makeshift hospital bed

Experts warned of a pandemic decades ago. Why weren't we ready?

In a rueful look back at her prescient book, an author wrestles with why we shrugged at the nightmare warnings and hopes this time will be different.

With its hospitals overwhelmed by COVID-19 cases, New York City is relying on makeshift intensive care units constructed in Central Park. The rapid spread of the new coronavirus caught most of the world unprepared despite decades of warnings from scientists.

Photograph by Misha Friedman, Getty Images
A version of this story appears in the July 2020 issue of National Geographic magazine.

In my obsessive reading about the coronavirus pandemic, I’ve avoided articles that focus on the early missteps that could have stopped COVID-19 if only we’d been more attentive, organized, and responsive. Those articles were wreaking havoc with my anxiety level. The time for “coulda, woulda, shoulda” would be later, I figured; what matters now is whatever needs to be done in the next few days, and the next few days after that.

There’s also a personal reason why I’ve boycotted articles about early warning signs: Scientists were detailing those early warning signs decades ago, and a handful of science journalists were writing about their work. I was one of those journalists.

When I started researching A Dancing Matrix in 1990,

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