argument essay about covid 19 pandemic

Persuasive Essay Guide

Persuasive Essay About Covid19

How to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid19 | Examples & Tips

11 min read

Steps to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Here are the steps to help you write a persuasive essay on this topic, along with an example essay:

Step 1: Choose a Specific Thesis Statement

Your thesis statement should clearly state your position on a specific aspect of COVID-19. It should be debatable and clear. For example:

Step 2: Research and Gather Information

Collect reliable and up-to-date information from reputable sources to support your thesis statement. This may include statistics, expert opinions, and scientific studies. For instance:

COVID-19 vaccination effectiveness data
Information on vaccine mandates in different countries
Expert statements from health organizations like the WHO or CDC

Step 3: Outline Your Essay

Create a clear and organized outline to structure your essay. A persuasive essay typically follows this structure:

Introduction
Background Information
Body Paragraphs (with supporting evidence)
Counterarguments (addressing opposing views)

Step 4: Write the Introduction

In the introduction, grab your reader's attention and present your thesis statement. For example:

Step 5: Provide Background Information

Offer context and background information to help your readers understand the issue better. For instance:

Step 6: Develop Body Paragraphs

Each body paragraph should present a single point or piece of evidence that supports your thesis statement. Use clear topic sentences, evidence, and analysis. Here's an example:

Step 7: Address Counterarguments

Acknowledge opposing viewpoints and refute them with strong counterarguments. This demonstrates that you've considered different perspectives. For example:

Step 8: Write the Conclusion

Summarize your main points and restate your thesis statement in the conclusion. End with a strong call to action or thought-provoking statement. For instance:

Step 9: Revise and Proofread

Edit your essay for clarity, coherence, grammar, and spelling errors. Ensure that your argument flows logically.

Step 10: Cite Your Sources

Include proper citations and a bibliography page to give credit to your sources.

Remember to adjust your approach and arguments based on your target audience and the specific angle you want to take in your persuasive essay about COVID-19.

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Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid19

When writing a persuasive essay about the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s important to consider how you want to present your argument. To help you get started, here are some example essays for you to read:

Check out some more PDF examples below:

Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Pandemic

Sample Of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 In The Philippines - Example

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Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Vaccine

Covid19 vaccines are one of the ways to prevent the spread of Covid-19, but they have been a source of controversy. Different sides argue about the benefits or dangers of the new vaccines. Whatever your point of view is, writing a persuasive essay about it is a good way of organizing your thoughts and persuading others.

A persuasive essay about the Covid-19 vaccine could consider the benefits of getting vaccinated as well as the potential side effects.

Below are some examples of persuasive essays on getting vaccinated for Covid-19.

Covid19 Vaccine Persuasive Essay

Persuasive Essay on Covid Vaccines

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Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Integration

Covid19 has drastically changed the way people interact in schools, markets, and workplaces. In short, it has affected all aspects of life. However, people have started to learn to live with Covid19.

Writing a persuasive essay about it shouldn't be stressful. Read the sample essay below to get idea for your own essay about Covid19 integration.

Persuasive Essay About Working From Home During Covid19

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Examples of Argumentative Essay About Covid 19

Covid-19 has been an ever-evolving issue, with new developments and discoveries being made on a daily basis.

Writing an argumentative essay about such an issue is both interesting and challenging. It allows you to evaluate different aspects of the pandemic, as well as consider potential solutions.

Here are some examples of argumentative essays on Covid19.

Argumentative Essay About Covid19 Sample

Argumentative Essay About Covid19 With Introduction Body and Conclusion

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Examples of Persuasive Speeches About Covid-19

Do you need to prepare a speech about Covid19 and need examples? We have them for you!

Persuasive speeches about Covid-19 can provide the audience with valuable insights on how to best handle the pandemic. They can be used to advocate for specific changes in policies or simply raise awareness about the virus.

Check out some examples of persuasive speeches on Covid-19:

Persuasive Speech About Covid-19 Example

Persuasive Speech About Vaccine For Covid-19

You can also read persuasive essay examples on other topics to master your persuasive techniques!

Tips to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Writing a persuasive essay about COVID-19 requires a thoughtful approach to present your arguments effectively.

Here are some tips to help you craft a compelling persuasive essay on this topic:

Choose a Specific Angle

Start by narrowing down your focus. COVID-19 is a broad topic, so selecting a specific aspect or issue related to it will make your essay more persuasive and manageable. For example, you could focus on vaccination, public health measures, the economic impact, or misinformation.

Provide Credible Sources

Support your arguments with credible sources such as scientific studies, government reports, and reputable news outlets. Reliable sources enhance the credibility of your essay.

Use Persuasive Language

Employ persuasive techniques, such as ethos (establishing credibility), pathos (appealing to emotions), and logos (using logic and evidence). Use vivid examples and anecdotes to make your points relatable.

Organize Your Essay

Structure your essay involves creating a persuasive essay outline and establishing a logical flow from one point to the next. Each paragraph should focus on a single point, and transitions between paragraphs should be smooth and logical.

Emphasize Benefits

Highlight the benefits of your proposed actions or viewpoints. Explain how your suggestions can improve public health, safety, or well-being. Make it clear why your audience should support your position.

Use Visuals -H3

Incorporate graphs, charts, and statistics when applicable. Visual aids can reinforce your arguments and make complex data more accessible to your readers.

Call to Action

End your essay with a strong call to action. Encourage your readers to take a specific step or consider your viewpoint. Make it clear what you want them to do or think after reading your essay.

Revise and Edit

Proofread your essay for grammar, spelling, and clarity. Make sure your arguments are well-structured and that your writing flows smoothly.

Seek Feedback

Have someone else read your essay to get feedback. They may offer valuable insights and help you identify areas where your persuasive techniques can be improved.

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Common Topics for a Persuasive Essay on COVID-19

Here are some persuasive essay topics on COVID-19:

The Importance of Vaccination Mandates for COVID-19 Control
Balancing Public Health and Personal Freedom During a Pandemic
The Economic Impact of Lockdowns vs. Public Health Benefits
The Role of Misinformation in Fueling Vaccine Hesitancy
Remote Learning vs. In-Person Education: What's Best for Students?
The Ethics of Vaccine Distribution: Prioritizing Vulnerable Populations
The Mental Health Crisis Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic
The Long-Term Effects of COVID-19 on Healthcare Systems
Global Cooperation vs. Vaccine Nationalism in Fighting the Pandemic
The Future of Telemedicine: Expanding Healthcare Access Post-COVID-19

In search of more inspiring topics for your next persuasive essay? Our persuasive essay topics blog has plenty of ideas!

To sum it up,

You have read good sample essays and got some helpful tips. You now have the tools you needed to write a persuasive essay about Covid-19. So don't let the doubts stop you, start writing!

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Frequently Asked Questions

Are there any ethical considerations when writing a persuasive essay about covid-19.

Yes, there are ethical considerations when writing a persuasive essay about COVID-19. It's essential to ensure the information is accurate, not contribute to misinformation, and be sensitive to the pandemic's impact on individuals and communities. Additionally, respecting diverse viewpoints and emphasizing public health benefits can promote ethical communication.

What impact does COVID-19 have on society?

The impact of COVID-19 on society is far-reaching. It has led to job and economic losses, an increase in stress and mental health disorders, and changes in education systems. It has also had a negative effect on social interactions, as people have been asked to limit their contact with others.

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How to Write About Coronavirus in a College Essay

Students can share how they navigated life during the coronavirus pandemic in a full-length essay or an optional supplement.

Writing About COVID-19 in College Essays

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Experts say students should be honest and not limit themselves to merely their experiences with the pandemic.

The global impact of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, means colleges and prospective students alike are in for an admissions cycle like no other. Both face unprecedented challenges and questions as they grapple with their respective futures amid the ongoing fallout of the pandemic.

Colleges must examine applicants without the aid of standardized test scores for many – a factor that prompted many schools to go test-optional for now . Even grades, a significant component of a college application, may be hard to interpret with some high schools adopting pass-fail classes last spring due to the pandemic. Major college admissions factors are suddenly skewed.

"I can't help but think other (admissions) factors are going to matter more," says Ethan Sawyer, founder of the College Essay Guy, a website that offers free and paid essay-writing resources.

College essays and letters of recommendation , Sawyer says, are likely to carry more weight than ever in this admissions cycle. And many essays will likely focus on how the pandemic shaped students' lives throughout an often tumultuous 2020.

But before writing a college essay focused on the coronavirus, students should explore whether it's the best topic for them.

Writing About COVID-19 for a College Application

Much of daily life has been colored by the coronavirus. Virtual learning is the norm at many colleges and high schools, many extracurriculars have vanished and social lives have stalled for students complying with measures to stop the spread of COVID-19.

"For some young people, the pandemic took away what they envisioned as their senior year," says Robert Alexander, dean of admissions, financial aid and enrollment management at the University of Rochester in New York. "Maybe that's a spot on a varsity athletic team or the lead role in the fall play. And it's OK for them to mourn what should have been and what they feel like they lost, but more important is how are they making the most of the opportunities they do have?"

That question, Alexander says, is what colleges want answered if students choose to address COVID-19 in their college essay.

But the question of whether a student should write about the coronavirus is tricky. The answer depends largely on the student.

"In general, I don't think students should write about COVID-19 in their main personal statement for their application," Robin Miller, master college admissions counselor at IvyWise, a college counseling company, wrote in an email.

"Certainly, there may be exceptions to this based on a student's individual experience, but since the personal essay is the main place in the application where the student can really allow their voice to be heard and share insight into who they are as an individual, there are likely many other topics they can choose to write about that are more distinctive and unique than COVID-19," Miller says.

Opinions among admissions experts vary on whether to write about the likely popular topic of the pandemic.

"If your essay communicates something positive, unique, and compelling about you in an interesting and eloquent way, go for it," Carolyn Pippen, principal college admissions counselor at IvyWise, wrote in an email. She adds that students shouldn't be dissuaded from writing about a topic merely because it's common, noting that "topics are bound to repeat, no matter how hard we try to avoid it."

Above all, she urges honesty.

"If your experience within the context of the pandemic has been truly unique, then write about that experience, and the standing out will take care of itself," Pippen says. "If your experience has been generally the same as most other students in your context, then trying to find a unique angle can easily cross the line into exploiting a tragedy, or at least appearing as though you have."

But focusing entirely on the pandemic can limit a student to a single story and narrow who they are in an application, Sawyer says. "There are so many wonderful possibilities for what you can say about yourself outside of your experience within the pandemic."

