Every pandemic starts as a squall—a localized disturbance in a single city or town, causing all manner of problems there, but sparing the larger world outside. Squalls become storms, however, and storms become tempests and before long the entire world is being lashed by winds of disease and death that no one saw coming just a few months before. As President Joe Biden takes office, he is facing nothing short of a pathogenic typhoon, with COVID-19 raging around the world, nowhere more so than in the U.S., with some 24 million cases and 400,000 deaths—more than 20% of the global toll.
