Time - USA (2020-09-21)

4 TIME September 21/September 28, 2020

A devastating

milestone

△

Audience

members at an

Eric Chou concert

on Aug. 8 in

Taipei

From the Editor

Edward Felsenthal,

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF & CEO

@EFELSENTHAL

IN MARCH, AS THE GLOBAL PANDEMIC

hit New York, my colleague Kat Moon

decided—wisely, it turned out, given what

was ahead for the U.S.—to decamp to

her childhood home, Taipei. Despite its

proximity to mainland China, where the

outbreak originated, Taiwan has seen only

495 cases and seven deaths among its more

than 23 million people, making its response

to the corona virus one of the most successful in the world. So

successful, in fact, that last month it was able to host one of

the largest public gatherings reported since social distancing

began: a 10,000-person live arena concert, which Moon and

photographer An Rong Xu attended and covered for TIME. As

one U.S. reader put it on Twitter, “An arena concert taking place

with corona restrictions honestly seems like it’s happening on

another planet considering what’s going on here in the U.S.”

While a great many mysteries remain around COVID-19, the

most eff ective ways to curb its spread are not among them. That

is the theme of this week’s U.S. cover story by Alex Fitzpatrick

and Elijah Wolfson, echoing what scientists around the world

have made clear now for many months. “Not testing alone. Not

physical distancing alone. Not contact tracing alone. Not masks

alone. Do it all,” says World Health Organization director-

general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “Countries that have

adopted this comprehensive approach have suppressed trans-

mission and saved lives.”

And then there is the U.S., which will soon cross a devastat-

ing marker: 200,000 deaths caused by COVID-19. That death

toll—equivalent to U.S. deaths in more than three Vietnams,

or the entire population of Salt Lake City—is the world’s larg-

est by far and more deaths per capita than in all but 12 other

countries.

I spoke this week to Tom Ridge, the former Republican

governor of Pennsylvania who later served as the fi rst Secre-

tary of the Department of Homeland Security—a role created

after Sept. 11, 2001, out of the recognition that the threat of

terrorist attacks on American soil would forever be part of

the nation’s reality. There are clear parallels not only with

the continuing threat of COVID-19 but also with the like-

lihood of future pandemics that virologists predict

may well be worse. “We see in a painful and dra-

matic way the globalization of disease, and it’s in-

cumbent on us to make some rather substantive

changes,” Ridge says. “If we don’t, then shame on

us and shame on our leadership.”

FOR THIS WEEK’S U.S. COVER, we turned to

artist John Mavroudis, who—using data from

the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource

Center—handwrote the death counts in America

on every one of the 193 days between Feb. 29,

the fi rst confi rmation of a COVID-related death

in the U.S., and Sept. 8, as it neared

time to go to press. Out of that data,

the illustration reveals the coming grim

milestone of 200,000. Creative director

D.W. Pine then placed the illustration

within a black border—only the second

time in our history we have done so,

the fi rst being after 9/11. “I really hope

this cover is a wake-up call for those

who are numbed to this catastrophe,”

says Mavroudis. “Science and common

sense are the answers to this crisis.”

THERE IS SOME GOOD NEWS. The

data suggest that we are reducing the

death rate in America among people

who contract the virus. And as TIME’s

Alice Park notes elsewhere in this issue,

it’s possible that at least one vaccine

may be available by the time 2020

comes to an end, although distribution

will create many new questions and

challenges. In the meantime, it is not

too late to do better.

AN RONG XU FOR TIME