(Timeline)
Here are selected news stories relative to the Covid-19 pandemic (and directly or indirectly the science behind it) for the month of April 2020, starting with the most recent news. (Let me know if you hit a paywall or if you find scientific misinformation.)
Return to the latest news on the news timeline
Back to May 1, 2020
April 30, 2020
NYT: The Coronavirus: What Scientists Have Learned So Far
- “Men are more likely to die from an infection compared to women, possibly because they produce weaker immune responses and have higher rates of tobacco consumption, Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure than women, which may increase the risk of complications following an infection.”
CNN: Remdesivir drug shows promise — but it is far from a coronavirus cure
- “It improved recovery time for coronavirus patients from 15 to 11 days. That’s similar to the effect that the influenza drug Tamiflu has on flu.”
- “The study also showed that 8% of patients who took remdesivir died compared to 11% of patients who received the placebo. However, there were not enough deaths to make those numbers statistically significant.”
- “The value, instead, is more in what the study’s results represent — that a drug can indeed have an impact on Covid-19.”
NYT: Millions Had Risen Out of Poverty. Coronavirus Is Pulling Them Back
- “While everyone will suffer, the developing world will be hardest hit.”
- “Most at risk are people working in the informal sector, which employs two billion people who have no access to benefits like unemployment assistance or health care.”
- “Poverty is a huge driver of disease, and illness is one of the big shocks that drive families into poverty and keep them there.”
BBC: Coronavirus cure: When will we have a drug to treat it?
- “If a company chooses to go back to work, what’s the role of that company if they end up seeding infections to the wider public?”
- “The problem, experts say, is that diagnostic testing remains so limited that a second surge of cases could silently build.”
- States should work together to “test widely to identify cases, isolate people who are sick, and track down and quarantine people they’ve encountered to see if they contracted the virus.”
Medical News Today: Loss of smell may suggest milder COVID-19, study finds
STAT: How high will it go? As Covid-19 death toll in U.S. blows past 60,000, there are no easy answers
- “As some models stumble, and many no longer even try to project more than a few weeks, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has added models to those it highlights on its website.”
- “We do not try to calculate how many of the Covid-19 deaths ‘substitute’ for other deaths; that is an important calculation that researchers will be eager to do once the crisis passes.”
- “You may believe a different methodology paints a truer picture of how Covid-19 deaths compare to others. As we said, how to think about deaths is deeply personal.”
April 29, 2020
STAT: Gilead says critical study of Covid-19 drug shows patients are responding to treatment
- This is “the first treatment shown to improve outcomes in patients infected with” Covid-19.
- “[T]he NIAID study, which was not expected to be released so soon, was by far the most important and rigorously designed test of remdesivir in Covid-19. The study compared remdesivir to placebo in 800 patients…”
nature: Hopes rise on coronavirus drug remdesivir
- The NIAID results put a new sheen on remdesivir. “It may not be the wonder drug that everyone’s looking for, but if you can stop some patients from becoming critically ill, that’s good enough”
- Remdesivir works by gumming up an enzyme that some viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, use to replicate. In February, researchers showed that the drug reduces viral infection in human cells grown in a laboratory.
Hungary Today: Coronavirus: Blood Plasma Therapy Promising, Recovered Patients Asked to Donate Blood
MOVED OR REMOVED
- “In a scientific collaboration, two patients from Semmelweis University who tested positive for coronavirus, have received the already licensed serum infused with the blood plasma of healed COVID-19 patients. The serum was developed by a group of Hungarian research physicians, together with Semmelweis University and the Virology Center of the University of Pécs.”
The Atlantic: Why the Coronavirus Is So Confusing
- A very informative article!
- “This is how science actually works. It’s less the parade of decisive blockbuster discoveries that the press often portrays, and more a slow, erratic stumble toward ever less uncertainty.” (Science is generally a slow advancement towards becoming more and more certain of “facts”.)
