The Economist this week | | Our coverage of the coronavirus |  | | |
| Welcome to the newsletter highlighting The Economist’s best writing on the pandemic.
Our cover this week examines the huge impact that the virus has had on the office and working life. Around the world employees, governments and firms are trying to work out if the office is obsolete—and are coming to radically different conclusions. Before the pandemic only 3% of Americans worked from home regularly; now vast numbers do. How much of this change will stick when a vaccine arrives? The emerging picture is of an “optional office”, which people attend, but less frequently. That will have huge economic costs, from the collapse of city-centre cafés to the $16bn budget shortfall that New York subway’s system faces. Still, rather than turning the clock back, governments and firms need to adapt.
Although the plight of mega-cities gets much of the attention, the pandemic is changing suburbs, too. We report from the front line of Britain’s commuterland. Meanwhile the implications of lockdowns continue to extend far beyond work. Our sister publication, 1843, looks at the revival of the drive-in cinema. Latin America is in the midst of an education crisis: more than 95% of the region’s 150m pupils remain at home and most countries have set no date for school reopening. At least the coronavirus pandemic has eliminated the flu season in the southern hemisphere. As we explain in this week’s Graphic detail, lockdowns and social distancing have changed the pattern of this illness dramatically. In the first two weeks of August, the World Health Organisation (WHO) processed nearly 200,000 influenza tests, and found just 46 were positive. In a typical year the number would be closer to 3,500.
The WHO itself has been the subject of bitter criticism, not least from the White House. But as we report from Geneva, it has done reasonably well against covid-19. And to perform better it needs more muscle and money. Alongside our analysis we have also published one of our periodic By Invitation essays, this time by Tedros Adhanom, the WHO’s director-general. He outlines the risks from vaccine nationalism but also strikes an optimistic note, as long as countries co-operate rather than fight. “Although we absolutely must not let down our guard, it is possible to imagine the beginning of the end of the health and economic crises caused by the coronavirus.” | | |
 | Zanny Minton Beddoes
Editor-In-Chief | | | |
Editor’s picks Must-reads from our recent coverage | | |
