What I’m Reading: COVID-19 origins
As we count the days in this lockdown, it’s easy to feel as if there are only two ways to cope with the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) situation:
Especially in view of this crisis, education helps, but I suggest that information intake amid this pressing situation be in moderation. What everyone needs now is to be somewhere between panicked and apathetic.
I won’t talk about the figures because they change every day — and quite dubiously, some critics observed. Government response also varies from time to time and is frequently adjusted to address changing circumstances.
Instead, I’m compiling a list of COVID-19-related readings that I think are essential to help us make sense of what’s happening. In the first part of this series, we will be exploring how this pandemic began.
- to be active on social media, regularly following and seeking news updates, so much so that the government response and the ensuing public debates are agonizing one mentally; or
- to be detached enough to be able to fully enjoy one’s time binge-watching films and series, baking sourdough, cooking experimental dishes, answering tagged posts on social media — all while, consciously or subconsciously, either negating the despair and desperation of the poor or thinking that positivity is what we need at this time.
Especially in view of this crisis, education helps, but I suggest that information intake amid this pressing situation be in moderation. What everyone needs now is to be somewhere between panicked and apathetic.
I won’t talk about the figures because they change every day — and quite dubiously, some critics observed. Government response also varies from time to time and is frequently adjusted to address changing circumstances.
Instead, I’m compiling a list of COVID-19-related readings that I think are essential to help us make sense of what’s happening. In the first part of this series, we will be exploring how this pandemic began.
- First Covid-19 case happened in November, China government records show - report, by The Guardian
According to reports, the earliest case of COVID-19 was recorded in November 17, but it was more than a month since then when the Chinese government finally alerted the World Health Organization. Why is an inquiry that we may never find answered, but Jonathan Mayer, professor emeritus at the University of Washington’s department of epidemiology, who was interviewed in this article offered three possibilities: first, cases weren’t detected at the time; second, they were detected but not recognized as a new disease; and third, they were detected and recognized but reporting was suppressed.
Mayer was also quoted as saying the following, which I find relevant in any political context:
Governments seem opposed to admitting that things were handled imperfectly, yet it is only by identifying the imperfections and shortcomings that things can be addressed to do a better job next time.
- As new coronavirus spread, China’s old habits delayed flight, by the New York Times
Nothing good happens when politics gets in the way of public service. COVID-19 will go down in history as the global health crisis that stemmed from one government lie.
Where the public is concerned, government transparency is always the best antidote.
Related videos:
Related article:
Report says China internet firms censored coronavirus terms, criticism early in outbreak, from Reuters
- How the virus got out, by the New York Times
We’ve been bombarded by the media, public officials, and health professionals with protocols that can help contain the spread of the virus. Today, it’s easy to see how we can slow the spread of a pandemic: limit movement.
Looking back, it’s precisely the lack of swift government action and decisive travel restrictions that spread the virus from Wuhan in China, the “ground zero” or where the first cases of COVID-19 were recorded, to the rest of the world.
This special feature helps illustrate how it happened.
- From bats to human lungs, the evolution of a coronavirus, by the New Yorker
When news of a new deadly virus broke out, many attributed its origin to people eating bats. While there is no evience yet to this argument so far, it’s interesting to know how coronaviruses have transported from wild animals to humans, mutating in a span of centurion until the SARS-Cov-2 has become what we know it to be today.
The New Yorker explained technical scientific terms and processes into an easily digestible material. There’s a glimmer of hope by the end of this article, one that a rational mind in the time of coronaviruses may appreciate.
- The story behind ‘flatten the curve,’ the defining chart of the coronavirus, by Fast Company
If the COVID-19 pandemic were a war, then “flatten the curve” is everybody’s battlecry.
The ubiquity of the graph which guides the way policymakers make their calls and affects ordinary citizens’ decision-making has always been illustrative rather than facts-based, apparently. Still, it’s worth knowing how it came about and how it has morphed into graphic curve we’re now most familiar with.
Related articles:
Flattening the coronavirus curve, by the New York Times
Why outbreaks like coronavirus spread exponentially, and how to “flatten the curve”, by the Washington Post — An excellent simulation on why it matters that everybody does his and her part amid this pandemic and stay at home! •