VOLUME 13 NUMBER 1 (January to June 2020)

COVID-19: What we know and don’t know and what to do

Imagine finding your way out of a forested swamp at night, not knowing if your next step leads you closer to the swamp’s edge or deeper into the morass. That’s what officials dealing with COVID-19 must feel. It reminds me of the months I led a UN team to fight the Ebola outbreak in Africa in 2014-2015. In the field of public health, trying to make the best decisions from a pile of often confusing data and an even larger stack of unknowns is a matter of course, but when faced with a global health emergency it is a heavy burden.