A thread about COVID-19 and how to keep informed amid the confusion. Perhaps only one thing's been vaguer than the British govt's testing strategy and that's British press coverage of the pandemic. So here's some recommendations for sites where you can find out facts. Real ones.
2./ The worst offender has been the @guardian whose coverage has been appalling. Anyone with an axe to grind like Nassim Taleb or Richard Horton gets invited to sound off with no questions asked. Taleb considers himself a genius. Not all agree. theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/a…
3./ Others consider him a misognynistic bully with dodgy views on immigration. Horton is the editor of @TheLancet who's never apologised for publishing the Andrew Wakefield piece that undermined the MMR vaccine and was later linked to fraud. bmj.com/content/342/bm…
4./ Maybe this coverage is all we can expect in a newspaper whose science editor believes men can really be women, gender is a spectrum and @suzanne_moore is transphobic for defending women's rights. So let's look at good sources of information.
5./ Despite my politics I recommend the @Telegraph which has been running gritty, thoughtful pieces and big scoops. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, for example, recently pointed out Italian deaths may actually be 4 times greater than so far estimated. telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/…
6./ He knows that because....he bothers to read the foreign press. Maybe the Guardian could try that. Here's the English version of the article in @Corriere that the Telegraph linked to:- corriere.it/politica/20_ma…
7./ Another great site is @FiveThirtyEight now owned by @ABC It does what so much of the British press refuse to do- drill down into detail. This piece on the limits of modelling points out the death rate in the US will be skewed by diabetes. fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-i…
8./ This next piece analyses the challenges of testing and how test kits work. It's a useful corrective too to the way our press constantly churns out the dumb comparison between the UK and South Korea. South Korea had 2 recent coronavirus outbreaks. fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-c…
9./ The most recent was only in 2015 (with MERS). @WIRED reveals how the country stockpiled test kits and reagents and it ran a full nationwide drill of its coronavirus pandemic preparedness only weeks before C-19 emerged. wired.co.uk/article/south-…
10./ That's an unfair comparison. My favourite go-to source of calm, reasoned information, without bias or grandstanding is @derspiegel Its English edition is a wonder of incisive analysis. Here's a telling piece in February. spiegel.de/international/…
11./ It lambasted German lack of preparation and praised the NHS and its testing regime. Of course what happened within the next two weeks was Germany upped its game and its manufacture of text kits. We didn't. Why? Good old wikipedia has some clues. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coro…
12./ In the two weeks following February 28th, the date of that Spiegel article and ironically the date of the UK's first infection not linked to anyone who'd travelled abroad, cases appeared across the country that could not be linked to previous contacts. That meant one thing:-
13./ The virus was circulating widely. At that stage a pivot focused on building NHS capability. Was that wrong? Perhaps. But until we know how limited were test kits and materials we won't know whether the govt had no choice but to focus testing on hospital admissions.
14./ This article is a tour de force. Above all it reminds us that right now all our efforts on the virus are like "conducting repairs on a aeroplane in flight". We have to live with uncertainty, avoid over-reaction and be guided by evidence. spiegel.de/international/…
15./ In particular it cites a German expert who warns the current best candidate there for a useful antibody test won't be ready for "two to three months". So is the talk here by govt ministers of an antibody test available soon for a different test for a different marker? 🤷♂️
16./ We berate our govt and point out flaws. But Angela Merkel argued 70% would get infected and was pushed into tougher action by lockdown hardliners. Sound familiar? Bild accused her of "corona chaos". Nobody's perfect in a pandemic. marketwatch.com/story/german-c…
17./ If you can afford it @newscientist is wonderful. They reported early on that in 2013 Chinese scientists found a coronavirus almost identical to SARS-CoV-2 in bats and warned it might leap to humans. Want to guess why their work was stopped? newscientist.com/article/mg2453…
18./ @edyong209 at @TheAtlantic has written some very confused articles on trans issues but on the pandemic he's doing sterling work. Hey, he's American so what chance has he got in a country that's lost its mind on gender. This is great:- theatlantic.com/health/archive…
19./ @sciam is a giant. There are heaps of great articles about COVID but I particularly adore this one from 2004. It tracks scientific attempts to decide whether viruses are alive or inanimate. It's a really rather lovely piece of writing too. scientificamerican.com/article/are-vi…
20./ @ScienceDaily is great fun, like a ramble through papers. I found this article that reminds us viruses may have played a crucial role in our evolution; helping shape up to 30% of the differences between us and chimps. Who knew?! sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/…
21./ No science rundown would be complete without @NatGeo Anyone who's made shows for them will confirm how exhaustive (and exhausting) their fact-checking is. In a world of fake they are a shining light of truth. Check this amazing story out. nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/0…
22./ The @smithsonian is endlessly surprising. This article explores perhaps the biggest question of all about the pandemic: how bloody long will our immunity to the virus last after we recover? No one's sure. But hey, you knew that didn't you? smithsonianmag.com/science-nature…
23./ The BBC's leadership may not care as much about science as they should and that prime time BBC1 special was beyond lamentable but Radio4 has the thrillingly skeptical @mgtmccartney & @BBCScienceNews is full of factual nuggets. bbc.co.uk/news/coronavir…
24./ @ARTEfr has some fabulous science docs. And some are in English. Here's the intro to one I made about about zika. It ravaged unborn babies and their brains. Scientists feared the disease would return in a second wave. The good news- and no one knows why- it never did. 👇
I interviewed some of the top scientists now heading up the COVID-19 struggle including the legend that is Anthony Fauci. At the end Arnaud Fontanet issued a warning that was prescient. A pandemic was inevitable. Now we just have to beat it. Together.👇
