This week’s topics are dominated by covid-19. The pandemic, as the World Health Organisation has officially declared it, is spreading fast, with almost 45,000 cases and nearly 1,500 deaths in 112 countries outside China. Politicians are belatedly realising that, as health systems buckle and deaths mount, they will have to weather the storm. America, despite its wealth and the excellence of its medical science, has squandered its chance to prepare for the pandemic, and China’s president, Xi Jinping, celebrated a precipitous fall in cases with a victory lap in Wuhan, where the disease first took hold.
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