NYT: COVID-19 Complication Seen in Children Is ‘Rare’, WHO Says
Page No Longer Available at NYT, but available at Reuters:
COVID-19 Complication Seen in Children Is ‘Rare’, WHO Says
- “Three U.S. children infected with the virus are being treated for a rare inflammatory syndrome that appears similar to one that has raised concerns in Britain, Italy and Spain.”
- “There are some recent rare descriptions of children in some European countries that have had this inflammatory syndrome, which is similar to Kawasaki syndrome, but it seems to be very rare.”
April 28, 2020
SciAm: ‘Spider-Man’ Immune Response May Promote Severe COVID-19
BBC: Coronavirus and chloroquine: Is there evidence it works?
- There are “risks of serious side effects, including renal and liver damage.”
- “More than 20 trials carried out, including in the US, UK, Spain and China.”
- France has authorised its use but has warned of side effects.
- India has recommended it as a preventative treatment for healthcare workers but warns it is “experimental” and only for emergency situations.
- “Several Middle Eastern countries have authorised its use or are conducting trials. This includes Bahrain, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia.”
- There are reports of “people poisoned from overdoses of chloroquine”.
Science: Why don’t some coronavirus patients sense their alarmingly low oxygen levels?
nature: The race for coronavirus vaccines: a graphical guide
April 27, 2020
NYT: In Race for a Coronavirus Vaccine, an Oxford Group Leaps Ahead
- “As scientists at the Jenner Institute prepare for mass clinical trials, new tests show their vaccine to be effective in monkeys.”
- “[W]ith an emergency approval from regulators, the first few million doses of their vaccine could be available by September … if it proves to be effective.”
NPR: CDC Adds 6 Symptoms To Its COVID-19 List
- The CDC has added “six more conditions that may come with the disease: [1] chills, [2] repeated shaking with chills, [3] muscle pain, [4] headache, [5] sore throat and [6] new loss of taste or smell.”
BBC: Coronavirus: New Zealand claims no community cases as lockdown eases
- “No community cases” basically means that all known cases could be traced in order to know exactly how the virus is spreading. New Zealand is managing to control the spread.
- “The country brought in some of the toughest restrictions in the world on travel and activity early on in the pandemic, when it only had a few dozen cases.”
- “It closed its borders, started enforcing quarantine of all arrivals in the country, brought in a stringent lockdown and mounted an extensive testing and contact tracing operation.”
CSM: With science and shared values, Sweden charts own pandemic course
Updated May6, 2020
- “The emphasis of Sweden’s response to the pandemic has been on citizens taking personal responsibility”
- “Dr. Tragdarh says decisions made by Swedish authorities have been science-based rather than political”
- “The governments of Finland and Denmark “were given similar advice from their health agencies, but they decided to shut down public life anyway.”
- “A lot of the strategy is based on cultural norms, the narrative that Swedes will follow the recommendations and trust the authorities,” however the outcome was not as good as expected. (As of April 27, Sweden has around three times more deaths per capita than Denmark and around six times more than Finland.)
- Twenty-two Swedish experts” demanded “the government to take a different course of action”.
Berkeley: Urban slums are uniquely vulnerable to COVID-19. Here’s how to help
- “COVID-19 became a pandemic because of the global spread of the virus by those people who can afford to travel on airplanes and cruise ships. As we are now seeing, inevitably, the disease has ended up in vulnerable communities of the world.”
SciAm: How China’s ‘Bat Woman’ Hunted Down Viruses from SARS to the New Coronavirus
nature: Whose coronavirus strategy worked best? Scientists hunt most effective policies
- “Researchers sift through data to compare nations’ vastly different containment measures.”
- “The database will standardize the information collected by the different teams and should be more comprehensive than anything an individual group could generate, says Chris Grundy, a data scientist behind the LSHTM [London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine] project.”