He notes that passions, strengths, career interests and personal identity are among the multitude of essay topic options available to applicants and encourages them to probe their values to help determine the topic that matters most to them – and write about it.

That doesn't mean the pandemic experience has to be ignored if applicants feel the need to write about it.

Writing About Coronavirus in Main and Supplemental Essays

Students can choose to write a full-length college essay on the coronavirus or summarize their experience in a shorter form.

To help students explain how the pandemic affected them, The Common App has added an optional section to address this topic. Applicants have 250 words to describe their pandemic experience and the personal and academic impact of COVID-19.

"That's not a trick question, and there's no right or wrong answer," Alexander says. Colleges want to know, he adds, how students navigated the pandemic, how they prioritized their time, what responsibilities they took on and what they learned along the way.

If students can distill all of the above information into 250 words, there's likely no need to write about it in a full-length college essay, experts say. And applicants whose lives were not heavily altered by the pandemic may even choose to skip the optional COVID-19 question.

"This space is best used to discuss hardship and/or significant challenges that the student and/or the student's family experienced as a result of COVID-19 and how they have responded to those difficulties," Miller notes. Using the section to acknowledge a lack of impact, she adds, "could be perceived as trite and lacking insight, despite the good intentions of the applicant."

To guard against this lack of awareness, Sawyer encourages students to tap someone they trust to review their writing , whether it's the 250-word Common App response or the full-length essay.

Experts tend to agree that the short-form approach to this as an essay topic works better, but there are exceptions. And if a student does have a coronavirus story that he or she feels must be told, Alexander encourages the writer to be authentic in the essay.

"My advice for an essay about COVID-19 is the same as my advice about an essay for any topic – and that is, don't write what you think we want to read or hear," Alexander says. "Write what really changed you and that story that now is yours and yours alone to tell."

Sawyer urges students to ask themselves, "What's the sentence that only I can write?" He also encourages students to remember that the pandemic is only a chapter of their lives and not the whole book.

Miller, who cautions against writing a full-length essay on the coronavirus, says that if students choose to do so they should have a conversation with their high school counselor about whether that's the right move. And if students choose to proceed with COVID-19 as a topic, she says they need to be clear, detailed and insightful about what they learned and how they adapted along the way.

"Approaching the essay in this manner will provide important balance while demonstrating personal growth and vulnerability," Miller says.

Pippen encourages students to remember that they are in an unprecedented time for college admissions.

"It is important to keep in mind with all of these (admission) factors that no colleges have ever had to consider them this way in the selection process, if at all," Pippen says. "They have had very little time to calibrate their evaluations of different application components within their offices, let alone across institutions. This means that colleges will all be handling the admissions process a little bit differently, and their approaches may even evolve over the course of the admissions cycle."

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Coronavirus Pandemic

Opinion | An opinion on opinions in a pandemic

An influx of contrarian viewpoints on covid-19 policy in mainstream opinion journalism could have dire consequences on how the pandemic plays out..

Over the span of four long days in September 1918, two leading voices expressed dismay about what was then known as the “Spanish influenza.”

First, Lt. Col. Philip Doane, who led the Health and Sanitation Section of the Emergency Fleet Corporation, “forcefully” voiced that the Germans were behind the epidemic, which had reached American shores earlier in the year. He theorized that German spies may have spilled the virus in a locale where a large number of Americans had gathered, such as a cinema.

“The Germans have started epidemics in Europe, and there is no reason why they should be particularly gentle with America,” Doane opined.

Then, a few days later, another opinion, by Surgeon General Rupert Blue of the Public Health Service — this time in an article in the editorial pages of The New York Times — downplayed the seriousness of the pandemic, suggesting that smallpox, dysentery and typhoid were much more worrisome.

Doane’s statement further fueled stateside anger against the Germans, but may have helped shore up support for the remaining battles occurring thousands of miles away. Blue’s may have swayed public opinion towards not taking the pandemic seriously — and cases across the U.S. continued to rise.

For most of 1918, coverage of the pandemic was dangerously slim, attributed in part to President Woodrow Wilson’s disinterest in addressing it . Most of the coverage in major papers was thus about the war, only occasionally punctuated with statistics about deaths from the epidemic.

But precisely a month after these opinions were aired, the Times changed tack, dedicating over 1,000 words in the Sunday editorial pages to the views of a recent Russian immigrant, a physician, named Dr. Michael A. Iogolevitch, who had both witnessed the epidemic firsthand in Europe weeks earlier and served on the front lines during another flu epidemic 16 years prior.

His opinion was invaluable. For one, he argued that the term “Spanish flu” was incorrect, and that “pulmonary flu” was more appropriate. More importantly, he advised isolating infected cases, ventilation and supportive care; warned against transmission in children; and advised the appropriate use of medications. He also, humbly, lauded the efforts behind finding a vaccine while emphasizing the need to educate the public about disease transmission:

Thanks to the public health officials of this country, you appear to be on the eve of the practical application of a vaccine. … I think your health authorities are on the right track … the public should be made acquainted with the disease through lectures, printed pamphlets, newspapers … in a short time (the public) may be taught the necessary fundamentals of the disease … such as not to cough or sneeze without a handkerchief.

The Times appeared to heed his call. It undertook the key role newspapers play in impacting public understanding of the virus. It increased regular reporting of the pandemic, such as the enforcement of fines to ensure public health guidelines were followed; and educated the public on the promise of vaccine research, all while warning them against ingesting “cures” that could “do more harm than good” ( la plus ca change !). Portions of advertising space were also reallocated to public health messages that encouraged readers to wear masks and follow disinfection recommendations.

That said, despite experts suggesting the pandemic had ended, and it was the time to reflect on learnings , transmission took a long time to curtail: After 50 million deaths, almost 700,000 of which were in the U.S., the last case was detected in April 1920 .

Arguably, Iogolevitch’s views were influential in shaping how the Times and other newspapers reported on the pandemic, which then impacted public understanding and opinion, all which collectively helped drive widespread behavior change.

This illustrates that during a pandemic, it’s not just the reporting on the pandemic that matters — the opinions shared by experts also matter.

The impact of contrarian opinions

Over the last 18 months, with the influx of thousands of op-eds focused on the pandemic, we’ve seen the impact of airing contrarian opinions.

In March 2020, a viral piece published in the Times by David Katz, a physician with expertise in nutrition, called for keeping businesses open. A few days later, then-President Donald Trump used the same language from the piece to justify the administration’s inaction. This didn’t go unnoticed , suggesting that the op-ed may have, to some degree, either influenced Trump’s choices, or was used to justify his a priori plans.

One year later, an article in The Atlantic by the economist Emily Oster was similarly perplexing: another argument for a “laissez-faire” approach to pandemic planning, this time applied to children. The blowback by infectious disease physicians and epidemiologists was huge, taking the form of an ad hoc scientific peer review online (disclosure: I consult for the Twitter health design team to support more productive disagreements online). And while the author issued a clarification on social media, the article itself still lacks a correction. It became weaponized by libertarians , and more recently, used in a testimony (and subsequent appeal) against mask mandates for children in Florida.

Further, in early September, another op-ed , by oncologist Vinay Prasad, called into question masks for children, only having been met by similar blowback by epidemiologists and pediatricians. His claims could potentially be weaponized by anti-maskers. In that case, while “ children are not little adults ” is an adage in pediatric medicine, which often applies to drug dosing, that doesn’t typically apply to standard practices like helmets, masks, seatbelts and so forth. The potential trade-offs are worth it to prevent transmission at a time when pediatric cases, hospitalizations and deaths are surging in this vulnerable unvaccinated group. Yet Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ successful appeal last week may have benefited from this counterpoint narrative.

But the issue here goes beyond any one self-described expert’s opinion. To make it solely personal is to fail to see the underlying problem. This dilemma has less to do with any specific individual, and more to do with the processes in place among newsrooms across the country to vet these opinions, including who deserves a platform (and who doesn’t), and whether the opinion offered is supported by sound data, all on top of the traditional challenges readers may face when discerning meaning from opinion journalism.

A different approach to opinion journalism

The idea to separate opinion from news is credited to the founder of the New York Tribune, Horace Greeley. Now there are codes of ethics for opinion journalism, and some newsrooms have their own. But this is complicated by the fact that most readers still have a hard time distinguishing between news and opinion . Efforts to label sections as “ideas” and “essays” may not always help with this distinction, particularly if they are written by an individual that “appears” to be an expert on pandemics.

At a time when editors may be burnt out , but when readers still expect quality data-informed advice, and when ad hoc scientific “peer review” on social media has limited impact, we need a different approach, one that addresses the two main problems.

First, to what degree is expertise and credibility required when opining about an active pandemic, especially on policies by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and how best can editors determine this?

Second, during an active pandemic, should the publication standards for pandemic-focused op-eds be higher, knowing that the consequences of readers integrating this information can be immense, potentially even impacting pandemic prediction models themselves ?

The first issue involves expertise and credibility. A common argument made by epidemiologists and infectious disease experts against the Oster, Prasad, and Katz op-eds are that they shouldn’t have been published because the writers lacked the specific expertise in the area they were commenting on. This is an appropriate criticism. We wouldn’t turn to an infectious disease expert to advise us on the economy of the country, the best chemotherapy protocol for a form of breast cancer, nor how national nutrition policy should be overhauled.

But this criticism doesn’t heed the value of what “outsiders” — nonscientists and scientists alike — offer to the public conversation. Dr. Michael Iogolevitch, despite being a physician, was an outsider by virtue of being a new immigrant who wielded no power compared to Surgeon General Blue or Lt. Col. Doane.

Moreover, we need only turn to Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” as self-evident. Carson was a citizen scientist, not an expert on environmental pollutants or human health, yet her outsider perspective helped shift public opinion, including that of countless scientists who resided in echo chambers, some who were unduly influenced by industry, and were altogether unable or unwilling to see their blind spots.

Echoing American philosopher Thomas Kuhn , Carson spoke to the defining feature of science being that it evolves , including in her book an elegant quote from Johns Hopkins professor Carl Swanson, that “others” are crucial to that evolution: “Science may be likened to a river … it gathers momentum with the work of many investigators and as it is fed by other streams of thought; it is deepened and broadened by the concepts and generalizations that are gradually evolved.” As Philip Tetlock has written extensively about, experts are often blind to gaps in their understanding, which justifies why we need humble non -experts in the room.

As such, the downfall of all three of these op-eds, is at least in part that they lacked intellectual humility , that is, the clear idea that their view is one of an outsider having appraised the evidence, but that it is subject to change as understanding evolves. Indeed, if high-quality traditional journalism is “balanced,” so too should opinion journalism. It should be forceful yet flexible, especially so with opinions that run counter to established public health recommendations.

