Category: Pandemic Diary

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A lot of the maps I see showing coronavirus cases, even from sources like the CDC, have a problem: They’re labeled by country, or by state. It’s too big to be useful.

  • Labeling the number of cases reported in the US doesn’t tell you that they’re mostly in clusters in Washington and California.
  • Labeling the number of cases in California doesn’t tell you that they’re mostly in northern California.

What matters for tracking its spread is actual location and transportation links, not jurisdiction.

Note: Cleaned up a bit from my original post on Mastodon.

Update 2024: It’s weird to look back at this now that the virus is literally everywhere (except maybe still Antarctica and the International Space Station?) and will be with us forever. That there was a time when it was still on the horizon but hadn’t arrived here (for whatever your value of “here” might have been) yet.

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The Washington Post points out that 82% of covid-19 cases identified so far are mild, basically a bad cold. Virologists are trying to determine: How many more mild cases haven’t been counted? And what factors cause some cases to be mild and others lethal?

There are several coronaviruses that already circulate globally and just cause colds. And there are several that cause more dangerous diseases like SARS and MERS. Covid-19 is new enough that we’re still trying to figure out where it is on the scale between a cold and SARS.

The Los Angeles Times brought up the H1N1 flu, which at first appeared much more deadly than other strains because it was the severe cases that were being counted. Once researchers could go back and find the mild cases, it turned out to be about the same as the typical seasonal flu. A decade since jumping to humans, H1N1 has essentially become just another seasonal flu.

Covid-19 is somewhere in between a cold and SARS, but as mentioned above, we’re still trying to figure out where.

In any case, it’s worth remembering: mild or severe, coronaviruses spread the same way as colds and the flu. Update 2023: Well, we thought it did at the time. Now we know it’s mostly shared, close airspaces. But washing your hands is still a good idea.

Wash your hands. (As Science-Based Medicine points out, a recent study suggests that hand-washing in airports is “probably the single most effective method for preventing pandemics.”)

Cough and sneeze into your elbow instead of your palm.

And if you get sick, stay home if you can.

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Why do people get take-out fast food, then sit and eat it in their car in the parking lot, idling with the AC on?

Update: It’s weird how this became normal for me during the 2020 Covid shutdown. I always figured, if you’re going to eat right there anyway, why not just eat at the restaurant? (Assuming the tables aren’t full, of course.)

But in 2020? First you couldn’t eat at the restaurant at all. Then you couldn’t eat inside the restaurant, but could eat outside. Though depending on the weather, you might not want to. Eventually you could eat inside, but had to make a risk calculation as to whether it was a good idea or not. Drive-through and park became an easy way to keep separate airspaces.

At least by the time that hit I was driving a plug-in hybrid, so I didn’t need to idle the gas motor.

Of course there are also plenty of other reasons I just hadn’t thought of at the time: private conversations, for instance, or a sleeping baby in the car seat who you don’t want to wake up early.