April 26, 2020
AP: Perfect storm: Lombardy’s virus disaster is lesson for world
AP: Virus lockdown raises tensions in France’s poorest areas
- “Alongside the food crisis, there has been scattered violence, with youths targeting French police in confrontations that end in clouds of tear gas, including in Clichy-sous-Bois. The town is where filmmaker Ladj Ly shot his Oscar-nominated modern police drama ‘Les Misérables’.”
Reuters: Mink found to have coronavirus on two Dutch farms: ministry
- Mink are the latest mammals found to test positive for Covid-19.
April 25, 2020
LA Times: Could a ‘controlled avalanche’ stop the coronavirus faster, and with fewer deaths?
April 24, 2020
Medscape: COVID-19 Linked to Large Vessel Stroke in Young Adults
- “It’s been surprising to learn that the virus appears to cause disease through a process of blood clotting,” Dr. Oxley of Mount Sinai Health System in New York City told Medscape Medical News.
NYT: Amid Signs the Virus Came Earlier, Americans Ask: Did I Already Have It?
- It seems that many people were already sick with Covid-19 in the US in January or February.
CBS Boston: Cambridge Research Institute Creates Plan To Test Reopening The Workplace
- “The Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard believes if they are careful, they can prevent infection in the workplace.” Their “experiment” is testing a plan.
- “If someone tests positive, the Institute would do tracing of everyone they came in contact with at work and those colleagues would be retested. If a second person tests positive, the institute would sequence that virus, then check to see if the transmission was among staff or outside of the workplace.”
STAT: WHO launches ambitious global project to develop Covid-19 medical products
- “[A] key goal is to level the global playing field so that any products will be available to rich and poor populations alike.”
MedicalXPress: COVID-19: New model predicts its course, resolution and eventual good news
- “The predictions, updated daily, are available at COVIDwave.org and look at the ratio of known infections to recoveries in each country.”
MedicalXPress: Higher levels of NETs in blood associated with more severe COVID-19
- “New research finds a connection between destructive white blood cells and a more severe disease course in patients with COVID-19,” showing evidence of an overactive immune system.
MedicalXPress: The promise and uncertainties of antibody testing for coronavirus
- “Everybody wants to be believe that if I have antibodies, I’m immune. Well, we can’t be certain of that. The antibody test for this virus hasn’t been around long enough to show that nobody can get infected again if they have antibodies.”
- A recent study showed that 25% of patients that recovered from Covid-19 had low levels of antibodies and 5% had undetectable levels.
- “We have not proven that the antibodies that are being produced are in fact neutralizing antibodies. It’s possible, for example, that an antibody may bind to a part of the virus that the virus doesn’t need to infect our cells. In order to be neutralizing, an antibody must prevent the virus from infecting our cells.”
- “I would call convalescent plasma a treatment of desperation, but that’s where we are right now.”
Oxford… : Oxford COVID-19 vaccine begins human trial stage
NYT: ‘Playing Russian Roulette’: Nursing Homes Told to Take the Infected
April 23, 2020
CNN: Preliminary antibody testing in New York suggests much wider spread of coronavirus
Reuters: Blood-pressure drugs are in the crosshairs of COVID-19 research
- A clue is the “disproportionate number” of Covid-19 patients with high blood pressure.
- Blood-pressure drugs might increase the number of ACE2 enzymes on a cell’s surface in order to raise levels of a hormone that dilates blood vessels, but the ACE2 enzymes are the sites where the virus strikes and where its RNA enters the cell.
- “Other evidence, however, suggests the infection’s interference with ACE2 may lead to higher levels of a hormone that causes inflammation, which can result in acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), a dangerous build-up of fluid in the lungs.”
WebMD.com: The Great Invader: How COVID Attacks Every Organ
MOVED OR REMOVED
- “We have underestimated and misunderstood COVID-19 since it first appeared.”
- “It’s joined the ranks of other ‘great imitators’ — diseases that can look like almost any condition.”
- It interferes with signals for immune responses, to give it time to spread before causing symptoms!