The second issue is whether an active pandemic necessarily raises the standards for pandemic-related opinion journalism. This is specifically the case now where major news outlets are cosplaying as the main source of public health information, given the limitations on traditional authoritative bodies like the CDC .

Compelling opinion journalism is supported by data and evidence. But who exactly is the judge of this evidence? Unlike peer-reviewed science, the judges — editors in this case — often do not have the deep expertise to scientifically appraise the quality of evidence used in an article. They can’t be expected to. Alas, that judgment rests primarily on the individual submitting their opinion, and their self-assessment of both expertise and ability to appropriately apply the data.

The Katz op-ed was not buttressed by relevant scientific data, which was perhaps expected given that the pandemic was in its earliest weeks and such data was not available.

As several infectious diseases experts pointed out, the Oster op-ed used sound economic modeling assumptions, but extrapolated these assumptions to epidemiological data (the crux of the concerns raised involved the conclusions perceived as erroneous).

With the Prasad op-ed, as his critics pointed out, the overreliance on one small trial that wasn’t replicable and lacked external validity rendered his main argument thorny. But what’s particularly puzzling with Prasad’s op-ed is that he co-wrote an excellent book that describes these very research limitations in compelling detail, and why they often lead to medical reversals.

A similar issue around assessing expertise and the application of evidence is present in the justice system with medical expert witnesses . Some states leave the judgment of medical expertise, and the application of scientific evidence, to a jury and judge who typically lack scientific training. Others leave the determination to the expert’s professional peers. Both are imperfect.

During a pandemic, the stakes of misjudging expertise and the appropriate application of data are high. One poorly supported opinion can be used to justify inaction or disobedience, which could then fuel higher transmission rates. Failing to have high standards effectively poses the same harm as the Tom Cotton op-ed controversy, but the consequences to flawed public understanding may be more dire and traceable, through the larger ripple effect on cases, hospitalizations and deaths.

These two points — on expertise and standards — inevitably run against arguments around free speech and censorship. It harkens back to another pressing issue in 1918, which was President Woodrow Wilson’s concern that contrarian opinions about the war, namely anti-war sentiment, could pose a risk to the populace. This led to the passing of the Sedition Act of 1918, which also covered which opinions would be voiced in the media (including newspaper editorial pages). The justification was that the common good of winning the war was held in higher esteem as compared to any individual’s right to protest against the war publicly.

Seen as extreme, Supreme Court associate justice Oliver Wendell Holmes put forth a test the following year for assessing whether the Sedition Act could be applied, the “ Clear and Present Danger Test ” (emphasis mine):

The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree. When a nation is at war many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight, and that no court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right.

Notably, the COVID-19 pandemic has been likened to war by the very nature that it requires collective action and cooperation in order to defeat the enemy named SARS-CoV2. Holmes’ attempt was to create a more objective way of measuring when free speech should be curtailed for the sake of the war, and more broadly for the public good (of note, libertarian sentiment against pandemic regulations was uncommon in 1918, possibly because the broader libertarian value around winning a war, and the associated freedoms, was perceived more salient).

How to reconcile expertise and standards

So how might we reconcile these two broad issues?

First, ideally, newsroom opinion sections should have at least one editor with scientific training and experience in critically appraising research studies to provide insight around if a submission, regardless of the author’s titles, is supported with valid data. As this may prove difficult, investing in training opinion editors to be better judges can help fill in the gaps. (Trainings are offered by the National Association of Science Writers .)

Second, creating a standard rubric for opinion editors to help assess a given “expert” op-ed would help. As a scientific peer reviewer, I’ve often followed these , which could be adapted for pandemic-focused op-eds. Such a rubric could include a variation of a “clear and present danger test” — applicable to potentially hateful views as much as those that could pose a public health risk.

Third, newsrooms should regularly publish and make available explainer guides to help educate readers on scientific media literacy.

Fourth, where clarifications or corrections (or even a revision of a prior opinion) are offered by the writer, as with the Oster example, editors could publish this as an update to the article itself.

Fifth, whether it’s opinion or traditional journalism, caution should be heeded on any article that offers a crystal ball — whether around herd immunity , whether to plan social events next season , or when/ how the pandemic will end. At a time when readers are looking to news outlets for certainty, the temptation by newsrooms to provide this is strong. We don’t know how this pandemic will end, and no expert opinion or conscientious science journalist, albeit well-meaning, knows either. Certainty remains elusive , but the most accurate pandemic forecasts are made a bit like the weather: a week or two at a time, a diminishing return on this accuracy the further out we go. The news media must continue to normalize this, as well as normalize that the understanding of SARS-CoV2, as with all science, will evolve , so the recommendations and messaging will too (which doesn’t equal flip-flopping ). Reporting that helps place the pandemic’s trajectory in context, and guides readers’ thinking will continue to prove extremely useful.

For readers who are turning to these pages for hope but also prudent expert guidance, a healthy acceptance of the uncertainty that all of us — expert or not — are grappling with , as well as the limits of forecasting, will help undo some of the pressure many editors face to meet that need in their outlets. And, of course, subscribe and support these outlets.

Heed those who lack a platform

The original title of this essay was “What Silence Springs,” a play on words of Carson’s book title. My goal was to underscore a crucial last point.

I’d be remiss to omit the fact that oftentimes the most knowledgeable and experienced people lack the platform to lend their expertise, or are implicitly (or explicitly) silenced, which is fertile ground for overconfident voices to take the lead.

As with other professions, the journalism world struggles with a bias towards a certain kind of journalist or expert. My volunteer work mentoring several academics through the Op-ed Project only further cemented that meritocracy remains an ideal. When it comes to opinion journalism, it’s on editors to ensure that it isn’t just the loudest (often self-proclaiming) experts who are provided with a platform for their views and ideas, but those with demonstrated expertise, humility and thoughtfulness , as they often add immeasurable value to the public conversation — perhaps, especially, those voices that remain underrepresented primarily because they are excluded.

An outsider, but one that held herself to the same standards of scientific evidence as her more decorated academic contemporaries, Carson demonstrated that the evidence-based opinions of a non-expert can indeed shift the public’s perception of the most pressing issues of our time.

She once proclaimed: “Wonder and humility are wholesome emotions, and they do not exist side by side with a lust for destruction.” Though Carson was referring to how humans experience our natural world, the same might be applied to opinion journalism. A reader’s sense of wonder is rooted in noticing how differently another might understand crucial issues. We are often humbled if that perspective is novel enough to change our minds. We also value that which is rare, which is why we pay attention to contrarian views.

But this wonder and humility, in its truest sense, cannot be derived from arguments that are ultimately destructive by virtue of being unsupported by the evidence.

During a pandemic, where millions of citizens, and their leaders, base (or justify) their actions on what they read in news sources they trust, it’s simply a pattern we cannot afford to repeat.

A version of this article originally appeared on Elemental , a publication from Medium for science-backed health and wellness coverage.

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The Pandemic Did Not Affect Mental Health the Way You Think

The world’s psychological immune system turned out to be more robust than expected.

Artwork depicting two heads facing each other, with red faces and green heads with black zigzags spreading from their faces.

You’ve probably heard that the coronavirus pandemic triggered a worldwide mental-health crisis. This narrative took hold almost as quickly as the virus itself. In the spring of 2020, article after article —even an op-ed by one of us—warned of a looming psychological epidemic. As clinical scientists and research psychologists have pointed out , the coronavirus pandemic has created many conditions that might lead to psychological distress: sudden, widespread disruptions to people’s livelihoods and social connections; millions bereaved; and the most vulnerable subjected to long-lasting hardship. A global collapse in well-being has seemed inevitable.

We joined a mental-health task force , commissioned by The Lancet, in order to quantify the pandemic’s psychological effects. When we reviewed the best available data, we saw that some groups—including people facing financial stress—have experienced substantial, life-changing suffering. However, looking at the global population on the whole, we were surprised not to find the prolonged misery we had expected.

We combed through close to 1,000 studies that examined hundreds of thousands of people from nearly 100 countries. This research measured many variables related to mental health—including anxiety, depression, and deaths by suicide—as well as life satisfaction. We focused on two complementary types of evidence: surveys that examined comparable groups of people before and during the pandemic and studies tracking the same individuals over time. Neither type of study is perfect, but when the same conclusions emerged from both sets of evidence, we gained confidence that we were seeing something real.

Early in the pandemic, our team observed in these studies what the media was reporting: Average levels of anxiety and depression—as well as broader psychological distress —climbed dramatically, as did the number of people experiencing clinically significant forms of these conditions. For example, in both the U.S . and Norway , reports of depression rose three-fold during March and April of 2020 compared with averages collected in previous years. And in a study of more than 50,000 people across the United Kingdom , 27 percent showed clinically significant levels of distress early in the pandemic, compared with 19 percent before the pandemic.

Read: This is not a normal mental-health disaster

But as spring turned to summer, something remarkable happened: Average levels of depression, anxiety, and distress began to fall . Some data sets even suggested that overall psychological distress returned to near-pre-pandemic levels by early summer 2020. We share what we learned in a paper that is forthcoming in Perspective on Psychological Science .

We kept digging into the data to account for any anomalies. For example, some of the data sets came disproportionately from wealthy countries, so we expanded our geographic lens. We also considered that even if the pandemic didn’t produce intense, long-term distress, it might have undercut people’s overall life satisfaction. So, members from our team examined the largest data set available on that topic, from the Gallup World Poll . This survey asks people to evaluate their life on a 10-point scale, with 10 being the best possible life and zero being the worst. Representative samples of people from most of the world’s countries answer this question every year, allowing us to compare results from 2020 with preceding years. Looking at the world as a whole, we saw no trace of a decline in life satisfaction: People in 2020 rated their lives at 5.75 on average, identical to the average in previous years.

We also wondered if the surveys weren’t reaching the people who were struggling the most. If you’re barely holding things together, you might not answer calls from a researcher. However, real-time data from official government sources in 21 countries showed no detectable increase in instances of suicide from April to July 2020, relative to previous years; in fact, suicide rates actually declined slightly within some countries, including the U.S. For example, California expected to see 1,429 deaths by suicide during this period, based on data from prior years; instead, 1,280 occurred.

We were surprised by how well many people weathered the pandemic’s psychological challenges. In order to make sense of these patterns, we looked back to a classic psychology finding: People are more resilient than they themselves realize. We imagine that negative life events—losing a job or a romantic partner—will be devastating for months or years. When people actually experience these losses, however, their misery tends to fade far faster than they imagined it would.

