The Economist this week | | Our coverage of the new coronavirus |  | | |
| Welcome to the newsletter highlighting The Economist’s best writing on the pandemic. Our cover this week highlights the nature of viruses, life stripped down to its essentials of information and reproduction. Viruses have caused a litany of modern pandemics, from covid-19 to the influenza outbreak in 1918-20. However, the influence of viruses on life on Earth goes far beyond the tragedies of a single species. Recent research shows how viruses have shaped the evolution of organisms of all types since the very beginnings of life. For humanity they present a heady mix of threat and opportunity. As well as a six-page essay about viruses and their profound effect on creation, our coverage of the pandemic this week includes a detailed report on the many baffling chronic complications of contracting covid-19. Our sister publication, 1843, looks at what the history of the elevator reveals about social distancing. We have stories from Iran, about the failure to control crowds of worshippers during an important religious festival, and Britain, where the government has launched a shake-up of the health bureaucracy at a tricky moment. And our economists calculate the astonishingly high financial return to society from people wearing a mask. Our mortality tracker uses the gap between the total number of people who have died from any cause and the historical average for the time of year to estimate how many deaths from the virus the official statistics are failing to pick up.
We have also been focusing on covid-19 in Economist Radio and Economist Films. This week we feature a wide-ranging interview with Bill Gates, in which he shares his predictions for how and when the pandemic might end.
As the summer draws on, I hope you are finding our covid-19 coverage useful and stimulating. | | |
 | Zanny Minton Beddoes
Editor-In-Chief | | | |
Editor’s picks Must-reads from our recent coverage | | |