- If the immune system doesn’t stop the virus soon enough, it ends up in the lungs or in the digestive system.
- From there it can go to attack “other organs that have ACE2 receptors … including heart muscle, kidneys, blood vessels, the liver, and potentially the central nervous system.”
- It has not yet been confirmed scientifically if the virus can attack nerve cells and travel this way, for example, from the nasal passages to the brain. If so, this can explain how the sense of smell is affected. (Viral particles have been found in the fluid around the brain it at least one patient.)
- “In one study from the Netherlands, 31% of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 got [blood] clots while on blood thinners.”
- “Targeting or blocking [the ACE2] receptor as a treatment strategy to prevent viral entry into cells may actually worsen blood pressure, increase the risk of heart failure and kidney injury, and increase inflammation that may worsen lung injury.”
- “Timing is likely to be key in treatment strategies. For example, patients may need a drug to boost the immune system early on in the disease, and then one to tamp it down if the disease progresses and cytokine markers begin to rise.”
- Skin conditions related to Covid-19 are described.
April 22, 2020
MIT: Researchers identify cells likely targeted by Covid-19 virus
- Researchers at MIT, Harvard and other institutes have found specific types of cells that the virus targets in the lung, the nasal passages, and the intestine.
- These cells have two proteins, ACE2 on the cell membrane that binds to a spike on the virus and TMPRSS2 that “activates” the spike to allow the RNA genetic material to enter the cell.
- They used data that came from the Human Cell Atlas project and other sources to discover which human cells express these proteins (i.e, assemble them according to genes in their DNA) .
- The cells in the nasal passages are “goblet secretory cells“, which produce mucus. The cells in the lungs are type II pneumocytes in the alveoli (tiny air sacs at the end of the air passages), which have already been known to be affected by the virus.
- Surprisingly, “expression of the ACE2 gene appeared to be correlated with activation of genes that are known to be turned on by interferon, a protein that the body produces in response to viral infection”. Experiments confirmed that interferon did exactly that. However, interferon is part of the immune system, meaning that the virus is “hijacking” part of the immune system to enter cells.
- Interferon is sometimes used to treat other viral infections. This finding then complicates matters for using it to fight Covid-19.
- Click here for a pre-print of the research report.
genengnews.com: Connecting SARS-CoV-2 Dots: Pinpointing Targeted Cells and Exploring Interferon’s Intriguing Role
- An article on the same research described in MIT’s article above.
- “It’s also too soon to try to relate the study findings to the ‘cytokine storm,’ a runaway inflammatory response that has been reported in very sick COVID-19 patients. Cytokines are a family of chemicals that rally the body’s immune responses to fight infections, and interferon is part of the family.”
- “It might be that we’re seeing a cytokine storm because of a failure of interferon to restrict the virus to begin with, so the lungs start calling for more help. That’s exactly what we’re trying to understand right now.”
NYT: Alarmed as COVID Patients’ Blood Thickened, New York Doctors Try New Treatments
Page not available at NYT, but found at Reuters:
Alarmed as COVID Patients’ Blood Thickened, New York Doctors Try New Treatments
- “As colleagues from various specialties pooled their observations, they developed a new treatment protocol. Patients now receive high doses of a blood-thinning drug even before any evidence of clotting appears.”
- “The American Society of Hematology, which has also noted the clotting, says in its guidance to physicians that the benefits of the blood-thinning therapy for COVID-19 patients not already showing signs of clotting are ‘currently unknown’.”
CNN: Study finds no benefit, higher death rate in patients taking hydroxychloroquine for Covid-19
- This report describes the research article pre-print (not yet peer reviewed or published) found on medRxiv.com.
BBC: Coronavirus cure: When will we have a drug to treat it?