The capacity to withstand difficult events also applies to traumas such as living through war or sustaining serious injury. These incidents can produce considerable anguish, and we don’t want to minimize the pain that so many suffer. But study after study demonstrates that a majority of survivors either bounce back quickly or never show a substantial decline in mental health.

Human beings possess what some researchers call a psychological immune system , a host of cognitive abilities that enable us to make the best of even the worst situation. For example, after breaking up with a romantic partner, people may focus on the ex’s annoying habits or relish their newfound free time.

Lucy McBride: By now, burnout is a given

The pandemic has been a test of the global psychological immune system, which appears more robust than we would have guessed. When familiar sources of enjoyment evaporated in the spring of 2020, people got creative. They participated in drive-by birthday parties, mutual-assistance groups, virtual cocktail evenings with old friends, and nightly cheers for health-care workers. Some people got really good at baking. Many found a way to reweave their social tapestry. Indeed, across multiple large data sets, levels of loneliness showed only a modest increase, with 13.8 percent of adults in the U.S. reporting always or often feeling lonely in April 2020, compared with 11 percent in spring 2018.

But these broad trends and averages shouldn’t erase the real struggles—immense pain, overwhelming loss, financial hardships—that so many people have faced over the past 17 months. For example, that 2.8 percent increase in the number of Americans reporting loneliness last spring represents 7 million people. Like so many aspects of the pandemic, the coronavirus’s mental-health toll was not distributed evenly. Early on , some segments of the population—including women and parents of young children—exhibited an especially pronounced increase in overall psychological distress. As the pandemic progressed , lasting mental-health challenges disproportionately affected people who were facing financial issues, individuals who got sick with COVID-19, and those who had been struggling with physical and mental-health disorders prior to the pandemic. The resilience of the population as a whole does not relieve leaders of their responsibility to provide tangible support and access to mental-health services to those people who have endured the most intense distress and who are at the greatest ongoing risk.

But the astonishing resilience that most people have exhibited in the face of the sudden changes brought on by the pandemic holds its own lessons. We learned that people can handle temporary changes to their lifestyle—such as working from home, giving up travel, or even going into isolation—better than some policy makers seemed to assume.

As we look ahead to the world’s next great challenges—including a future pandemic —we need to remember this hard-won lesson: Human beings are not passive victims of change but active stewards of our own well-being. This knowledge should empower us to make the disruptive changes our societies may require, even as we support the individuals and communities that have been hit hardest.

Special Issue: COVID-19

This essay was published as part of a Special Issue on Misinformation and COVID-19, guest-edited by Dr. Meghan McGinty (Director of Emergency Management, NYC Health + Hospitals) and Nat Gyenes (Director, Meedan Digital Health Lab).

Peer Reviewed

The causes and consequences of COVID-19 misperceptions: Understanding the role of news and social media

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We investigate the relationship between media consumption, misinformation, and important attitudes and behaviours during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. We find that comparatively more misinformation circulates on Twitter, while news media tends to reinforce public health recommendations like social distancing. We find that exposure to social media is associated with misperceptions regarding basic facts about COVID-19 while the inverse is true for news media. These misperceptions are in turn associated with lower compliance with social distancing measures. We thus draw a clear link from misinformation circulating on social media, notably Twitter, to behaviours and attitudes that potentially magnify the scale and lethality of COVID-19.

Department of Political Science, McGill University, Canada

Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto, Canada

Max Bell School of Public Policy, McGill University, Canada

School of Computer Science, McGill University, Canada

Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, McGill University, Canada

Computer Science Program, McGill University, Canada

Research Questions

How prevalent is misinformation surrounding COVID-19 on Twitter, and how does this compare to Canadian news media?
Does the type of media one is exposed to influence social distancing behaviours and beliefs about COVID-19?
Is there a link between COVID-19 misinformation and perceptions of the pandemic’s severity and compliance with social distancing recommendations?

Essay Summary

We evaluate the presence of misinformation and public health recommendations regarding COVID-19 in a massive corpus of tweets as well as all articles published on nineteen Canadian news sites. Using these data, we show that preventative measures are more encouraged and covered on traditional news media, while misinformation appears more frequently on Twitter.
To evaluate the impact of this greater level of misinformation, we conducted a nationally representative survey that included questions about common misperceptions regarding COVID-19, risk perceptions, social distancing compliance, and exposure to traditional news and social media. We find that being exposed to news media is associated with fewer misperceptions and more social distancing compliance while conversely, social media exposure is associated with more misperceptions and less social distancing compliance.
Misperceptions regarding the virus are in turn associated with less compliance with social distancing measures, even when controlling for a broad range of other attitudes and characteristics.
Association between social media exposure and social distancing non-compliance is eliminated when accounting for effect of misperceptions, providing evidence that social media is associated with non-compliance through increasing misperceptions about the virus.

Implications

The COVID-19 pandemic has been accompanied by a so-called “infodemic”—a global spread of misinformation that poses a serious problem for public health. Infodemics are concerning because the spread of false or misleading information has the capacity to change transmission patterns (Kim et al., 2019) and consequently the scale and lethality of a pandemic. This information can be shared by any media, but there is reason to be particularly concerned about the role that social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, play in incidentally boosting misperceptions. These platforms are increasingly relied upon as primary sources of news (Mitchell et al., 2016) and misinformation has been heavily documented on them (Garrett, 2019; Vicario et al., 2016). Scholars have found medical and health misinformation on the platforms, including that related to vaccines (Radzikowski et al., 2016) and other virus epidemics such as Ebola (Fung et al., 2016) and Zika (Sharma et al., 2017).

However, misinformation content typically makes up a low percentage of overall discussion of a topic (e.g. Fung et al., 2016) and mere exposure to misinformation does not guarantee belief in that misinformation. More research is thus needed to understand the extent and consequences of misinformation surrounding COVID-19 on social media. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Twitter, Facebook and other platforms have engaged in efforts to combat misinformation but they have continued to receive widespread criticism that misinformation is still appearing on prominent pages and groups (Kouzy et al., 2020; NewsGuard, 2020). The extent to which misinformation continues to circulate on these platforms and influence people’s attitudes and behaviours is still very much an open question.

Here, we draw on three data sets and a sequential mixed method approach to better understand the consequences of online misinformation for important behaviours and attitudes. First, we collected nearly 2.5 million tweets explicitly referring to COVID-19 in the Canadian context. Second, we collected just over 9 thousand articles from nineteen Canadian English-language news sites from the same time period. We coded both of these media sets for misinformation and public health recommendations. Third, we conducted a nationally representative survey that included questions related to media consumption habits, COVID-19 perceptions and misperceptions, and social distancing compliance. As our outcome variables are continuous, we use Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression to identify relationships between news and social media exposure, misperceptions, compliance with social distancing measures, and risk perceptions. We use these data to illustrate: 1) the relative prevalence of misinformation on Twitter; and 2) a powerful association between social media usage and misperceptions, on the one hand, and social distancing non-compliance on the other.

Misinformation and compliance with social distancing

We first compare the presence of misinformation on Twitter with that on news media and find, consistent with the other country cases (Chadwick & Vaccari, 2019; Vicario et al., 2016), comparatively higher levels of misinformation circulating on the social media platform. We also found that recommendations for safe practices during the pandemic (e.g. washing hands, social distancing) appeared much more frequently in the Canadian news media. These findings are in line with literature examining fake news which finds a large difference in information quality across media (Al-Rawi, 2019; Guess & Nyhan, 2018).

Spending time in a media environment that contains misinformation is likely to change attitudes and behaviours. Even if users are not nested in networks that propagate misinformation, they are likely to be incidentally exposed to information from a variety of perspectives (Feezell, 2018; Fletcher & Nielsen, 2018; Weeks et al., 2017). Even a highly curated social media feed is thus still likely to contain misinformation. As cumulative exposure to misinformation increases, users are likely to experience a reinforcement effect whereby familiarity leads to stronger belief (Dechêne et al., 2010).

To evaluate this empirically, we conducted a national survey that included questions on information consumption habits and a battery of COVID-19 misperceptions that could be the result of exposure to misinformation. We find that those who self-report exposure to the misinformation-rich social media environment do tend to have more misperceptions regarding COVID-19. These findings are consistent with others that link exposure to misinformation and misperceptions (Garrett et al., 2016; Jamieson & Albarracín, 2020). Social media users also self-report less compliance with social distancing.

Misperceptions are most meaningful when they impact behaviors in dangerous ways. During a pandemic, misperceptions can be fatal. In this case, we find that misperceptions are associated with reduced COVID-19 risk perceptions and with lower compliance with social distancing measures. We continue to find strong effects after controlling for socio-economic characteristics as well as scientific literacy. After accounting for the effect of misperceptions on social distancing non-compliance, social media usage no longer has a significant association with non-compliance, providing evidence that social media may lead to less social distancing compliance through its effect on COVID-19 misperceptions.

While some social media companies have made efforts to suppress misinformation on their platforms, there continues to be a high level of misinformation relative to news media. Highly polarized political environments and media ecosystems can lead to the spread of misinformation, such as in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic (Allcott et al., 2020; Motta et al., 2020). But even in healthy media ecosystems with less partisan news (Owen et al., 2020), social media can continue to facilitate the spread of misinformation. There is a real danger that without concerted efforts to reduce the amount of misinformation shared on social media, the large-scale social efforts required to combat COVID-19 will be undermined.

We contribute to a growing base of evidence that misinformation circulating on social media poses public health risks and join others in calling for social media companies to put greater focus on flattening the curve of misinformation (Donovan, 2020). These findings also provide governments with stronger evidence that the misinformation circulating on social media can be directly linked to misperceptions and public health risks. Such evidence is essential for them to chart an effective policy course. Finally, the methods and approach developed in this paper can be fruitfully applied to study other waves of misinformation and the research community can build upon the link clearly drawn between misinformation exposure, misperceptions, and downstream attitudes and behaviours.

We found use of social media platforms broadly contributes to misperceptions but were unable to precise the overall level of misinformation circulating on non-Twitter social media. Data access for researchers to platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram is limited and virtually non-existent for SnapChat, WhatsApp, and WeChat. Cross-platform content comparisons are an important ingredient for a rich understand of the social media environment and these social media companies must better open their platforms to research in the public interest.

Finding 1: Misinformation about COVID-19 is circulated more on Twitter as compared to traditional media.

