Editor’s letter

If our fight against Covid-19 were a horror movie, then we’d probably be in that clichéd second-to-last scene right now. You know the one: The villain has been thrown off a building, blown up, or crushed by a truck, and the surviving protagonists are gasping with relief. Except, of course, the monster isn’t really dead. So just before the final credits roll, Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, or some other serial slayer pounces back on to the screen, giving viewers one final scare and setting up the next installment in the franchise. Here in the real world, it’s tempting to think that we’ve defeated our own viral villain. Thanks to remarkably effective vaccines, new Covid cases in the U.S. are at their lowest level in more than a year and life is returning to a pre-2020 normal. Polls show that some 30 percent of Americans now think the pandemic is over. But if horror movies have taught me anything, apart from the dangers of investigating suspicious sounds in a poorly lit basement, it’s that this killer isn’t done with us yet.

The warning signs are all around. In the U.K. and Israel, authorities have slowed reopening plans and reimposed mask mandates, respectively, because of outbreaks of the highly contagious Delta variant. Los Angeles County is so worried about this mutant strain that it’s recommending all residents wear masks in indoor public spaces. Most of those infected with the new variant are unvaccinated adults and children; the relatively few “breakthrough” cases in fully inoculated people tend not to result in serious illness. But only 46 percent of Americans are fully vaccinated; that share drops to about 30 percent in deep-red states such as Mississippi and Alabama. Come fall, when temperatures drop and coronaviruses spread more easily, we will likely see an explosion of Delta infections and deaths among the unvaccinated and—because many young kids won’t yet be eligible for shots— more school shutdowns. A happy ending to our Theunis Bates national Covid horror remains a long way off. Managing editor