- “There are three broad approaches being investigated:
- Antiviral drugs that directly affect the coronavirus’s ability to thrive inside the body
- [Immunosuppressant drugs] that can calm the immune system – patients become seriously ill when their immune system overreacts and starts causing collateral damage to the body [in a cytokine storm]
- Antibodies, either from survivors’ blood or made in a lab, that can attack the virus”
CNN: Doctors try to untangle why they’re seeing ‘unprecedented’ blood clotting among Covid-19 patients
NYT: From 1 to 1,000s: Solving the Mysteries of Coronavirus With Genetic Fingerprints
NYT: A Coronavirus Death in Early February Was ‘Probably the Tip of an Iceberg’
- “The startling discovery that the virus was responsible for a Feb. 6 death in California raises questions about where else it might have been spreading undetected.”
NYT: What 5 Coronavirus Models Say the Next Month Will Look Like
- An excellent New York Times article that compares projections of current models and explains the difficulty of making predictions.
AP: 2 cats in NY become first US pets to test positive for virus
CSM: Behind coronavirus lockdown protests, questions of whom to trust
Updated April 27, 2020
April 21, 2020
STAT: He ran marathons and was fit. So why did Covid-19 almost kill him?
- The patient was a doctor. Extremely high levels of two proteins in the body, ferritin and C-reactive protein, indicated inflammation and a possible cytokine storm, an overactive reaction of the immune system that is thought to be the cause of death for many young Covid-19 patients with no prior health condition. He tried several unproven drugs. Two hours after an infusion of the drug tocilizumab (sold as Actemra), his fever subsided and his oxygen levels were near normal. “It appeared the drug had worked.” (Tocilizumab, a promising drug for Covid-19 patients, is an anti-inflammatory drug that was approved in 2017 to treat cytokine storms and has also appeared to work on other Covid-19 patients.)
AP: US OKs 1st coronavirus test that allows self-swab at home
CSM: Want to end state lockdowns? Send in the coronavirus detectives.
- “To end coronavirus lockdowns, states will need a robust network of human contact tracers. Massachusetts shows how that process can start.”
- “Known as ‘disease detectives,’ contact tracers are people who work to halt the spread of a virus. They reach out to individuals who are confirmed cases and then trace others the person came into contact with, from family members to subway riders.”
STAT: New analysis recommends less reliance on ventilators to treat coronavirus patients
NYT: How Many Infections? Rewards for Testing May Provide an Answer
We are having trouble retrieving the article content.
BBC: Coronavirus: Why are international comparisons difficult?
CNN: CDC chief says there could be second, possibly worse coronavirus outbreak this winter
NYT: 25,000 Missing Deaths: Tracking the True Toll of the Coronavirus Crisis
Science: Antibody surveys suggesting vast undercount of coronavirus infections may be unreliable
The Atlantic: Why Some People Get Sicker Than Others
MedicalXPress: New COVID-19 tracking app may find ‘hotspots’ across America
April 20, 2020
The Lancet: Endothelial cell infection and endotheliitis in COVID-19
Updated on May 2, 2020?
- A Swiss study analyzing tissue samples of three Covid-19 patients from postmortems of the two who died and from an intestinal resection of the male patient that survived.
- Viral inclusion structures (spots visible at locations where a virus enters a cell) are found in endothelial cells of blood vessels (cells of one layer of the inside wall of blood vessels).
- Endotheliitis (inflammation of these endothelial cells) was discovered in the small intestine of the patient that survived (patient 3) and in patient 2; in the lung, heart, kidney and liver of patient 2; and evidence thereof in the heart, small bowel and lung of patient 1.
- A resulting endothelial dysfunction can lead to organ ischemia (inadequate blood supply that can cause necrosis, death of at least part of the organ, observed in this study), inflammation with edema (collection of fluid), and a pro-coagulant state (capable of clotting blood).
NYT: The Infection That’s Silently Killing Coronavirus Patients
- An article by an ER doctor at Bellevue Hospital in New York City that explains how hypoxia (insufficient oxygen reaching tissues) is developing in Covid-19 patients, but well before the patient experiences any shortness of breath and often without him/her aware of any symptoms of pneumonia.