We find large differences between the quality of information shared about COVID-19 on traditional news and Twitter. Figure 1 shows the percentage of COVID-19 related content that contains information linked to a particular theme. The plot reports the prevalence of information on both social and news media for: 1) three specific pieces of misinformation; 2) a general set of content that describes the pandemic itself as a conspiracy or a hoax; and 3) advice about hygiene and social distancing during the pandemic. We differentiate content that shared misinformation (red in the plot) from content that debunked misinformation (green in the plot).

There are large differences between the levels of misinformation on Twitter and news media. Misinformation was comparatively more common on Twitter across all four categories, while debunking was relatively more common in traditional news. Meanwhile, advice on hygiene and social distancing appeared much more frequently in news media. Note that higher percentages are to be expected for longer format news articles since we rely on keyword searches for identification. This makes the misinformation findings even starker – despite much higher average word counts, far fewer news articles propagate misinformation.

Finding 2: There is a strong association between social media exposure and misperceptions about COVID-19. The inverse is true for exposure to traditional news.

Among our survey respondents we find a corresponding strong association between social media exposure and misperceptions about COVID-19. These results are plotted in Figure 2, with controls included for both socioeconomic characteristics and demographics. Moving from no social media exposure to its maximum is expected to increase one’s misperceptions of COVID-19 by 0.22 on the 0-1 scale and decreased self-reported social distancing compliance by 0.12 on that same scale.

This result stands in stark contrast with the observed relationship between traditional news exposure and our outcome measures. Traditional news exposure is positively associated with correct perceptions regarding COVID-19. Moving from no news exposure to its highest level is expected to reduce misperceptions by 0.12 on the 0-1 scale and to increase social distancing compliance by 0.28 on that same scale. The effects are plotted in Figure 2. Social media usage appears to be correlated with COVID-19 misperceptions, suggesting these misperceptions are partially a result of misinformation on social media. The same cannot be said of traditional news exposure.

Finding 3: Misperceptions about the pandemic are associated with lower levels of risk perceptions and social distancing compliance.

COVID-19 misperceptions are also powerfully associated with lower levels of social distancing compliance. Moving from the lowest level of COVID-19 misperceptions to its maximum is associated with a reduction of one’s social distancing by 0.39 on the 0-1 scale. The previously observed relationship between social media exposure and misperceptions disappears, suggestive of a mediated relationship. That is, social media exposure increases misperceptions, which in turn reduces social distancing compliance. Misperceptions is also weakly associated with lower COVID-19 risk perceptions. Estimates from our models using COVID-19 concern as the outcome can be found in the left panel of Figure 3, while social distancing can be found in the right panel.

Finally, we also see that the relationship between misinformation and both social distancing compliance and COVID-19 concern hold when including controls for science literacy and a number of fundamental predispositions that are likely associated with both misperceptions and following the advice of scientific experts, such as anti-intellectualism, pseudoscientific beliefs, and left-right ideology. These estimates can similarly be found in Figure 3.

Canadian Twitter and news data were collected from March 26 th to April 6 th , 2020. We collected all English-language tweets from a set of 620,000 users that have been determined to be likely Canadians. For inclusion, a given user must self-identify as Canadian-based, follow a large number of Canadian political elite accounts, or frequently use Canadian-specific hashtags. News media was collected from nineteen prominent Canadian news sites with active RSS feeds. These tweets and news articles were searched for “covid” or “coronavirus”, leaving a sample of 2.25 million tweets and 8,857 news articles.

Of the COVID-19 related content, we searched for terms associated with four instances of misinformation that circulated during the COVID-19 pandemic: that COVID-19 was no more serious than the flu, that vitamin C or other supplements will prevent contraction of the virus, that the initial animal-to-human transfer of the virus was the direct result of eating bats, or that COVID-19 was a hoax or conspiracy. Given that we used keyword searches to identify content, we manually reviewed a random sample of 500 tweets from each instance of misinformation. Each tweet was coded as one of four categories: propagating misinformation, combatting misinformation, content with the relevant keywords but unrelated to misinformation, or content that refers to the misinformation but does not offer comment.

We then calculated the overall level of misinformation for that instance on Twitter by multiplying the overall volume of tweets by the proportion of hand-coded content where misinformation was identified. Each news article that included relevant keywords was similarly coded. The volume of the news mentioning these terms was sufficiently low that all news articles were hand coded. To identify health recommendations, we used a similar keyword search for terms associated with particular recommendations: 1) social distancing including staying at home, staying at least 6 feet or 2 meters away and avoiding gatherings; and 2) washing hands and not touching any part of your face. 1 Further details on the media collection strategy and hand-coding schema are available in the supporting materials.

For survey data, we used a sample of nearly 2,500 Canadian citizens 18 years or older drawn from a probability-based online national panel fielded from April 2-6, 2020. Quotas we set on age, gender, region, and language to ensure sample representativeness, and data was further weighted within region by gender and age based on the 2016 Canadian census.

We measure levels of COVID-19 misperceptions by asking respondents to rate the truthfulness of a series of nine false claims, such as the coronavirus being no worse than the seasonal flu or that it can be warded off with Vitamin C. Each was asked on a scale from definitely false (0) to definitely true (5). We use Cronbach’s Alpha as an indicator of scale reliability. Cronbach’s Alpha ranges from 0-1, with scores above 0.8 indicating the reliability is “good.” These items score 0.88, so we can safely construct a 0-1 scale of misperceptions from them.

We evaluate COVID-19 risk perceptions with a pair of questions asking respondents how serious of a threat they believe the pandemic to be for themselves and for Canadians, respectively. Each question was asked on a scale from not at all (0) to very (4). We construct a continuous index with these items.

We quantify social distancing by asking respondents to indicate which of a series of behaviours they had undertaken in response to the pandemic, such as working from home or avoiding in-person contact with friends, family, and acquaintances. We use principal component analysis (PCA) to reduce the number of dimensions in these data while minimizing information loss. The analysis revealed 2 distinct dimensions in our questions. One dimension includes factors strongly determined by occupation, such as working from home and switching to online meetings. The other dimension contains more inclusive behaviours such as avoiding contact, travel, and crowded places. We generate predictions from the PCA for this latter dimension to use in our analyses. The factor loadings can be found in Table A1 of the supporting materials.

We gauge news and social media consumption by asking respondents to identify news outlets and social media platforms they have used over the past week for political news. The list of news outlets included 17 organizations such as mainstream sources like CBC and Global, and partisan outlets like Rebel Media and National Observer. The list of social media platforms included 10 options such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. We sum the total number of outlets/platforms respondents report using and take the log to adjust for extreme values. We measure offline political discussion with an index based on questions asking how often respondents have discussed politics with family, friends, and acquaintances over the past week. Descriptions of our primary variables can be found in Table A2 of the supporting materials.

We evaluate our hypotheses using a standard design that evaluates the association between our explanatory and outcome variables controlling for other observable factors we measured. In practice, randomly assigning social media exposure is impractical, while randomly assigning misinformation is unethical. This approach allows us to describe these relationships, though we cannot make definite claims to causality.

We hypothesize that social media exposure is associated with misinformation on COVID-19. Figure 2 presents the coefficients of models predicting the effects of news exposure, social media exposure, and political discussion on COVID-19 misinformation, risk perceptions, and social distancing. Socio-economic and demographic control estimates are not displayed. Full estimation results can be found in the Table A3 of the supporting materials.

We further hypothesize that COVID-19 misinformation is associated with lower COVID-19 risk perceptions and less social distancing compliance. Figure 3 presents the coefficients for models predicting the effects of misinformation, news exposure, and social media exposure on severity perceptions and social distancing. We show models with and without controls for science literacy and other predispositions. Full estimation results can be found in the Table A4 of the supporting materials.

Limitations and robustness

A study such as this comes with clear limitations. First, we have evaluated information coming from only a section of the overall media ecosystem and during a specific time-period. The level of misinformation differs across platforms and online news sites and a more granular investigation into these dynamics would be valuable. Our analysis suggests that similar dynamics exist across social media platforms, however. In the supplementary materials we show that associations between misperceptions and social media usage are even higher for other social media platforms, suggesting that our analysis of Twitter content may underrepresent the prevalence of misinformation on social media writ large. As noted above, existing limitations on data access make such cross-platform research difficult.

Second, our data is drawn from a single country and language case study and other countries may have different media environments and levels of misinformation circulating on social media. We anticipate the underlying dynamics found in this paper to hold across these contexts, however. Those who consume information from platforms where misinformation is more prevalent will have greater misperceptions and that these misperceptions will be linked to lower compliance with social distancing and lower risk perceptions. Third, an ecological problem is present wherein we do not link survey respondents directly to their social media consumption (and evaluation of the misinformation they are exposed to) and lack the ability to randomly assign social media exposure to make a strong causal argument. We cannot and do not make a causal argument here but argue instead that there is strong evidence for a misinformation to misperceptions to lower social distancing compliance link.

/ Fake News
/ Mainstream Media
/ Public Health
/ Social Media

Cite this Essay

Bridgman, A., Merkley, E., Loewen, P. J., Owen, T., Ruths, D., Teichmann, L., & Zhilin, O. (2020). The causes and consequences of COVID-19 misperceptions: Understanding the role of news and social media. Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review . https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-028

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NewsGuard. (2020). Superspreaders . https://www.newsguardtech.com/superspreaders/

Owen, T., Loewen, P., Ruths, D., Bridgman, A., Gorwa, R., MacLellan, S., Merkley, E., & Zhilin, O. (2020). Lessons in Resilience: Canada’s Digital Media Ecosystem and the 2019 Election . Public Policy Forum. https://ppforum.ca/articles/lessons-in-resilience-canadas-digital-media-ecosystem-and-the-2019-election/

Radzikowski, J., Stefanidis, A., Jacobsen, K. H., Croitoru, A., Crooks, A., & Delamater, P. L. (2016). The Measles Vaccination Narrative in Twitter: A Quantitative Analysis. JMIR Public Health and Surveillance , 2 (1), e1. https://doi.org/10.2196/publichealth.5059

Sharma, M., Yadav, K., Yadav, N., & Ferdinand, K. C. (2017). Zika virus pandemic—Analysis of Facebook as a social media health information platform. American Journal of Infection Control , 45 (3), 301–302. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajic.2016.08.022

Shin, J., Jian, L., Driscoll, K., & Bar, F. (2018). The diffusion of misinformation on social media: Temporal pattern, message, and source. Computers in Human Behavior , 83 , 278–287. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.02.008

Vicario, M. D., Bessi, A., Zollo, F., Petroni, F., Scala, A., Caldarelli, G., Stanley, H. E., & Quattrociocchi, W. (2016). The spreading of misinformation online. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , 113 (3), 554–559. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1517441113

Weeks, B. E., Lane, D. S., Kim, D. H., Lee, S. S., & Kwak, N. (2017). Incidental Exposure, Selective Exposure, and Political Information Sharing: Integrating Online Exposure Patterns and Expression on Social Media. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication , 22 (6), 363–379. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcc4.12199

The project was funded through the Department of Canadian Heritage’s Digital Citizens Initiative.

