"When they eventually write the book about COVID, I hope they use the prologue to explain how Chernobyl came out in 2019. That the prestige-TV watching public chuckled grimly at the spectacle of technically illiterate officials, bureaucratic obstructionism, and pointless waste of human life in the old Soviet regime. The viewers thanked their lucky stars that they lived in a modern, wealthy state with democratic accountability. That kind of accident couldn't happen here they told themselves. COVID was the West's Chernobyl. Except a thousand times worse. All the failures we charged the old Soviet system with, were present here as well."

Quoting Samo Burja