Pulled from the daily newsletter; reverse chronological order.
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Week 4
- Day 68, 28 March 2020
- Day 67, 27 March 2020
- Day 66, 26 March 2020
- Day 65, 25 March 2020
- Day 64, 24 March 2020
- Day 63, 23 March 2020
- Day 62, 22 March 2020
28 March 2020
- COVID-19 News, 28 March 2020
27 March 2020
- COVID-19 News, 27 March 2020
- Covid-19 hasn’t yet hit India in a widespread way. But I saw more warnings there than I did in the U.S. Stat News, 27 March 2020.
- How do the tests work? Compound Interest, 19 March 2020.
- Our best defense against Covid-19? Science. Stat News, 27 March 2020.
- ‘The Other Option Is Death’: New York Starts Sharing of Ventilators. NY Times, 26 March 2020.
Many people now pointing to old articles (incl. one from me) saying: It’s all there. And others saying: No-one could have predicted #covid19. So I just want to be very clear about what I personally as a journalist covering this beat for years expected and didn‘t expect. A thread
— Kai Kupferschmidt (@kakape) March 27, 2020
26 March 2020
Scary-hard but important reading suggestions today. Trigger warning. Kleenex warning.
- Hospitals consider universal do-not-resuscitate orders for coronavirus patients. Washington Post. 25 March 2020.
Worry that ‘all hands’ responses may expose doctors and nurses to infection prompts debate about prioritizing the survival of the many over the one
- If the idea of needing a ventilator for weeks to survive COVID-19 doesn’t make you quail, read this. Medium, Shasta Willson. 26 March 2020.
A neuropsychologist subsequently told me that being conscious while ventilated is equivalent to torture. Not just “it’s awful,” but that it actually results in trauma effects like PTSD, just as repeated waterboarding might.
- My Dad Has Coronavirus. I Don’t Know if I Should Say Goodbye. New York Times. 26 March 2020.
For weeks, he has been treating patients with the coronavirus. He has sent some home, knowing that they might come back. He has intubated others, easing breathing tubes down their throats and attaching those tubes to ventilators.
- We’re not allowing visitors in the I.C.U. My patients will suffer in solitary confinement. New York Times. 24 March 2020.
I had to tell him. There was no way to soften the blow. The hospital is changing its rules, I said. No more visitors. When you leave today, you both need to say goodbye.
- What we’ve learned about the coronavirus — and what we still need to know. Stat News. 26 March 2020.
25 March 2020
- COVID-19 News, 25 March 2020
- Can you become immune to coronavirus? NY Times, 25 March 2020.
Related: FDA will allow doctors to treat critically ill coronavirus patients with blood from survivors. NBC News. 24 March 2020. - Chapter 11 of Public Health Law, Public Health Emergency Preparedness, is available as a free download from the University of California Press.
- Her Family Was Careful, And They Got The Coronavirus Anyway. BuzzFeed News, 25 March 2020.
I do not feel like I could safely disclose my positive status, given what I’ve heard,” a mother in Seattle said. “However, there is a silver lining: This is a bit liberating.
24 March 2020
- COVID-19 News, 24 March 2020
- Critical inhaler medication shortage looms as coronavirus cases soar. ABC News, 24 March 2020. [Drug shortage notice.]
- How Switzerland ended up with the second-highest coronavirus infection rate in the world. Global News, 22 March 2020 (updated 24 March).
- I probably have a ‘mild to moderate’ case of covid-19. I don’t think I could survive worse. Washington Post, 24 March 2020.
- We’re not allowing visitors in the I.C.U. My patients will suffer in solitary confinement. NY Times, 24 March 2020.
… as we tighten our protocols to protect our patients from the threat of Covid-19, she’s alone. Here in my hospital, as in so many others throughout the country, we’ve banished most visitors. It’s a tough decision that leaves our patients to suffer through their illnesses in a medical version of solitary confinement. And I’m worried for them. Because those of us on the front lines simply don’t have a plan for this.
23 March 2020
- I’m 26. Coronavirus Sent Me to the Hospital. Millennials: If you can’t stay at home for others, do it for yourselves. New York Times, 23 March 2020.
I’m 26. I don’t have any prior autoimmune or respiratory conditions. I work out six times a week, and abstain from cigarettes. I thought my role in the current health crisis would be as an ally to the elderly and compromised. Then, I was hospitalized for Covid-19.
- Keeping the Coronavirus from Infecting Health-Care Workers. What Singapore’s and Hong Kong’s success is teaching us about the pandemic. New Yorker, 21 March 2020.
Those of us who must go out into the world and have contact with people don’t have to panic if we find out that someone with the coronavirus has been in the same room or stood closer than we wanted for a moment. Transmission seems to occur primarily through sustained exposure in the absence of basic protection or through the lack of hand hygiene after contact with secretions.
- The coronavirus isn’t alive. That’s why it’s so hard to kill. The science behind what makes this coronavirus so sneaky, deadly and difficult to defeat. Washington Post, 23 March 2020.
Andrew Pekosz, a virologist at Johns Hopkins University, compared viruses to particularly destructive burglars: They break into your home, eat your food and use your furniture and have 10,000 babies. “And then they leave the place trashed,” he said.
22 March 2020
- The coronavirus’s rampage through the Kirkland nursing home. New York Times, 22 March 2020
- What is a chronic health condition? WiredPen, 20 March 2020
If you’re on Twitter, follow Carl, he’s a UW professor and his book Calling Bullshit will be published Aug 4th.
1. Another day, another vile #COVID19 #coronavirus piece on @Medium. pic.twitter.com/CLdvZWAOal
— Carl T. Bergstrom (@CT_Bergstrom) March 23, 2020