Competing Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

The research protocol was approved by the institutional review board at University of Toronto. Human subjects gave informed consent before participating and were debriefed at the end of the study.

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original author and source are properly credited.

Data Availability

All materials needed to replicate this study are available via the Harvard Dataverse: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/5QS2XP .

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Arguments against mask requirements during the coronavirus (covid-19) pandemic, 2020-2021.

This page captures the main arguments that have been advanced against mask requirements during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. These arguments come from a variety of sources, including public officials, journalists, think tanks, economists, scientists, and other stakeholders. We encourage you to share the debates happening in your local community to [email protected] .

There are six main types of arguments against mask requirements:

Mask requirements are not necessary to stop the spread of coronavirus

Mask requirements give a false sense of security, mask requirements restrict freedom, masks present other health risks, mask requirements have harmful social consequences, mask requirements are unenforceable.

Click here to read about arguments in favor of mask requirements.

1.1 Claim: There is insufficient data to support that mask requirements effectively prevent the spread of coronavirus
1.2 Claim: The curve has been successfully flattened in areas without mask requirements
1.3 Claim: Mask requirements risk deemphasizing other necessary public health measures
2.1 Claim: Mask requirements disincentivize vaccinations
2.2 Claim: Mask-wearing mandates encourage people to pursue risky behaviors and activities that could spread COVID-19
3.1 Claim: Mask requirements are an overreach of government power and are unconstitutional
3.2 Claim: Mask requirements are a slippery slope and will lead to more government mandates, bureaucracy, and regulations
4.1 Claim: Wearing masks can cause other health risks
5.1 Claim: Wearing of masks can generate racist reactions
5.2 Claim: Mask wearing inhibits communication and children's social development
5.3 Claim: Mask mandates are immoral laws by government-imposed to control human behavior and personal development
6.1 Claim: Local mask laws with unclear enforcement mechanisms are ineffective, counter-productive, and potentially dangerous for employees
6.2 Claim: Mask mandates for businesses require employees to enforce laws
6.3 Claim: Colleges and universities should not ask students to report violations of Covid-19 rules
8 Footnotes

Claim: There is insufficient data to support that mask requirements effectively prevent the spread of coronavirus

Ashton Forbes, a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging San Diego County's mask requirements ( The San Diego Union Tribune ): Ashton Forbes is the plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging San Diego County's mask requirements.

"With new evidence and data coming to light regarding the science and severity of this specific virus, it has become ever more prevalent the requirement to wear a facial covering is not effective in stopping the spread of COVID-19. As such, the requirement to wear a face mask is overbroad and violates fundamental rights of both the United States Constitution as well as the California Constitution." - " San Diego resident sues county over mask orders ," June 2, 2020.

Joseph A. Ladapo ( Wall Street Journal ): "While mask-wearing has often been invoked in explanations for rising or falling Covid-19 case counts, the reality is that these trends reflect a basic human need to interact with one another. Claims that low mask compliance is responsible for rising case counts are also not supported by Gallup data, which show that the percentage of Americans reporting wearing masks has been high and relatively stable since June. Health officials and political leaders have assigned mask mandates a gravity unsupported by empirical research." - " Masks Are a Distraction From the Pandemic Reality ," October 28, 2020.

Phillip W. Magness ( Wall Street Journal ): "Unfortunately, the IHME modelers’ findings contained an error that even minimal scrutiny should have caught. The projected number of lives saved, and the implied case for a mask mandate, are based on a faulty statistic. Using a months-old survey, IHME modelers assumed erroneously that the U.S. mask-adoption rate stood at only 49% as of late September, and therefore had plenty of room to increase to “universal adoption,” defined as 95%, or to a more plausible 85%. According to more recent survey findings, however, America’s mask-adoption rate has hovered around 80% since the summer. New numbers would completely alter the IHME study’s findings. If 80% of Americans already wear masks, a new mandate could add only a few percentage points to the mask-adoption rate instead of nearly doubling it. Additional gains would be small and certainly nowhere near 130,000 lives saved." - " Case for Mask Mandate Rests on Bad Data ," November 11, 2020.

Claim: The curve has been successfully flattened in areas without mask requirements

Andrew Cooper, the plaintiff in a lawsuit in Nashua, New Hampshire ( New Hampshire Union Leader ): Andrew Cooper filed a lawsuit against a mask requirement ordinance of Nashua, New Hampshire.

"The ordinance’s justification that ‘slowing the spread’ of the coronavirus is somehow still a societal objective also ignores the fact that the entire state of New Hampshire has been wildly successful at ‘flattening the curve’ since it never came close to reaching the capacity of its health care system." - " Nashua resident files lawsuit over city's mask mandate ," June 1, 2020.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) ( The Dallas Morning News ): "After opening things 100%, effective March the 10th, with no masks, the numbers have just continued to drop." - " Abbott says Biden ’100% wrong’ on mask mandate and owes apology for ‘Neanderthal’ gibe. Who’s right? ," June 2, 2021.

Claim: Mask requirements risk deemphasizing other necessary public health measures

Group of doctors ( Reason ): A group of scientists and doctors sent a letter to the Editorial Board of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences criticizing a study regarding the effectiveness of masks to slow the spread of the coronavirus and saying that the study's conclusions that "airborne transmission represents the only viable route for spreading the disease" and the ineffectiveness of social distancing, quarantine, and handwashing recommendations was misleading and harmful.

"While masks are almost certainly an effective public health measure for preventing and slowing the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the claims presented in this study are dangerously misleading and lack any basis in evidence." - " Prominent Researchers Say a Widely Cited Study on Wearing Masks Is Badly Flawed ," June 22, 2020.

Claim: Mask requirements disincentivize vaccinations

Marc Siegel ( The Wall Street Journal ): "A more effective strategy would be to relieve the public of ineffective draconian restrictions. The president should announce that all federal mask mandates will end effective May 28, in time for Memorial Day weekend, and he should encourage states, localities and private institutions to do the same. This would send a clear message to the vaccine-resistant: It’s your responsibility to protect yourself by getting your shots. The message to everyone: Vaccines work, and it’s time to get back to normal." - " End Mask Mandates to Spur Vaccination ," May 6, 2021.

Claim: Mask-wearing mandates encourage people to pursue risky behaviors and activities that could spread COVID-19

Allysia Finley ( The Wall Street Journal ): "The decision to wear a mask would seem to be cost-free, apart from minor discomfort. But absolutism about masks and disregard for scientific uncertainties may promote a false sense of security that encourages risky behavior—including massive political protests." - " The Hidden Danger of Masks ," August 4, 2020.

Claim: Mask requirements are an overreach of government power and are unconstitutional

Philip Mauriello, Jr., an attorney representing plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging San Diego County's mask requirements ( The San Diego Union Tribune ): Philip Mauriello, Jr., is an attorney representing plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging San Diego County's mask requirements.

"The requirement of Plaintiff to wear a facial covering in public when not in his residence restricts his right to travel within the County by forcing him to make a decision between wearing a facial covering which provides no medical benefit and in fact creates other collateral health risks, or remain a prisoner in his own home. Either choice violates essential constitutional rights of the Plaintiff." - " San Diego resident sues county over mask orders ," June 2, 2020.

Brantley Lyons, Montgomery City Councilmember ( AP ): "I think to make somebody do something or require somebody to wear something is an overreach." - " US virus outbreaks stir clash over masks, personal freedom ," June 18, 2020.

Claim: Mask requirements are a slippery slope and will lead to more government mandates, bureaucracy, and regulations

Molly McCann, Of Counsel with Sidney Powell, P.C. ( The Federalist ): "To take our freedom from us, people with anti-American agendas have to mobilize some initial quorum of consent from the population. Mandatory masking seeks to build that consent. In addition to extending the fiction that we are in an emergency sufficient to trigger the extra-constitutional authority of local and state executives, mandatory masking acts as a peer pressure-fueled signal that encourages conformity to our coming 'new normal." - " Mandatory Masks Aren't About Safety, They're About Social Control ," May 27, 2020.

Claim: Wearing masks can cause other health risks

Antonio I Lazzarino, medical doctor and epidemiologist ( The BMJ ): A letter to the editor of BMJ stated several side effects of wearing a mask.

"(4) Wearing a face mask makes the exhaled air go into the eyes. This generates an uncomfortable feeling and an impulse to touch your eyes. If your hands are contaminated, you are infecting yourself. (5) Face masks make breathing more difficult. For people with COPD, face masks are in fact intolerable to wear as they worsen their breathlessness.[5] Moreover, a fraction of carbon dioxide previously exhaled is inhaled at each respiratory cycle. Those two phenomena increase breathing frequency and deepness, and hence they increase the amount of inhaled and exhaled air. This may worsen the burden of covid-19 if infected people wearing masks spread more contaminated air. This may also worsen the clinical condition of infected people if the enhanced breathing pushes the viral load down into their lungs." - " Covid-19: important potential side effects of wearing face masks that we should bear in mind ," April 20, 2020.

Claim: Wearing of masks can generate racist reactions

Trevon Logan, an economics professor at Ohio State University ( CNN ): "This (wearing a homemade mask) seems like a reasonable response unless you just sort of take American society out of it. When you can't do that, you're basically telling people to look dangerous given racial stereotypes that are out there. This is in the larger context of black men fitting the description of a suspect who has a hood on, who has a face covering on. It looks like almost every criminal sketch of any garden-variety black suspect." - " Why some people of color say they won't wear homemade masks ," April 7, 2020.

Steven Horwitz and Donald J. Boudreaux ( Detroit News ): "In the same way that empowering politicians to solve pollution does not automatically produce the black-and-white results on the economist’s chalkboard, mask mandates might also have unintended negative consequences. By creating more opportunities for encounters between law enforcement and the citizenry, mask mandates create yet one more way for authorities to harass the relatively powerless. We’ve already seen that mandates are disproportionately enforced against people and communities of color." - " "Economics show why politicians' mask mandates don't work" ," August 26, 2020.

