Top Stories - Quillette (Page 42)

COVID-19 Science Update for March 31st: Wear a Mask, Georgia's SSE, Kinsa's Fever Map

Both the scientific literature and media reports suggest COVID-19 transmission is most likely to take place (1) within families, and (2) through one-off SSEs of the type described above.

Jonathan Kay

31 Mar 2020 · 7 min read

Warehouse Work in an Age of Contagion

As regular readers of Quillette will know, I work at a warehouse in West Sacramento, California, where every workday I toil in close quarters with dozens of other employees. In the days before the advent of the novel coronavirus pandemic, that wasn’t a problem. Now, however, it’s a

Kevin Mims

30 Mar 2020 · 6 min read

COVID-19 Science Update for March 30th: The Planet's Deadly Viral Baseline

According to statistics compiled by Our World in Data (OWD), the number of newly confirmed COVID-19 deaths decreased yesterday.

Jonathan Kay

30 Mar 2020 · 6 min read

Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family—A Review

Full Surrogacy Now makes a feminist argument for, as the author puts it, “abolishing the family” by no longer attaching any importance to biological relationships between people.

Louise Perry

30 Mar 2020 · 9 min read

COVID-19 Science Update for March 29th: Keep Your Voice Down

The latest research on COVID-19 tells us that “the major transmission mechanisms are not fine aerosols but large droplets.”

Jonathan Kay

30 Mar 2020 · 9 min read

Denmark’s Weapons Against COVID-19: Early Action, High Trust—and a No-Nonsense Queen

There is no guarantee that the Danish health system will have the resources to help everyone who needs care. And the economy might be in tatters when the quarantine ends.

Kay Xander Mellish

29 Mar 2020 · 7 min read

Social Distancing During the Black Death

The Black Death wiped out half the population of Europe in the space of four years.

James Hankins

28 Mar 2020 · 5 min read

Symptoms of Loneliness

When you care for others, when you don’t live alone—and most people don’t—the equation changes radically.

Stephen Elliott

28 Mar 2020 · 6 min read

COVID-19 Science Update for March 28th: Bergamo's Decimation, More SSEs, and the Case for Masks

On an annualized basis, the last three weeks in Lombardy correspond to a regional per-capita death rate of 0.72 percent—or, put another way, the death of one person out of every 140 residents.

Jonathan Kay

28 Mar 2020 · 6 min read

COVID-19 Science Update for March 27th: Super-Spreaders and the Need for New Prediction Models

Absent isolation or other precautionary measures, the average socially active COVID-19 infectee will transmit the disease to an average of about 2.4 people. i.e., the R0 value is 2.4. But super-spreaders can spread a disease to dozens or hundreds.

Jonathan Kay

27 Mar 2020 · 11 min read

COVID-19 Science Update for March 26th: Five Trends Shaping Medium-Term Policy

Even if a COVID-19 vaccine were invented tomorrow (it won’t be), our experience with the virus shows how underprepared we are for this kind of public-health emergency.

Jonathan Kay

26 Mar 2020 · 10 min read

COVID-19 Science Update for March 25th: Understanding Models

This clustering phenomenon explains why the COVID-19 policy debate among politicians, doctors, and pundits now has become somewhat surreal, with world-class experts telling us either that we are facing an “apocalypse,” or that the pandemic will fizzle and we’re all “going to be fine.”

Jonathan Kay

25 Mar 2020 · 12 min read