This isn’t a COVID-19 wave — it’s a tsunami

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

This is what it took for local and state governments across this country to hit the brakes on their reckless reopening plans: 2.6 million people in the US infected with the coronavirus. 128,064 dead.
Thanks to inept leadership, miscommunication, and a deep sense of hubris, the first wave of this pandemic never ended. It just turned into a tsunami.
Here’s the thing about tsunamis: in deeper water, they’re barely a ripple, and they don’t hit all coastlines the same way. Given the right conditions, they might splash onshore like a small wave or be so distant that people have time to evacuate. But given the wrong conditions — an earthquake just off a coast, a lack of early warning systems — a tsunami wave can become a city-leveling…

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