Thoughts on things going on in Science and science.

By H. Holden Thorp

Posts tagged with "COVID-19"

• COVID-19

  A year of reckoning for science

  18 March, 2021

  Last week marked the 1-year anniversary of the declaration of COVID-19 as a pandemic, and although we learned many tough lessons about trust in science and science communication, the year also revealed an inability to convey observable facts about systemic racism to the public. The killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in May last… Read More

• COVID-19

  Marking 1 year of COVID-19

  11 March, 2021

  This week marks the first anniversary of the World Health Organization’s declaration of COVID-19 as a pandemic. In Science’s editorial this week, U.S. National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins writes about the lessons that researchers have learned during the past year. Collins and his colleagues, especially Anthony Fauci, Barney Gr… Read More

• COVID-19

  Building trust in science requires more than just funding

  4 March, 2021

  The costs of anti-science sentiment in the United States have become magnified in the past year. The inability of scientists to convince the American public about the reality of COVID-19, the effectiveness of masks, and the safety of vaccines has led to loss of life and has decreased the possibility that the pandemic will end… Read More

• COVID-19

  Atlas shrugs

  18 August, 2020

  In its latest attempt to confuse the public about the science of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the Trump administration has added Dr. Scott Atlas to the team advising the president.  Although Atlas may be capable of neurological imaging, he’s not an expert in infectious diseases or public health—and it shows.  He’s spreading scientif… Read More

• COVID-19

  Modeling herd immunity

  23 June, 2020

  Today, Science published a study by Britton et al. that incorporates population heterogeneity into modeling the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)—that is, it accounts for the fact that members of a population may have differential exposure and susceptibility to infection. In this model, the authors vary the ex… Read More

• COVID-19

  The end of the handshake?

  12 May, 2020

  In the time of a pandemic, societies adopt practices that necessitate the least human contact. To curtail the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), people have transitioned to social distancing and replaced gestures of greeting and parting for an alternative acknowledgment. In the early days of the pandemic, people were waving, bowing, foo… Read More

• COVID-19

  Reading the pandemic data

  12 May, 2020

  Understanding the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) requires understanding nonlinear growth. Whereas linear growth is intuitive, nonlinear growth is not. People’s predictions for nonlinear patterns tend to be closer to linear projections, assuming that future growth will be similar to that of the past. For a pandemic, this can lead to… Read More

• COVID-19

  Drawing the blueprint to a COVID-19 response

  27 April, 2020

  On 27 March, President Trump said, in describing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), “This whatever they want to call it. You can call it a germ, you can call it a flu, you can call it a virus. You know, you can call it many different names. I’m not sure anybody even knows what it is.”… Read More

• COVID-19

  Expanding voices during the COVID-19 crisis

  7 April, 2020

  Science always gets far more great content than we can publish. And in these extraordinary times, we are receiving more submissions about coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) than we could have ever imagined. For those who have sent pieces to us, we’re sorry that we cannot consider them all and will continue to respond as rapidly… Read More

• COVID-19

  Adapting to the crisis

  3 April, 2020

  The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is affecting our lives, and the scientific research enterprise more generally, in profoundly challenging ways. At the Science family of journals, we are aware of these impacts in our own lives and in the lives of our authors and reviewers. Like most organizations, the American Association for the Adv… Read More