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I was traveling through Uganda just as the Trump administration announced new restrictive measures to guard against the Ebola virus outbreak for travelers coming from that country, the Congo and South Sudan. I wasn’t worried about my health. The epicenter of the virus, located in Ituri Province in the Congo, was about 200 miles away from where I was staying in western Uganda, and I hadn’t visited Kampala, where at least five cases had been identified. My initial concern focused on the logistical hurdles I might encounter returning to the U.S. ... In the end, nothing happened. I didn’t have my temperature taken. I was not questioned or taken aside. (Laura Kelly, 5/27)

Most successful scientists are optimists. They have to be, since the vast majority of experiments fail. In graduate school, I remember sitting in the lab at Rockefeller University in New York at 3 a.m., surrounded by stacks of culture dishes for growing cancer cells, none quite showing me what I hoped to find. But glimmers of interesting changes in the cells promised future success and made me feel the experiments wanted to work. (Sally Kornbluth, 5/27)

The MV Hondius outbreak is not an isolated incident. It is another warning sign—one that echoes the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. It demonstrates, once again, the human costs of scrambled health responses at sea. Despite the experience of 2020, international law still lacks clear and coordinated rules for managing public health emergencies on cruise ships. Reform efforts have failed to learn the lessons from the past. (Thomas Mulder and Dr. Natalie Klein, 5/25)

After almost a year of policy disputes, staff turnover and complaints about management, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary resigned under pressure earlier this month. His successor will need to restore order at an agency in turmoil. (5/28)