Coronavirus disease 2019

Aerosols containing Covid-19 can travel as easily as the smoke from a cigarette...If you can smell a cigarette in the location you're at, then you're breathing someone else's air that may have the virus in it. ~ Michael Osterholm

Virus particles dilute rapidly outdoors. Virginia Tech aerosol expert Linsey Marr has compared it to a droplet of dye in the ocean: "If you happen to be right next to it, then maybe you'll get a whiff of it. But it's going to become diluted rapidly into the huge atmosphere". ~ Sheila Mulrooney Eldred quoting Linsey Marr

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The disease was first identified in December 2019 in Wuhan, the capital of China's Hubei province, and has since spread globally, resulting in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Quotes

Outbreaks of new viral diseases are like the steel balls in a pinball machine: You can slap your flippers at them, rock the machine on its legs and bonk the balls to the jittery rings, but where they end up dropping depends on 11 levels of chance as well as on anything you do. ~ Shi Zhengli

• Aerosols containing Covid-19 can travel as easily as the smoke from a cigarette, Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said Friday.
  "If you want to understand what an aerosol is, just think of somebody smoking," Osterholm told CNN. "If you can smell a cigarette in the location you're at, then you're breathing someone else's air that may have the virus in it."
  • Travis Caldwell, “The surge of Covid-19 infections for unvaccinated people is only beginning, experts warn”, CNN, July 31, 2021

• We spend billions of dollars on vaccines and drugs, but you can't get funding to do research on basics like how effective is this mask versus that mask," he said, adding that was partly because answers to those questions didn't make the problem go away -- they just decreased the risk.
  • Peter Collignon, as quoted in “Coronavirus has been with us for a year. Here's what we still don't know”, by Julia Hollingsworth, CNN, (28/12/2020)

• We didn't know until the last 24 hours.
  • Brian Kemp, governor of Georgia, on that asymptomatic COVID-19 infected individuals can transmit the disease, in a CNN interview recorded in April 2020

• Virus particles dilute rapidly outdoors. Virginia Tech aerosol expert Linsey Marr has compared it to a droplet of dye in the ocean: "If you happen to be right next to it, then maybe you'll get a whiff of it. But it's going to become diluted rapidly into the huge atmosphere."
  • Linsey Marr as quoted by Sheila Mulrooney Eldred, “Coronavirus FAQ: I'm Vaccinated. I Thought I Could Give Up Masks! But Should I?, NPR, (July 26, 2021)

• I say "possibly" (for the SARS-CoV-2 to more dangerous to humans than the other coronaviruses) because so far, not only do we not know how dangerous it is, we can't know. Outbreaks of new viral diseases are like the steel balls in a pinball machine: You can slap your flippers at them, rock the machine on its legs and bonk the balls to the jittery rings, but where they end up dropping depends on 11 levels of chance as well as on anything you do. This is true with coronaviruses in particular: They mutate often while they replicate, and can evolve as quickly as a nightmare ghoul.
  • Shi Zhengli (2020) cited in "We Made the Coronavirus Epidemic" on The New York Times, 28 January 2020.

• There is no disease in the history of humankind that has disappeared from the face of the Earth when zoonotic disease was such an important part of, or played a role in, the transmission.
  • Michael Osterholm cited in “The coronavirus is here to stay — here’s what that means”, Nature, (16 February 2021), 590, pp.382-384

There is no disease in the history of humankind that has disappeared from the face of the Earth when zoonotic disease was such an important part of, or played a role in, the transmission. ~ Michael Osterholm

• One thing about this (COVID-19) that's somewhat unprecedented is the speed at which new data is coming out and becoming available for mass consumption.
  • Angela Rasmussen (2020) cited in ""Talking to a Virologist About How Worried We Should Be About Coronavirus" on Intelligencer, (31 January 2020).

[[File:Deux_masques_grand_public.jpg|thumb|It’s become clear that cloth masks, even though they’re not as effective as the N95s, are still effective at reducing transmission. Even if you’re not achieving that 95 percent reduction, something is better than nothing. ~ Linsey Marr

• “It’s become clear that cloth masks, even though they’re not as effective as the N95s, are still effective at reducing transmission,” said Linsey Marr, an aerosol expert at Virginia Tech. “Even if you’re not achieving that 95 percent reduction, something is better than nothing.”
  • Linsey Marr as quoted in “Masks Work. Really. We’ll Show You How”, Or Fleisher, Gabriel Gianordoli, Yuliya Parshina-Kottas, Karthik Patanjali, Miles Peyton and Bedel Saget; “New York Times”, (Oct. 30, 2020)

• The most challenging aspects of modelling COVID-19 are the sociological components, Meyers says. “What we know about human behaviour up until now is really thrown out of the window because we are living in unprecedented times and behaving in unprecedented ways.” Meyers and others are trying to adjust their models on the fly to account for shifts in behaviours such as mask wearing and social distancing.
  • Christie Aschwanden, “Five reasons why COVID herd immunity is probably impossible”, Nature, (18 March 2021), 591, pp.520-522

We’re building simplified representations of reality. Models are not crystal balls. ~ Neil Ferguson

• The true performance of simulations in this pandemic might become clear only months or years from now. But to understand the value of COVID-19 models, it’s crucial to know how they are made and the assumptions on which they are built. “We’re building simplified representations of reality. Models are not crystal balls,” Ferguson says.
  • Neil Ferguson cited in “Special report: The simulations driving the world’s response to COVID-19”, Nature, (02 April 2020, correction 03 April 2020), 580, pp.316-318)