- Dr. Levitan recommends the use of a pulse oximeter (a device, obtainable at pharmacies, which is placed on a finger and measures oxygen in the blood and the pulse rate) to warn individuals when oxygen levels are low enough that hospitalization is required.
AP: Reports suggest many have had coronavirus with no symptoms
STAT: The months of magical thinking: As the coronavirus swept over China, some experts were in denial
STAT: Everything we know about coronavirus immunity and antibodies — and plenty we still don’t
NYT: How Coronavirus Infected Some, but Not All, in a Restaurant
- Contract tracing in China discovered a cluster of ten people eating on January 24, 2020 at a restaurant in the city of Guangzhou and later found to be infected. Based on their positions in the restaurant, it is suggested that the infection spread by the air conditioner blowing air containing large (vs. small) droplets containing the virus.
NYT: The Coronavirus in America: The Year Ahead
- This is an informative article with many good explanations relating to science.
April 19, 2020
CNN: Singapore had a model coronavirus response, then cases spiked. What happened?
April 18, 2020
NYT: An Overlooked, Possibly Fatal Coronavirus Crisis: A Dire Need for Kidney Dialysis
- “Ventilators aren’t the only machines in intensive care units that are in short supply. Doctors have been confronting an unexpected rise in patients with failing kidneys.”
April 17, 2020
Science: How does coronavirus kill? Clinicians trace a ferocious rampage through the body, from brain to toes
- A very well written article providing excellent insight into the current theories of how the virus spreads throughout the body, damages organs and kills.
WebMD.com: Cytokine Storms May Be Fueling Some COVID Deaths
MOVED OR REMOVED
NYT: Why We Don’t Know the True Death Rate for Covid-19
- Several reasons are explained for why we cannot yet calculate a true death rate.
WSJ: When to Reopen: What We Know About Coronavirus Tests, Treatment and Vaccines
Updated June 18, 2020
CNN: Heartland hotspots: A sudden rise in coronavirus cases is hitting rural states without stay-at-home orders (in the US)
SFC: Coronavirus appears twice as deadly for blacks as whites in California
Berkeley: Faculty Expert Explains the COVID-19 Testing Lag, and How to Catch Up
- Several reasons are given for the delay of Covid-19 testing in the US.
CSM: How European countries are trying to safely end lockdowns
NIH: Antiviral remdesivir prevents disease progression in monkeys with COVID-19
- “Early treatment with the experimental antiviral drug remdesivir significantly reduced clinical disease and damage to the lungs of rhesus macaques infected with SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, according to National Institutes of Health scientists.”
April 16, 2020
NYT: Relying on Science and Politics, Merkel Offers a Cautious Virus Re-entry Plan
- The German chancellor, who has a doctorate in physics and therefore understands science very well, states that Germany so far has succeeded in slowing down the virus enough in order not to overburden the medical system.
JAMA: Predictive Mathematical Models of the COVID-19 Pandemic
- Current models for the spread of Covid-19 should not be relied on for making long-term predictions without an understanding of their many limitations.
- For several reasons, the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) model that was highly influential in the prediction of between 100,000 and 240,000 deaths in the US that was announced by the federal government in early April should only be relied on for short-term predictions, such as for preparations of sufficient hospital capacity.
- Another limitation of this IHME model is that its design did not properly account for regional differences in ways the virus can spread, making predictions for specific locations less reliable than that of the US as a whole.
- Updated projections based on this model are shown on covid19.healthdata.org/.
MIT: Model quantifies the impact of quarantine measures on Covid-19’s spread
NPR: Did You Fall For A Coronavirus Hoax? Facebook Will Let You Know
April 15, 2020
NYT: Ultra-Orthodox Enclave in Israel Opens to Outsiders to Fight a Virus
- “When an insular religious community became an epicenter for the coronavirus, its leaders did the unthinkable, calling on the military to help turn things around.”
