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The inability to field a reliable diagnostic, to deploy it in scale, and the overreliance on syndromic surveillance that was inherently flawed, were historic failures that left us badly at risk. If, as a later analysis has suggested, the first case in Seattle (the one diagnosed on January 20) never started a chain of transmission, and the subsequent outbreak was the result of a second case that had arrived in the city much later, then the virus hadn’t yet gained a foothold in the community until February.36 The window to act on the initial cases that we knew about in Seattle, and the ones we didn’t know about in New York, San Francisco, and other cities, may have been open longer than we thought—if only we had had a way to test for the virus and isolate it. It wasn’t even a hard test to design and manufacture. And still, we badly bungled its rollout.
Uncontrolled Spread
Scott Gottlieb
In our work with couples, we talk about creating love maps. By “love map,” we mean an intimate knowledge of your partner’s inner world. Their hopes and dreams. Their beliefs; their fears; their desires. You have to ask questions not only to create love maps, but also to update love maps. And that means asking open-ended questions. That’s what we mean by “big” questions: there’s no yes/no reply that’s possible; no quick drop-down menu of replies. An open-ended question doesn’t have a predetermined answer. (We all know that the only correct answer to “Did you pay the electrical bill?” is “Yes, honey.”) An open-ended question is full of possibility. There’s not one road forward, but many—you don’t know where the conversation will go next or where you’ll both end up. And that’s how you update love maps and make new ones—both by forging ahead into new territory and by looping back to previously mapped territory to see how it has changed. And we can’t save these types of exploratory questions for date nights. They need to be a daily habit, not a “special occasion” thing.
The Love Prescription
John Gottman and Julie Schwartz Gottman
The durability of concrete structures varies widely: while it is impossible to offer an average longevity figure, many will deteriorate badly after just two or three decades while others will do well for 60–100 years. This means that during the 21st century we will face unprecedented burdens of concrete deterioration, renewal, and removal (with, obviously, a particularly acute problem in China), as structures will have to be torn down—in order to be replaced or destroyed—or abandoned.
How the World Really Works
Vaclav Smil
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