• "If you were to create a petri dish and say, how can we spread this the most? It would be cruise ships, jails and prisons, factories, and it would be bars," Alozie says. He was a member of the Texas Medical Association committee that created a COVID-19 risk scale for common activities such as shopping at the grocery store.
  • Ogechika Alozie, as quoted by Will Stone, "How Bars Are Fueling COVID-19 Outbreaks”, Health-Shots, NPR, (August 18, 2020)

• “The idea of just opening a stadium and letting the crowds come back to capacity is clearly really foolish,” says Mark Rupp, chief of infectious disease at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. In an interview, Rupp tells me that while there could be ways of limiting crowds and enforcing safety measures, “I don’t think there is any way of taking the risk out of it completely, quite frankly.”
  • Mark Rupp as quoted in “When Will Football Stadiums Look Normal Again?“, by Carolyn Barber, Scientific American, (October 21, 2020)

• “We started to see retail workers get sick and put themselves on self-quarantine,” said Kim Cordova, president of the UFCW Local 7 in Colorado, which represents more than 17,000 private sector grocery workers in the state. “They had to use personal time to take time off or go to work sick...Workers felt [hazard pay] was just like a carrot to keep you working during this dangerous health crisis."
  • Kim Cordova, quoted in “Grocery workers died feeding the nation. Now, their families are left to pick up the pieces.”, NBC News, (April 13, 2021)

• Terrorists – like all criminals – have sought to profit from COVID-19, to make money, strengthen their base and to fuel division.
  • Jürgen Stock, “INTERPOL – Terrorist groups using COVID-19 to reinforce power and influence”, "Interpol", (22 December 2020)

• You cannot outrun the game clock with this pandemic. This virus will find you and, unfortunately, many of the outcomes are very sad. Look at what's happening right now in the US. We have health care systems around the country, including in my home state of Minnesota, that are hanging on by a thread. We've seen health care systems virtually broken by this pandemic. They just couldn't provide critical care to non-Covid patients.
  • Michael Osterholm as quoted by Peter Bergen in “The infectious disease expert who warned us 800,000 Americans would die of Covid-19”, CNN, (Dec 11, 2021)

• Wikipedia's main article for Wikipedia, one of the most important (as well as most edited) articles on the project, explains that the ability to lock pages and prevent anonymous public editing on the encyclopedia that anyone can edit was the key to Wikipedia's success in weeding out disinformation on the coronavirus.
  • "From Anarchy to Wikiality, Glaring Bias to Good Cop: Press Coverage of Wikipedia's First Two Decades"" (January 31, 2021) by Omer Benjakob (Haaretz) and Stephen Harrison (Slate )

“The epic battle against coronavirus misinformation and conspiracy theories” (5/21/2020)

Philip Ball & Amy Maxmen; “The epic battle against coronavirus misinformation and conspiracy theories”, Nature, (27 May 2020), 581, pp. 371-374

Every major news event comes drenched in rumours and propaganda. But COVID-19 is “the perfect storm for the diffusion of false rumour and fake news”, says data scientist Walter Quattrociocchi at the Ca’Foscari University of Venice, Italy. People are spending more time at home, and searching online for answers to an uncertain and rapidly changing situation. “The topic is polarizing, scary, captivating. And it’s really easy for everyone to get information that is consistent with their system of belief,” Quattrociocchi says.

“The problem with infodemics is its huge scale: collectively, we are producing much more information than what we can really parse and consume,” says De Domenico. “Even having thousands of professional fact-checkers might not be enough.”

Efforts to raise the profile of good information, and slap a warning label on the bad, can only go so far, says DiResta. “If people think the WHO is anti-American, or Anthony Fauci is corrupt, or that Bill Gates is evil, then elevating an alternative source doesn’t do much — it just makes people think that platform is colluding with that source,” she says. “The problem isn’t a lack of facts, it’s about what sources people trust.”

• Every major news event comes drenched in rumours and propaganda. But COVID-19 is “the perfect storm for the diffusion of false rumour and fake news”, says data scientist Walter Quattrociocchi at the Ca’Foscari University of Venice, Italy. People are spending more time at home, and searching online for answers to an uncertain and rapidly changing situation. “The topic is polarizing, scary, captivating. And it’s really easy for everyone to get information that is consistent with their system of belief,” Quattrociocchi says.
• Efforts to raise the profile of good information, and slap a warning label on the bad, can only go so far, says DiResta. “If people think the WHO is anti-American, or Anthony Fauci is corrupt, or that Bill Gates is evil, then elevating an alternative source doesn’t do much — it just makes people think that platform is colluding with that source,” she says. “The problem isn’t a lack of facts, it’s about what sources people trust.”

• In New York, the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S., the city’s health department put out a set of guidelines entitled, “Sex and coronavirus disease.” One piece of official advice: “You are your safest sex partner.”
  • NYC Health Department, cited in “Why the coronavirus might change dating forever”, CNBC, (May 25 2020)

• Ten days ago, I issued an appeal for an immediate ceasefire in all corners of the globe to reinforce diplomatic action, help create conditions for the delivery of lifesaving aid and bring hope to places that are among the most vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic. This call was rooted in a fundamental recognition: There should be only one fight in our world today, our shared battle against COVID-19.
  • Antonio Guterres, "Secretary-General Reiterates Appeal for Global Ceasefire, Warns ‘Worst Is Yet to Come’ as COVID-19 Threatens Conflict Zones", United Nations, (3 April, 2020)

• Enough is enough. go home and stay home.
  • Justin Trudeau, himself in self-isolation since his wife had tested positive, scolded Canadians who did not stay home

See also

• Coronavirus recession
• COVID-19 pandemic deaths
• COVID-19 vaccine
• Disease X
• Evacuations related to the COVID-19 pandemic
• Hydroxychloroquine
• Immune system
• Management of COVID-19
• Shortages related to the COVID-19 pandemic
• Travel restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic
• Vaccines

External links

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