confronting global disasters: government inabilities to abilities

Confronting Global Disasters

In 2019, two months before the first official reports of the new coronavirus were registered in Wuhan, the U.S. government shut down a research program called Predict. Predict, which was run by the U.S. Agency for International Development, was responsible for tracking and researching more than a thousand different viruses. At the time, the program’s creator blamed its closure on “risk-averse bureaucrats.” This week, we’re bringing you a selection of pieces about the ways in which we confront and manage—or, at times, mismanage—global disasters. In “Donald Trump’s Anti-Globalist Response to a Global Coronavirus,” Michael Specter, a science writer who has covered pandemics extensively, reports on the efforts by the Trump Administration to limit funding for disease research and to interrupt the very initiatives developed to help safeguard the public against a large-scale outbreak. In “The Estimate of Deaths in Puerto Rico Reflects a Broader Neglect,” Amy Davidson Sorkin writes about the tragedy of Hurricane Maria, which hit Puerto Rico late in the summer of 2017, and assesses how political indifference led to an increase in fatalities after the storm. In “A Summer of Megafires and Trump’s Non-Rules on Climate Change,” Elizabeth Kolbert examines the outbreak of widespread megafires in California and analyzes the anti-environmental policies that have exacerbated wildfire conditions in the U.S. and other areas around the world. Finally, in “Doomsday Prep for the Super-Rich,” Evan Osnos explores the extreme emergency plans of the super wealthy and chronicles the measures that some are taking to protect themselves, and only themselves, in the event of a global catastrophe. Taken together, these pieces are a bracing reminder of the fragility of individuals and families in the face of calamity, and the role that government and community can play in lessening the damage.

—David Remnick