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Two decades of pandemic war games failed to account for Donald Trump

The scenarios foresaw leaky travel bans, a scramble for vaccines and disputes between state and federal leaders, but none could anticipate the current levels of dysfunction in the United States.
  1. Amy Maxmen
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  2. Jeff Tollefson
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Illustration of a simulation of houses with a hand dropping Sars-CoV-2 virus onto them.

Illustration by Ana Kova

Like all pandemics, it started out small. A novel coronavirus emerged in Brazil, jumping from bats to pigs to farmers before making its way to a big city with an international airport. From there, infected travellers carried it to the United States, Portugal and China. Within 18 months, the coronavirus had spread around the world, 65 million people were dead and the global economy was in free fall.

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Nature 584, 26-29 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-02277-6

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