Best sources for info about COVID-19
March 3, 2020 2:53 PM   Subscribe

Is there anyone who has committed to give regular, not-sensationalized updates about the spread and impacts of the novel coronavirus strain? Twitter handles, blogs, or any other source welcome as long as they have said that they will continue posting updates and are careful to only report things that we actually know, not speculation.

Bonus points if they dig into statistics and also put the updates in broader context.
posted by Tehhund to Health & Fitness (34 answers total) 40 users marked this as a favorite
 
The regular megathreads on covid on r/medicine link to lots of reputable resources and have doctors discussing the issues.
posted by Lutoslawski at 3:02 PM on March 3, 2020 [2 favorites]


Wait for the CDC briefings? I think the problem is that we get all anxious and want news more often than it's really updated, and so we go seeking out all of the sensationalist sources. But the reality is that the CDC is updating as fast as they have actionable information. But the CDC current press releases really have all the info you're likely to get from any other source.

See, for example, CDC March 3 Transcript for the CDC Telebriefing Update on COVID-19
posted by straw at 3:03 PM on March 3, 2020 [4 favorites]


There are daily updates at WHO.
posted by davcoo at 3:07 PM on March 3, 2020 [4 favorites]


Best answer: WHO is offering daily updates and rolling updates.

Johns Hopkins is Mapping 2019-nCoV.

Live blogs are available from the Guardian, WaPo, NYT, and other news outlets.
posted by katra at 3:09 PM on March 3, 2020 [7 favorites]


This won’t give you a global perspective, but much of the heavy lifting here is being done by local health departments. I work for the one in King County, WA and our info page on it is thorough, factual, and non-sensationalized. It doesn’t look like you’re in this part of the country, but see if your local health department is posting updates.
posted by centrifugal at 3:27 PM on March 3, 2020 [4 favorites]


Best answer: Worldometer.info's COVID-19 coronavirus resource page collects information, breaks out stats, has "opinions" corralled under a hyperlink, and updates regularly.
posted by Iris Gambol at 4:11 PM on March 3, 2020 [4 favorites]




Maine's state public health dept is the Maine CDC; they have a website and a newsletter. Missouri has a health dept.
posted by theora55 at 5:27 PM on March 3, 2020


Best answer: For individual researchers, I like virologist Dr. Angela Rasmussen @angie_rasmussen and infectious disease epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch @mlipsitch.

Recs from Dr. Saskia Popescu @SaskiaPopescu:
I’ll be offline for large chunks next week (great timing for a vaca, right?) but for those looking for good sources of #COVID19 info, check out
@MMFill
@aetiology
@angie_rasmussen
@JenniferNuzzo
@JeremyKonyndyk
@alicesim
@rocza
@KindrachukJason
@maiamajumder
@KrutikaKuppalli
posted by spamandkimchi at 5:28 PM on March 3, 2020 [4 favorites]


Like the above suggestion of /r/medicine there is a series of megathreads on /r/worldnews that certainly needs to be read very very critically but the core quality observations have been quite accurate and up to date.
posted by sammyo at 5:34 PM on March 3, 2020 [1 favorite]


I would recommend the latest post from the always-excellent blog "Slate Star Codex". See, in particular, this document (referenced in the blog) for an up-to-date, readable, and concise summary of the situation.
posted by alex1965 at 6:26 PM on March 3, 2020 [2 favorites]




I would add StatNews.
posted by yclipse at 8:54 AM on March 4, 2020


I suggest adding 'dashboard' or 'dashboards' to the tags for ease of searching.
posted by ZeusHumms at 11:24 AM on March 4, 2020


My go-to recommendation for family members is LiveScience.com because it's easy for non-medical non-scientist types to read Also a prof freind of mine put together a list of 500 reputable twitter handles which I joined but that's probably overkill it's just we're 1 frontline and 2 support healthcare staff family so YMMV.
posted by Wilder at 6:50 AM on March 5, 2020 [1 favorite]


Best answer: Dr. John Campbell on youtube is doing daily summaries. Generally feels a step ahead of the official briefings WRT strategy and implications, and not hobbled by politics, without being sensational. Occasionally reports something that's incorrect, and corrects it the next day.