Claim: Mask wearing inhibits communication and children's social development

Yinon Weiss ( The Federalist ): "Masks dehumanize us, and ironically serve as a constant reminder that we should be afraid. People can now be spotted wearing masks while camping by themselves in the woods or on a solo sailing trip. They have become a cruel device on young children everywhere, kindergarten students covered by masks and isolated by Plexiglas, struggling to understand the social expressions of their peers. Face coverings are causing real harm to the American psyche, provide little to no medical benefit, and distract us from more important health policy issues." - " These 12 Graphs Show Mask Mandates Do Nothing To Stop COVID ," October 29, 2020.

Additional reading

" How face masks affect our communication " - BBC , June 8, 2020

Claim: Mask mandates are immoral laws by government-imposed to control human behavior and personal development

David Shane ( The Federalist ): "Accepting invasive rules that affect personal behavior in a low-risk environment conditions people to accept that kind of intrusion into their lives. This is one reason people are particularly against masking their children, who are especially prone to manipulation. If we do this, what kind of human are we helping to produce?" - " "The Moral Case Against Mask Mandates and Other COVID Restrictions" ," July 31, 2020.

Claim: Local mask laws with unclear enforcement mechanisms are ineffective, counter-productive, and potentially dangerous for employees

Manchester NH Alderman At-Large, Joe Kelly Lavasseur ( New Hampshire Union Leader ): "Honestly, this is the most unenforceable ordinance...It’s just amazing to me how many ordinances are being violated in this city on a daily basis that no one is being cited for them. We’re going to put something forward that has absolutely no teeth whatsoever." - " Some aldermen claim Manchester mask ordinance 'unenforceable' ," September 2, 2020.

Kyle Wingfield, opinion ( The Brunswick News ): "Not to get too paternalistic about government, but anyone who’s a parent, or a teacher, or who otherwise supervises children, learns this lesson very quickly: Only make rules you’re willing and able to enforce, or your ability to enforce any rules will weaken." - " How enforceable are local mask mandates? ," July 13, 2020.

Claim: Mask mandates for businesses require employees to enforce laws

The Wilson Times Editorial Board ( The Wilson Times ): "[NC Gov. Roy] Cooper deserves credit for taking criminal penalties off the table, but he’s wrong to order clerks and salespeople to do the state’s dirty work. He’s conferred responsibility without authority on thousands of people and made them the unwitting face of a controversial new policy." - " Our Opinion: Mask mandate drafts cashiers, clerks as Cooper's cops ," June 25, 2020.

Claim: Colleges and universities should not ask students to report violations of Covid-19 rules

Karen Levy and Lauren Kilgour, Cornell University ( The New York Times ): "Fighting the coronavirus is, to be sure, an all-hands-on-deck problem, but pitting students against one another in a high-stress time carries real risks, and colleges should be exceedingly careful about casting their students in the role of undercover coronavirus cops. Deputizing students to police their peers threatens to disrupt the interpersonal dynamics of student life, while also creating conditions to displace blame onto students should outbreaks occur. Universities need to be mindful of how peer surveillance systems might be misused, how they might burden different groups of students and the damage they may do to community trust." - " "Don’t Make College Kids the Coronavirus Police" ," August 12, 2020.

Arguments in favor of mask requirements during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, 2020-2021
Taxonomy of arguments about mask requirements during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, 2020
Documenting America's Path to Recovery
Coronavirus arguments by topic

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EDITORIAL article

Editorial: coronavirus disease (covid-19): the impact and role of mass media during the pandemic.

$\nPatrícia Arriaga$

1 Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, Iscte-University Institute of Lisbon, CIS-IUL, Lisbon, Portugal
2 Department of Psychology and Social Work, Mid Sweden University, Östersund, Sweden
3 Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Medical School and University Hospital, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

Editorial on the Research Topic Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19): The Impact and Role of Mass Media During the Pandemic

The outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has created a global health crisis that had a deep impact on the way we perceive our world and our everyday lives. Not only has the rate of contagion and patterns of transmission threatened our sense of agency, but the safety measures to contain the spread of the virus also required social and physical distancing, preventing us from finding solace in the company of others. Within this context, we launched our Research Topic on March 27th, 2020, and invited researchers to address the Impact and Role of Mass Media During the Pandemic on our lives at individual and social levels.

Despite all the hardships, disruption, and uncertainty brought by the pandemic, we received diverse and insightful manuscript proposals. Frontiers in Psychology published 15 articles, involving 61 authors from 8 countries, which were included in distinct specialized sections, including Health Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology, Emotion Science, and Organizational Psychology. Despite the diversity of this collective endeavor, the contributions fall into four areas of research: (1) the use of media in public health communication; (2) the diffusion of false information; (3) the compliance with the health recommendations; and (4) how media use relates to mental health and well-being.

A first line of research includes contributions examining the use of media in public health communication. Drawing on media messages used in previous health crises, such as Ebola and Zika, Hauer and Sood describe how health organizations use media. They offer a set of recommendations for COVID-19 related media messages, including the importance of message framing, interactive public forums with up-to-date information, and an honest communication about what is known and unknown about the pandemic and the virus. Following a content analysis approach, Parvin et al. studied the representations of COVID-19 in the opinion section of five Asian e-newspapers. The authors identified eight main issues (health and drugs, preparedness and awareness, social welfare and humanity, governance and institutions, the environment and wildlife, politics, innovation and technology, and the economy) and examined how e-newspapers from these countries attributed different weights to these issues and how this relates to the countries' cultural specificity. Raccanello et al. show how the internet can be a platform to disseminate a public campaign devised to inform adults about coping strategies that could help children and teenagers deal with the challenges of the pandemic. The authors examined the dissemination of the program through the analysis of website traffic, showing that in the 40 days following publication, the website reached 6,090 visits.

A second related line of research that drew the concern of researchers was the diffusion of false information about COVID-19 through the media. Lobato et al. examined the role of distinct individual differences (political orientation, social dominance orientation, traditionalism, conspiracy ideation, attitudes about science) on the willingness to share misinformation about COVID-19 over social media. The misinformation topics varied between the severity and spread of COVID-19, treatment and prevention, conspiracy theories, and miscellaneous unverifiable claims. Their results from 296 adult participants (Mage = 36.23; 117 women) suggest two different profiles. One indicating that those reporting more liberal positions and lower social dominance were less willing to share conspiracy misinformation. The other profile indicated that participants scoring high on social dominance and low in traditionalism were more willing to share both conspiracy and other miscellaneous claims, but less willing to share misinformation about the severity and spread of COVID-19. Their findings can have relevant contributions for the identification of specific individual profiles related to the widespread of distinct types of misinformation. Dhanani and Franz examined a sample of 1,141 adults (Mage = 44.66; 46.9% female, 74.7% White ethnic identity) living in the United States in March 2020. The authors examined how media consumption and information source were related to knowledge about COVID-19, the endorsement of misinformation about COVID-19, and prejudice toward Asian Americans. Higher levels of trust in informational sources such as public health organizations (e.g., Center for Disease Control) was associated with greater knowledge, lower endorsement of misinformation, and less prejudice toward Asian Americans. Media source was associated with distinct levels of knowledge, willingness to endorsement misinformation and prejudice toward American Asians, with social media use (e.g., Twitter, Facebook) being related with a lower knowledge about COVID-19, higher endorsement of misinformation, and stronger prejudice toward Asian Americans.

A third line of research addressed the factors that could contribute to compliance with the health recommendations to avoid the spread of the disease. Vai et al. studied early pre-lockdown risk perceptions about COVID-19 and the trust in media sources among 2,223 Italians (Mage = 36.4, 69.2% female). They found that the perceived usefulness of the containment measures (e.g., social distancing) was related to threat perception and efficacy beliefs. Lower threat perception was associated with less perception of utility of the containment measures. Although most participants considered themselves and others capable of taking preventive measures, they saw the measures as generally ineffective. Participants acknowledged using the internet as their main source of information and considered health organizations' websites as the most trustworthy source. Albeit frequently used, social media was in general considered an unreliable source of information. Tomczyk et al. studied knowledge about preventive behaviors, risk perception, stigmatizing attitudes (support for discrimination and blame), and sociodemographic data (e.g., age, gender, country of origin, education level, region, persons per household) as predictors of compliance with the behavioral recommendations among 157 Germans, (age range: 18–77 years, 80% female). Low compliance was associated with male gender, younger age, and lower public stigma. Regarding stigmatizing attitudes, the authors only found a relation between support for discrimination (i.e., support for compulsory measures) and higher intention to comply with recommendations. Mahmood et al. studied the relation between social media use, risk perception, preventive behaviors, and self-efficacy in a sample of 310 Pakistani adults (54.2% female). The authors found social media use to be positively related to self-efficacy and perceived threat, which were both positively related to preventive behaviors (e.g., hand hygiene, social distancing). Information credibility was also related to compliance with health recommendations. Lep et al. examined the relationship between information source perceived credibility and trust, and participants' levels of self-protective behavior among 1,718 Slovenians (age range: 18–81 years, 81.7% female). The authors found that scientists, general practitioners (family doctors), and the National Institute of Public Health were perceived as the more credible source of information, while social media and government officials received the lowest ratings. Perceived information credibility was found to be associated with lower levels of negative emotional responses (e.g., nervousness, helplessness) and a higher level of observance of self-protective measures (e.g., hand washing). Siebenhaar et al. also studied the link between compliance, distress by information, and information avoidance. They examined the online survey responses of 1,059 adults living in Germany (Mage = 39.53, 79.4% female). Their results suggested that distress by information could lead to higher compliance with preventive measures. Distress by information was also associated with higher information avoidance, which in turn is related to less compliance. Gantiva et al. studied the effectiveness of different messages regarding the intentions toward self-care behaviors, perceived efficacy to motivate self-care behaviors in others, perceived risk, and perceived message strength, in a sample of 319 Colombians (age range: 18–60 years, 69.9% female). Their experiment included the manipulation of message framing (gain vs. loss) and message content (economy vs. health). Participants judged gain-frame health related messages to be stronger and more effective in changing self-behavior, whereas loss-framed health messages resulted in increased perceived risk. Rahn et al. offer a comparative view of compliance and risk perception, examining three hazard types: COVID-19 pandemic, violent acts, and severe weather. With a sample of 403 Germans (age range: 18–89 years, 72% female), they studied how age, gender, previous hazard experience and different components of risk appraisal (perceived severity, anticipated negative emotions, anticipatory worry, and risk perception) were related to the intention to comply with behavioral recommendations. They found that higher age predicted compliance with health recommendations to prevent COVID-19, anticipatory worry predicted compliance with warning messages regarding violent acts, and women complied more often with severe weather recommendations than men.

