POLICY In the COVID-19 crisis, rival institutions joined forces. Can those collaborations endure? by Bruce Walker It is now possible to imagine a world recovered from COVID-19. In that future, how will medicine have changed? These 10 essays explore the technical, social and political ripples of the pandemic. On March 2, 2020, within days of the first reported cases of COVID-19 in the United States, a group of about 100 physicians and scientists gathered at Harvard Medical School to discuss the gathering storm. The meeting was notable in that it reached beyond institutional walls. It included not only people from Harvard, but also from the University of Massachusetts, MIT, Boston University, Tufts and all the teaching hospitals. It included local biotechnology firms, including Moderna, and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. Via video hookup, we had collaborators from the heart of the epidemic in China.