Borowitz writes: "No one could have seen the coronavirus pandemic coming except for people who are capable of reading, a new study indicates."
Workers in South Korea, which has been hit hard by COVID-19, disinfect a subway station in Seoul to slow the virus's spread. (photo: Newsis/AP)
14 April 20
The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report." 
o one could have seen the coronavirus pandemic coming except for people who are capable of reading, a new study indicates.
The study, published by the University of Minnesota, is highly critical of the current early-warning system for global pandemics, which requires that a person have the literacy necessary to read, comprehend, and digest a memo.
“In order to see a pandemic coming, one would have to read and also understand the words, sentences, and paragraphs that compose a typical memo,” Professor Davis Logsdon, the author of the study, said. “And some of these memos can run two, three, even four pages in length.”
For someone who does not typically read, and instead spends ten or twelve hours a day watching television, “A memo like that is doomed to fall through the cracks.”
Logsdon believes that the abject failure of the current “reading-centric” early-warning system can teach us valuable lessons about how to combat future pandemics.
“Right now, the lives of millions depend upon one person not being illiterate,” he said. “That’s setting the bar awfully high.”
