We are all fatigued, frazzled. Many of us have lost too many and too much, and still more will suffer long-term physical and mental effects. A strange geography has cropped into our lexicon: states, provinces and entire countries mapped by their rates of COVID-19, telling us how dangerous it is to go outside, go to work or school. It is also the geography of health care, leadership and policies that aim to protect people first—or not—the willingness to embrace the simply brilliant and brilliantly simple lessons of public health.

Coming for all of us, the entire human population, the disease has laid bare the social, economic and racial disparities between and within nations. It has exposed our failings brutally. Yet it has also revealed bright spots on the map that denote our resolve. The result is, indeed, a marked difference in how countries and people are faring, determined as much by the vagaries of the virus as by the public health protections already in place.