infection, but it is also linked to cancers and multiple sclerosis. What do we do about it?
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Octavio Jones / Getty The COVID Strategy America Hasn’t Really Tried
The clearest way to reduce deaths is to push to vaccinate more of the elderly—yes, still!
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Getty; The Atlantic The Coronavirus Will Surprise Us Again
The variant after Omicron could look very different from any yet.
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Heritage Images / Getty; The Atlantic How a Rare Brain Mutation Spread Across America
The Bowlin family knew they had a history of malformations in the brain. But they had no idea how far back it went.
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Getty; The Atlantic Omicron Is Forcing Us to Rethink Mild COVID
The staggering number of infections among the vaccinated is changing Americans’ pandemic mindset.
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Getty; The Atlantic Omicron Is Pushing America Into Soft Lockdown
Nobody wants to mandate business closures, but so many people are getting sick that businesses are closing anyway.
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Tom Bingham You Have No Idea How Hard It Is to Get a Hamster Drunk
“You just put a bottle of unsweetened Everclear on the cage and they love it.”
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Ben Hickey Omicron Is Our Past Pandemic Mistakes on Fast-Forward
We’ve been making the same errors for nearly two years now.
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Seth Wenig / AP We Know Enough About Omicron to Know That We’re in Trouble
More data will soon be coming in. But how much do they really matter?
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Josep Gutierrez / Getty; The Atlantic Omicron’s Explosive Growth Is a Warning Sign
We don’t know how severe Omicron is, but we do know it’s spreading very fast.
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Getty; The Atlantic We’re Not at Endemicity Yet
Too many people still have no protection against the coronavirus.
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Getty ; The Atlantic The Pandemic’s Next Turn Hinges on Three Unknowns
A potential winter surge is up to vaccines, variants, and us.
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Getty; The Atlantic The Next Weird Way We’re Changing Cats
What if you could make your cat hypoallergenic with biotechnology?
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Andrew Merry / Getty America Has Lost the Plot on COVID
We’re avoiding the hardest questions about living with the coronavirus long term.
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Justin Hofman / Alamy After 30 Years of Breeding Condors, a Secret Comes Out
‘Virgin birth’ might be more common in animals than we thought.
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Matt Chase The Children of Sperm Donors Want to Change the Rules of Conception
Does everyone have a right to know their biological parents?
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Drew Angerer / Getty ; The Atlantic Vaccine Data for Kids Under 5 Are Coming ‘Before the End of the Year’
Pfizer’s CEO set a timeline for when Americans can expect the earliest news about shots for young children.
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Shannon Lin / The Atlantic Six Rules That Will Define Our Second Pandemic Winter
The pandemic keeps changing, but these principles can guide your thinking through the seasons to come.
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Shira Inbar The Plan to Stop Every Respiratory Virus at Once
The benefits of ventilation reach far beyond the coronavirus. What if we stop taking colds and flus for granted, too?
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Jon Cherry / Getty This School Year Is Going to Be a Mess—Again
We have the tools to keep Delta in check, but schools have to actually use them.