(He's a retired nurse teacher, not an MD and has been posting general medical education videos to youtube well before this.)
posted by joeyh at 5:20 PM on March 5, 2020 [6 favorites]


I've found these MedCram updates on YouTube with Dr. Seheult informative and helpful.
posted by samren at 8:55 AM on March 7, 2020


The Johns Hopkins dashboard switched granularity from county to state today, dramatically reducing the data utility, if for understandable reasons. Any state/county level sites still up?
posted by mwhybark at 10:26 PM on March 9, 2020 [1 favorite]


It's a more technical source, and there's no commentary, but it gets updated and seems to fill a niche: Nextstrain's open source Genomic epidemiology of novel coronavirus.
posted by progosk at 10:04 AM on March 11, 2020


There are a variety of information resources from public health authorities, as well as fact-checking sites, listed on the MeFi Wiki Disaster Planning & Recovery page in the Medical / Pandemic section.
posted by katra at 11:12 AM on March 11, 2020 [2 favorites]


Personal anecdote for cultural info.
Here in Winchester, VA I almost got into fights with several barbers yesterday, as they were all dismissive coronavirus-hoax believers, and being loud about it.

Meanwhile my wife is in Brooklyn (Gowanus and Flatbush) visiting various sections of a hospital being quietly locked up as they have received their first Covid 19 positive patient, and her local Target is being emptied by the hour.
posted by Harry Caul at 7:43 AM on March 12, 2020


fyi: The New York Times is providing free access on the global coronavirus crisis.

The Seattle Times is also offering extended coverage of the outbreak of a new coronavirus known as SARS-CoV-2; the illness it causes, COVID-19; and its effects on the Seattle area, the Pacific Northwest and the world.
posted by katra at 8:05 AM on March 12, 2020 [1 favorite]




h/t vacapinta: New England Journal of Medicine articles on COVID-19, not paywalled.
posted by katra at 9:55 AM on March 12, 2020 [2 favorites]


The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is offering ongoing news and information about the coronavirus:
In the wake of an outbreak of coronavirus that began in China in late December 2019, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health experts have been speaking to a variety of media outlets. We’ll be updating this article on a regular basis.
posted by katra at 11:03 AM on March 15, 2020 [1 favorite]


Australian Government Department of Health: Coronavirus (COVID-19) current situation and case numbers
posted by flabdablet at 11:21 AM on March 15, 2020


via The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health:
March 14: Coronavirus: The Most Essential People To Follow On Twitter During The COVID-19 Outbreak (Forbes)

Several Harvard Chan School experts were named by Forbes as good experts to follow on Twitter during the coronavirus outbreak. They included Ashish Jha, K.T. Li Professor of Global Health and director of the Harvard Global Health Institute (HGHI); Marc Lipsitch; and Michael Mina, assistant professor of epidemiology.
posted by katra at 11:09 PM on March 16, 2020


Australian Government Department of Health: Weekly epidemiology reports
posted by flabdablet at 4:10 AM on March 17, 2020


Accessible COVID-19 statistics tracker - blog post about tracker from Freedom Scientific
posted by ZeusHumms at 9:40 AM on March 27, 2020


County level incident data from the New York Times, because the US Government isn't providing it.
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:06 AM on March 27, 2020 [2 favorites]


If you are into the hard medical science approach, Google Scholar now offers a dozen links to medical journals on Covid-19 issues right on its launch page.
posted by yclipse at 5:03 AM on April 9, 2020 [1 favorite]




Brief article: A real-time dashboard of clinical trials for COVID-19 (The Lancet)

The dashboard itself: COVID-19 clinical trials registry
posted by ZeusHumms at 11:15 AM on April 26, 2020


Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, University of Minnesota.

This is where the oft-interviewed expert Dr. Michael Osterholm is based.
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:25 PM on May 14, 2020


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