By Jennifer S. Bard
Lawyers and law professors are very much part of the ongoing efforts to make policy in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Like everyone else involved, we face the particular challenge of being confronted daily with what seems to be an ever-changing flow of information about a newly emerged and rapidly mutating virus.
But what may help us better make or evaluate policy is a better understanding of some typical characteristics of viruses that make all of them very difficult to contain, rather than just the unique features of the one threatening us now.
Knowing more about the ways that viruses spread could help us avoid the pitfalls of declaring victory too early, rolling back existing infection control measures, and ending up worse off than we have been at any stage of this pandemic.