- This unfortunate situation is explained by their not following social distancing orders.
BBC: Life on Estonia’s ‘corona island’
- An island of 33,000 people with perhaps half of the population infected. They anticipate around seven times the number of patients that their hospital can handle.
CNN: Italy aims to turn suffering to advantage with experimental Covid-19 treatment
- Italy plans to collect blood plasma containing antibodies from individuals who have had Covid-19 in order to use it to treat new patients of the disease. This needs to wait until there is a reliable test for these antibodies.
CNBC: New York Governor Andrew Cuomo outlines a gradual reopening of businesses:
April 14, 2020
NYT: Some European Nations Ease Pandemic Rules, but Move Warily
- “[T]he relationship between how the economy functions and how the coronavirus spreads is not yet fully understood… ‘There will need to be a conversation between epidemiologists and economists to understand this two-way street between the epidemiology and the economics.'”
- It is important to move slowly while science is working to answer questions.
UC Berkeley: Coronavirus: science and solutions
- “[R]esearchers at UC Berkeley are racing to find solutions that will both secure our health and help get the economy back on its feet.”
- Topics include serological (blood serum) testing and finding ways for the marginalized (underprivileged) to shelter in place.
TechCrunch: Q&A: Apple and Google discuss their coronavirus tracing efforts
- Around mid-May mobile phone users in the US may opt in (choose to accept) to have their locations recorded and processed in decentralized servers so that individuals can be alerted if they were near someone who tests positive for Covid-19.
Harvard: Coronavirus and the heart
- An overview of the ways currently thought that Covid-19 may damage the heart, even in patients with no prior history of heart disease. This includes the effect of a “cytokine storm” that may also damage other organs.
BBC: UK Biobank: DNA to unlock coronavirus secrets
- “A vast store of DNA [from volunteers] is being used to study why the severity of symptoms for coronavirus varies so much.”
STAT: How much of the coronavirus does it take to make you sick? The science, explained
April 13, 2020
NPR: What We Know About The Silent Spreaders Of COVID-19
- There is evidence of spreading from both presymptomatic (before symptoms appear) and asymptomatic (never having symptoms) individuals. There is more evidence regarding the number of people who are presymptomatic rather than asymptomatic.
UN: During this coronavirus pandemic, ‘fake news’ is putting lives at risk: UNESCO
- The UN warns that there is a great amount of misinformation (myths) about Covid-19 spreading around the world, which can lead to many deaths.
April 12, 2020
NYT: How a Premier U.S. Drug Company Became a Virus ‘Super Spreader’
- “Biogen employees unwittingly spread the coronavirus from Massachusetts to Indiana, Tennessee and North Carolina.” An example of how “business as usual” can spread in a pandemic.
April 10, 2020
NYT: ‘A Tragedy Is Unfolding’: Inside New York’s Virus Epicenter
- The coronavirus is spreading fastest in poor neighborhoods of New York city, where poverty unfortunately makes it extremely difficult to do social distancing without government assistance for basic needs.
NPR: CDC Director: ‘Very Aggressive’ Contact Tracing Needed For U.S. To Return To Normal
- Contract tracing is essentially detective work to learn exactly how the virus is spreading between individuals in a population.
SciAm: What Immunity to COVID-19 Really Means
SciAm: A New Web Tool Can Help You Figure Out if Those Symptoms Might Be COVID-19
BBC: UK suffers higher daily death toll than Italy or Spain (VIDEO)
CNN: What an antibody test could mean for the coronavirus pandemic (VIDEO)
April 9, 2020
BBC: New York has more cases than any country
- “New York” here means the state of New York, not the city. To keep this in perspective, the number of “cases” depends not only on the number of people infected, but also on the number of people tested. At this time a lot of tests are being performed. (Comparing deaths may be a more valid way of comparing outbreaks between regions once these numbers are high enough.)
