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When I was 11, I was scarred for life by the BBC. It was 1975 and the show was called “Survivors.”The title sequence began with a masked Chinese scientist dropping a glass flask. It smashes. We then see him boarding a plane to Moscow, where he starts to feel unwell. Suddenly, a naked arm falls lifeless across the screen. We see passport stamps for Berlin, Singapore, New York . . . finally London. And then a ghastly red stain spreads across the screen. The genius of the series was that it was set in middle-class England — a serene Herefordshire of tennis courts, boarding schools, and stay-at-home wives. Within 10 minutes of episode one, however, that England was spiraling back to the 14th century. For the Chinese scientist’s flask contained a bacterium even more deadly than Yersinia pestis, which is now generally recognized to have caused the Black Death. (Niall Ferguson, 2/3)

As reports of new coronavirus infections soar, it’s becoming clear that Chinese government leaders have been putting their political interests ahead of public health. This is not a surprise but a long-established pattern. In recent days, medical experts have found evidence that the origin of the outbreak was not a seafood market in Wuhan, as the Chinese government initially reported. That evidence also suggests that the first human infections occurred in November, if not earlier, rather than in early December. (Sarah Cook, 2/3)

In recent weeks, scientists have raced to understand the deadly new coronavirus and develop new tools to diagnose and contain it. As with past emerging threats, I’ve been impressed to see how this novel virus has mobilized collective action that transcends borders, sectors, and individual interests over such a short period.During those same few weeks, more familiar pathogens have been quietly exacting a far heavier toll on human health and prosperity. Neglected diseases like diarrheal illnesses, tuberculosis, malaria, and pneumonia kill thousands of people every day. But because they have been doing so for decades, they simply don’t catalyze the same urgency we see in the face of a novel, fast-moving outbreak. (Nick Chapman, 2/4)

Last month the National Archives found itself in the middle of a firestorm after it put a doctored photograph of the Women’s March on Washington on display. Even if the photo was not part of the National Archives’ own collection, the exhibit distorted history, and David S. Ferriero, the archivist of the United States, soon apologized. This was only the latest example — and hardly the most important — of a great and growing threat to our nation’s capacity to protect and learn from history. (Matthew Connelly, 2/4)

“Are we going to die today?”That was the last question a student ever asked me in my classroom at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. I taught about the Holocaust in room 1214, a fact that was obvious from just one glance around it. The back of the room was adorned with a yellow banner that read: “We will never forget,” donated to the class by a Holocaust survivor. The walls were lined with a painting of barbed wire that students had done the year before. (Ivy, 2/3)

No matter where you stand on the right to die, the recent New York Times feature on Marieke Vervoort’s life or death decision likely touched a chord. After years of blinding pain brought on by a degenerative muscle disease, the Paralympic Belgian medalist opted for a medically assisted death. Though Vervoort’s struggles transcend borders, her ability to die this way does not. (Anita Hannig, 2/4)

The fabled coastline of Malibu beckons residents, tourists, swimmers, surfers — and, now, homeless people. In the last few years, homeless people living in their vehicles, mostly RVs, have essentially taken up residence along parts of Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. In a way, their presence is proof that access to the coast is, indeed, guaranteed to all the public by the state’s landmark Coastal Act. But does public access mean someone can stake out a parking spot on Pacific Coast Highway overlooking the beach indefinitely? That’s as gnarly a question as some of the waves offshore. (2/4)