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This week brought another round of urgent pandemic updates, both catastrophic and spectacular. Our writers help you process the good and the bad.
“Understanding the pandemic this week requires grasping two thoughts at once,” my colleague Robinson Meyer writes with the COVID Tracking Project.
“First, the United States has never been closer to defeating the pandemic. Second, some of the country’s most agonizing days still lie ahead.”
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The end of the pandemic is in sight. “The most tenuous moment is over: The scientific uncertainty at the heart of COVID-19 vaccines is resolved,” Sarah Zhang reports.
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But how many Americans will die between now and then? “With cases rising as fast as they are, the U.S. could cross the threshold of 2,000 daily deaths within a month,” report Alexis C. Madrigal and Whet Moser of our COVID Tracking Project.
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That makes this the final surge—and it’s looking deadly. “Almost every major metric of the pandemic stands at or near record levels,” Robinson writes.
One question, answered: Did President Donald Trump delay the arrival of at-home coronavirus testing?