What Have You Heard About the Coronavirus This Week?
Science about COVID-19 is advancing faster than any previous outbreak, with the scientific community going from discovering the virus to starting a vaccine trial in just three months. But despite this speed, we still do not know everything that we would like to know about it. And no matter how diligently scientists study the virus in the laboratory, we cannot predict everything that will happen as it spreads around the world. There has never been a virus like this before, and there is only one way to find out what a new pandemic is like.
But we all want to know more. We want to know how deadly it is , where it came from , how much social distancing we really need to do, and how likely it is to infect us or someone we love.
This means that there is a huge gap between what we want to know and what is actually known. And this gap is filled with a lot of things. There are small snippets of genuine news and scientific preliminary discoveries, but they are just droplets in the empty bucket of our curiosity. The rest that fills this void are things of more indeterminate utility: opinions, assumptions, mathematical modeling. Feelings of medical professionals, doubts and hopes of politicians. Conspiracy theories. And, quite possibly, some brilliant observations that we do not yet recognize as such.
It is becoming clear that separating information from misinformation is more difficult than ever during COVID-19, but also more important than ever. At Lifehacker, we generally avoid hiding information that is preliminary or that appears to be false or unreliable – unless it is extremely popular, in which case we will proceed to rebuttal. But now that uncertainty reigns around us, we are going to take a different approach.
This is why we are launching a series of open discussions on Mondays where you can share what you have experienced lately. We can discuss a bit here – I’ll give my own flair if you like – and then the Lifehacker team will use this discussion to brief them on their coverage throughout the week.
For starters, here are a few things I’ve encountered lately:
- A few weeks ago, there was a warning that ibuprofen may not be safe for treating fever in COVID-19 patients. But this warning turned out to be not based on clinical data and was not accepted by large organizations as an official recommendation. However, this did not stop a lot of people from sending it to me. I urged not to cover this on Lifehacker, but at the time I really felt insecure: there was no evidence, but should we discuss the extent to which they are not supported, and the reasons why it seems plausible. ? I hope people didn’t flock to pharmacies to buy Tylenol when the drugs they had at home were (as far as we know) perfectly normal.
- There has been a lot of discussion lately about whether the community council not to wear masks was a mistake. One recent Washington Post review argued that we should all make our own masks out of old T-shirts. I’m actually working on a post about the pros and cons of cloth masks right now, but I think this is a subtle topic. Medical masks are in short supply and need to be retained for medical professionals and people with medical needs. Cloth masks are not considered PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) for medical personnel. There is conflicting evidence as to whether sheet masks are useful in real life. (Lots of lab tests, very few real-life population studies.) Personally, I’m not planning on wearing a mask, but I understand why this topic is a topic of discussion.
- Hospital parking lots and waiting rooms are empty in some places. Obviously, there is a movement (obviously on one side of the political spectrum) calling on people to document the void to show that the whole idea of a congested healthcare system is a hoax. But these visible parts of hospitals are empty for a much more real and obvious reason: Non-emergency procedures are being canceled because the CDC is asking medical facilities to keep patients out unless absolutely necessary . Many hospitals have also canceled or reduced visiting policies. It is partly a measure of social distancing, and partly a way to offset the surge in demand for health care that is already happening in some places and inevitably expected in others.
These are just three of the many stories around that seem worth discussing to me, but ultimately more challenging than a quick “we should” or “we shouldn’t” recommendation.
So now we would like to hear from you. What have you heard about the coronavirus (or any related issues) that makes you wonder? What excites you, what scares you, what you can’t wait to share, or what you tired of seeing on repeat? If something you read made you think, “Hmm, maybe I should do something different in my life now that I know it,” we would love to hear about it.
Update 04/01/2020: We accidentally linked this article on masks from Wired where we wanted to link this article from the Washington Post . Both read well. The link is now fixed.