STAT: It’s difficult to grasp the projected deaths from Covid-19. Here’s how they compare to other causes of death
STAT: Social distancing is controlling Covid-19; now scientists need to figure out which measures are most effective
WebMD: COVID May Trigger ‘Cytokine Storm’ in Some Cases
Has been removed or updated
- Here is a simply written explanation of how medical science so far believes that a cause of death from Covid-19 may be from the body’s own immune system being made to work on overdrive at a “lethal level”. A cytokine is any of various kinds of signaling molecules that call for an immune response. A “cytokine storm” is therefore the condition in which they appear in dangerously high numbers in the body.
Inside an intensive care unit in Barcelona’s Hospital Del Mar (VIDEO)
nature: The COVID-19 vaccine development landscape
Why coronavirus mortality rates are so different (VIDEO)
April 8, 2020
- Models (as science in general) require data. The more data, the better the modeling can be done. (This is like forecasting weather, which improves as sensors are improved and the number of sensors increase.) There are far more data now, so predictions are improved. Fortunately, the number of predicted deaths are considerably reduced, but this assumes that social distancing continues in the same manner.
Harvard: As coronavirus spreads, many questions and some answers
Updated in 2024
DW: Millions of coronavirus infections left undetected worldwide – study
- Testing is necessary, because there are individuals infected who are asymptomatic (show no symptoms, don’t seem to be sick) but we don’t know how many and they can spread the virus “invisibly”.
LiveScience: The mysterious connection between the coronavirus and the heart
- Not only the lungs, but also organs like the heart can be damaged by the virus.
JAMA: Coronavirus Q&A With Anthony Fauci, MD (VIDEO)
- An informative Q&A session between an editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association and expert Dr. Fauci of the US.
April 7, 2020
NPR: Why Some COVID-19 Patients Crash: The Body’s Immune System Might Be To Blame
- Covid-19 may cause the immune system to attack the patient’s own body by what is known as a “cytokine storm“.
WebMD: Doctors Puzzle Over COVID-19 Lung Problems
REMOVED OR UPDATED
- More than a half of the Covid-19 patients in Northern Italy have an unusual problem with their lungs. Go to Clinical news to learn more about this problem.
Coronavirus in Berlin (VIDEO)
FT: How satellite images show global lockdown (VIDEO)
April 6, 2020
Al Jazeera: World opinion shifts in favour of masks as virus fight deepens
- There is increasing evidence that even outside, using masks properly adds extra protection, but medical masks should be saved for health-care settings.
SciAm: Heart Damage in COVID Patients Puzzles Doctors
- The heart is also damaged in some Covid-19 patients.
Channel 4 News: Coronavirus ‘could kill 2 million in Bangladesh’ (VIDEO)
NYT: How Coronavirus Attacks the Body (VIDEO)
YOUTUBE: Inside a London hospital as doctors fight to save lives (VIDEO)
VIDEO UNAVAILABLE
April 3, 2020
NatGeo: The hunt for the next potential coronavirus animal host
April 2, 2020
nature: The simulations driving the world’s response to COVID-19
- “How epidemiologists rushed to model the coronavirus pandemic.”
- This article shows the complexities and difficulties in creating models.
Bill Gates on coronavirus pandemic (April 2, 2020):
April 1, 2020
Channel 4 News: Sweden’s no-lockdown approach to coronavirus (VIDEO)
The Swedish government chose to let citizens decide on their own how much social distancing is done rather than to impose measures. It is my understanding that Swedes are very well informed of the situation and the science behind it. For example, vulnerable individuals can isolate themselves. As seen in the video some people do not seem to be doing any social distancing. This may be a dangerous “experiment”. Time will tell how this may result in more deaths. Still, I expect the outcome to be better than areas of the world where the population is not well informed or where people do not realize how valuable scientific evidence is. – MH
Vox: Coronavirus is not the flu. It’s worse.
- The following is a video explaining several reasons for why Covid-19 is not the flu. In fact, it is quite dangerous in many ways:
Continue with the news timeline for March 2020.