<em>The Atlantic Daily</em>: The Pandemic Is an Intuition Nightmare

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Nine months into this outbreak, your brain may feel like it’s been tumbling around in a washing machine, bouncing up against despair and hope intermittently.

Today, we look at some of the cognitive traps that are muddling Americans’ thinking—and offer insights into what’s still to come:

America is trapped in a pandemic spiral.

Ed Yong, whose coverage of this pandemic has been essential, lays out nine conceptual errors that continue to dog the country—including, troublingly, a habituation of horror.  

The next phase will be emotionally challenging.

“We’ve been psychologically kicking the can down the road,” Juliette Kayyem writes. But the pandemic won’t end when the year does, she warns.

Today’s news, in two sentences:

(1) A new book from Bob Woodward alleges that President Donald Trump admitted to minimizing the danger of the coronavirus. (2) Fires continued to ravage the West, leaving San Francisco bathed in a dystopian orange glow.

One question, answered: A reader named Mike from Berlin, Germany, asks: Does America need another shutdown?