Understanding the pandemic

COVID-19 Timeline: Critical Moments in the First Year produced by information designer Lydia Hooper, Jan 29, 2021

The Code: How Genetic Science Helped Expose a Secret Coronavirus Outbreak, by Sarah Kaplan et al., The Washington Post, September 24, 2020

The Mayo Clinic provides accurate, up-to-date, patient-focused explanation of the symptoms, cause, diagnosis, and treatment of COVID-19, as it does for many medical conditions

A Primer on R0 for Infectious Diseases from 2U, a company providing digital learning technology

COVID-101: Doctor-reviewed answers to all your COVID-19 questions. This website states “Our consortium of public health experts, medical doctors, and experts-in-training rapidly review the scientific literature and tell you what you need to know. Each post is reviewed for accuracy by our doctors.”

Estimates of the prevalence of COVID-19 infection and predictions about the course of the current pandemic play a major role in public health and public policy responses to it. Differing views of epidemiologists and philosophers of science reveal the roles played by models and evidence. See, for example:

• Models v. Evidence by University of Pittsburgh’s Jonathan Fuller, Assistant Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, May 5, 2020
• On COVID-19, a Respected Science Watchdog Raises Eyebrows reports on controversy stirred by epidemiologist John Ioannidis, May 4, 2020
• Good Science Is Good Science by epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch, May 12, 2020
• COVID-19 Prevalence: John Ioannidis Responds to His Critics in this May 16, 2020 Medscape interview

History and Symptoms of the Coronavirus Illness, from Pacific Medical Training, provides some basic information and context for understanding COVID-19, accessed November 20, 2020

Anatomy of a Coronavirus - An Interview with Virologist Barbara Sherry, who explains basic issues—e.g., what is a virus, what is the ACE2 receptor, how soap stops the spread of the virus—in an interview with science communicator Brian Malow on April 8, 2020

Embracing the Uncertainties—While the unknowns about coronavirus abound, a new study finds we ‘can handle the truth’, New York Times, April 7, 2020

How To Test A Country—Planet Money Episode 981, from March 18, explaining why testing has taken so long to become available in the US

How the Virus Got Out—a New York Times online graphic from March 22, 2020

Measuring the basic reproduction rate (R0), dispersion (k), and case fatality rate of coronavirus:

• COVID19 in numbers—R0, the case fatality rate and why we need to flatten the curve—In this video, three computational biologists explain in accessible terms how contagious this coronavirus is, how many people it may infect, how virulent it is, and what it means to “flatten the curve.”

• This Overlooked Variable Is the Key to the Pandemic. It’s not R.—Zeynep Tufekci, a University of North Carolina faculty member writing in The Atlantic, explains attempts to measure dispersion of the virus and the “superspreader” phenomenon, September 30, 2020

Here’s How the Pandemic Finally Ends gathers comments from 11 experts, including Paul Offit and Zeke Emanuel, on the next one to three years, Politico, September 25, 2020

How the Pandemic Will End: The US may end up with the worst COVID-19 outbreak in the industrialized world. This is how it’s going to play out.—by Ed Yong in The Atlantic, March 25, 2020

Naming the New Coronavirus – Why Taking Wuhan out of the Picture Matters by the Center affiliated faculty member Mari Webel from the Department of History, writing for The Conversation

Johns Hopkins Corona Virus Resource Center, including its Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases map

How Coronavirus Hijacks Your Cells, a New York Times article by Jonathan Corum & Carl Zimmer with helpful graphics

Why outbreaks like coronavirus spread exponentially, and how to “flatten the curve,” an article in the Washington Post by Harry Stevens with a simulation of virus spread

Why the [UK] Government changed tack on COVID-19, Saloni Dattani’s analysis of the UK’s approach—and change in approach—to the pandemic, published by UnHeard

The Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team modeling report that helped to persuade the UK to change its approach, March 16, 2020

Two commentaries in tension:

• A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data by John P.A. Ioannidis, March 17, 2020
• We know enough now to act decisively against Covid-19. Social distancing is a good place to start by Marc Lipsitch, March 18, 2020