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Five years after the peak of Covid-19, as the nation searches for its next Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director, the most immediate threat to U.S. pandemic preparedness may not be a novel virus, but the erosion of public trust. The country remains vulnerable as avian influenza spreads, vaccination rates decline, and outbreaks of measles and dengue reemerge. (Charles J. Lockwood, Robert C. Gallo and Sten H. Vermund, 3/31)

For decades, five siblings in rural Kentucky were slowly turning to stone. After walking for just a few minutes, their legs would painfully freeze up, as if turning to rock — an agony no doctor could explain. By the time the eldest sibling, Louise Benge, reached her 50s, she had come to believe that medicine might never figure out what ailed her family. (Alexandra Sifferlin, 3/31)

Activists challenged the work; conservatives championed it, then defunded it. (Adam Omary, 3/30)

False positive results lead to nearly 30,000 people arrested on drug charges. (Tricia Rojo Bushnell, 3/31)

A new initiative declares that Chicago's hospital-centric infrastructure must be shrunk and proposes that Illinois defund the safety net hospitals. (Tim Egan, 3/31)