A fourth line of research examined media use, mental health and well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. Gabbiadini et al. addressed the use of digital technology (e.g., voice/video calls, online games, watching movies in party mode) to stay connected with others during lockdown. Participants, 465 Italians (age range: 18–73 years, 348 female), reported more perceived social support associated with the use of these digital technologies, which in turn was associated with fewer feelings of loneliness, boredom, anger, and higher sense of belongingness. Muñiz-Velázquez et al. compared the media habits of 249 Spanish adults (Mage = 42.06, 53.8% female) before and during confinement. They compared the type of media consumed (e.g., watching TV series, listening to radio, watching news) and found the increased consumption of TV and social networking sites during confinement to be negatively associated with reported level of happiness. People who reported higher levels of well-being also reported watching less TV and less use of social networking sites. Majeed et al. , on the other hand, examined the relation between problematic social media use, fear of COVID-19, depression, and mindfulness. Their study, involving 267 Pakistani adults (90 female), suggested trait mindfulness had a buffer effect, reducing the impact of problematic media use and fear of COVID-19 on depression.

Taken together, these findings highlight how using different frames for mass media gives a more expansive view of its positive and negative roles, but also showcase the major concerns in the context of a pandemic crisis. As limitations we highlight the use of cross-sectional designs in most studies, not allowing to establish true inferences of causal relationships. The outcome of some studies may also be limited by the unbalanced number of female and male participants, by the non-probability sampling method used, and by the restricted time frame in which the research occurred. Nevertheless, we are confident that all the selected studies in our Research Topic bring important and enduring contributions to the understanding of how media, individual differences, and social factors intertwine to shape our lives, which can also be useful to guide public policies during these challenging times.

Author Contributions

PA: conceptualization, writing the original draft, funding acquisition, writing—review, and editing. FE: conceptualization, writing—review, and editing. MP: writing—review and editing. NP: conceptualization, writing the original draft, writing—review, and editing. All authors approved the submitted version.

PA and NP received partial support to work on this Research Topic through Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) with reference to the project PTDC/CCI-INF/29234/2017. MP contribution was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG, PA847/22-1 and PA847/25-1). The authors are independent of the funders.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's Note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Acknowledgments

We would like to express our gratitude to all the authors who proposed their work, all the researchers who reviewed the submissions to this Research Topic, and to Rob Richards for proofreading the Editorial manuscript.

Keywords: COVID-19, coronavirus disease, mass media, health communication, prevention, intervention, social behavioral changes

Citation: Arriaga P, Esteves F, Pavlova MA and Piçarra N (2021) Editorial: Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19): The Impact and Role of Mass Media During the Pandemic. Front. Psychol. 12:729238. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.729238

Received: 22 June 2021; Accepted: 30 July 2021; Published: 23 August 2021.

Edited and reviewed by: Eduard Brandstätter , Johannes Kepler University of Linz, Austria

Copyright © 2021 Arriaga, Esteves, Pavlova and Piçarra. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Patrícia Arriaga, patricia.arriaga@iscte-iul.pt

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

COVID-19 pandemic impacts how we view, access mental health care

We have all felt the devastating effects of the coronavirus disease pandemic (COVID-19) on our families and communities.

It is unequivocal that this pandemic has led to a near total disruption of our social fabric. Global economics have been all but paralyzed. Under these circumstances, one can imagine the psychological toll is significant.

While there is no doubt that COVID-19 is causing significant stress, we won’t grasp the long-term mental health effects until we conduct future research. At the same time, and because of this pandemic, we see a positive impact on the way we consider mental health and how the healthcare system operates.

Removing barriers and improving access to care. Since the COVID pandemic, the mental health field has shifted almost completely to telehealth encounters with visits through video or phone. This shift, together with the response from insurers to expand payment for telehealth have resulted in better integration of care and improved access.

Reducing the stigma of experiencing emotional distress and mental illness. As we face this crisis together, and as the issues of mental health and wellness continue to be in the forefront of daily news coverage, the importance of physical safety as well as emotional well-being are normalized and becoming household concerns.

Better appreciation for our healthcare workers and their well-being . One of the major positive outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic is the worldwide appreciation for all healthcare workers who continue to place themselves in harm’s way to relieve the suffering of others.

A renewed value of taking care of each other. Even as we have become physically isolated and forced to cancel important celebrations and rites of passage, we also have found new ways to be connected through this shared experience. Communities are reaching out to their elders and other at-risk groups, sharing strategies for staying connected and coping. People are donating their resources and their time, using creativity and humor, as well as creating inspirational and beautiful art.

Maintaining this culture of caring and community moving forward will make us all the more resilient and connected. The COVID pandemic has devastated so many and so much. At the same time, the transformative effect on mental health access, as well as an expanded value placed on our community’s health can have a long-lasting positive effect on our healthcare system, if we chose to learn from this experience.

Catherine Cerulli, JD, Phd, is Director of the Susan B. Anthony Center & Laboratory of Interpersonal Violence and Victimization, University of Rochester; Dr. George S. Nasra is Chief of the Division of Collaborative Care and Wellness at URMC Department of Psychiatry and Medical Director of Behavioral Health at Accountable Health Partners. Ellen Poleshuck, PhD, is Director of Collaborative Care Services in the Departments of Psychiatry and Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Rochester School of Medicine.

Essay on COVID-19 Pandemic

As a result of the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) outbreak, daily life has been negatively affected, impacting the worldwide economy. Thousands of individuals have been sickened or died as a result of the outbreak of this disease. When you have the flu or a viral infection, the most common symptoms include fever, cold, coughing up bone fragments, and difficulty breathing, which may progress to pneumonia. It’s important to take major steps like keeping a strict cleaning routine, keeping social distance, and wearing masks, among other things. This virus’s geographic spread is accelerating (Daniel Pg 93). Governments restricted public meetings during the start of the pandemic to prevent the disease from spreading and breaking the exponential distribution curve. In order to avoid the damage caused by this extremely contagious disease, several countries quarantined their citizens. However, this scenario had drastically altered with the discovery of the vaccinations. The research aims to investigate the effect of the Covid-19 epidemic and its impact on the population’s well-being.

There is growing interest in the relationship between social determinants of health and health outcomes. Still, many health care providers and academics have been hesitant to recognize racism as a contributing factor to racial health disparities. Only a few research have examined the health effects of institutional racism, with the majority focusing on interpersonal racial and ethnic prejudice Ciotti et al., Pg 370. The latter comprises historically and culturally connected institutions that are interconnected. Prejudice is being practiced in a variety of contexts as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. In some ways, the outbreak has exposed pre-existing bias and inequity.

Thousands of businesses are in danger of failure. Around 2.3 billion of the world’s 3.3 billion employees are out of work. These workers are especially susceptible since they lack access to social security and adequate health care, and they’ve also given up ownership of productive assets, which makes them highly vulnerable. Many individuals lose their employment as a result of lockdowns, leaving them unable to support their families. People strapped for cash are often forced to reduce their caloric intake while also eating less nutritiously (Fraser et al, Pg 3). The epidemic has had an impact on the whole food chain, revealing vulnerabilities that were previously hidden. Border closures, trade restrictions, and confinement measures have limited farmer access to markets, while agricultural workers have not gathered crops. As a result, the local and global food supply chain has been disrupted, and people now have less access to healthy foods. As a consequence of the epidemic, many individuals have lost their employment, and millions more are now in danger. When breadwinners lose their jobs, become sick, or die, the food and nutrition of millions of people are endangered. Particularly severely hit are the world’s poorest small farmers and indigenous peoples.

Infectious illness outbreaks and epidemics have become worldwide threats due to globalization, urbanization, and environmental change. In developed countries like Europe and North America, surveillance and health systems monitor and manage the spread of infectious illnesses in real-time. Both low- and high-income countries need to improve their public health capacities (Omer et al., Pg 1767). These improvements should be financed using a mix of national and foreign donor money. In order to speed up research and reaction for new illnesses with pandemic potential, a global collaborative effort including governments and commercial companies has been proposed. When working on a vaccine-like COVID-19, cooperation is critical.

The epidemic has had an impact on the whole food chain, revealing vulnerabilities that were previously hidden. Border closures, trade restrictions, and confinement measures have limited farmer access to markets, while agricultural workers have been unable to gather crops. As a result, the local and global food supply chain has been disrupted, and people now have less access to healthy foods (Daniel et al.,Pg 95) . As a consequence of the epidemic, many individuals have lost their employment, and millions more are now in danger. When breadwinners lose their jobs, the food and nutrition of millions of people are endangered. Particularly severely hit are the world’s poorest small farmers and indigenous peoples.

While helping to feed the world’s population, millions of paid and unpaid agricultural laborers suffer from high levels of poverty, hunger, and bad health, as well as a lack of safety and labor safeguards, as well as other kinds of abuse at work. Poor people, who have no recourse to social assistance, must work longer and harder, sometimes in hazardous occupations, endangering their families in the process (Daniel Pg 96). When faced with a lack of income, people may turn to hazardous financial activities, including asset liquidation, predatory lending, or child labor, to make ends meet. Because of the dangers they encounter while traveling, working, and living abroad; migrant agricultural laborers are especially vulnerable. They also have a difficult time taking advantage of government assistance programs.

The pandemic also has a significant impact on education. Although many educational institutions across the globe have already made the switch to online learning, the extent to which technology is utilized to improve the quality of distance or online learning varies. This level is dependent on several variables, including the different parties engaged in the execution of this learning format and the incorporation of technology into educational institutions before the time of school closure caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. For many years, researchers from all around the globe have worked to determine what variables contribute to effective technology integration in the classroom Ciotti et al., Pg 371. The amount of technology usage and the quality of learning when moving from a classroom to a distant or online format are presumed to be influenced by the same set of variables. Findings from previous research, which sought to determine what affects educational systems ability to integrate technology into teaching, suggest understanding how teachers, students, and technology interact positively in order to achieve positive results in the integration of teaching technology (Honey et al., 2000). Teachers’ views on teaching may affect the chances of successfully incorporating technology into the classroom and making it a part of the learning process.

In conclusion, indeed, Covid 19 pandemic have affected the well being of the people in a significant manner. The economy operation across the globe have been destabilized as most of the people have been rendered jobless while the job operation has been stopped. As most of the people have been rendered jobless the living conditions of the people have also been significantly affected. Besides, the education sector has also been affected as most of the learning institutions prefer the use of online learning which is not effective as compared to the traditional method. With the invention of the vaccines, most of the developed countries have been noted to stabilize slowly, while the developing countries have not been able to vaccinate most of its citizens. However, despite the challenge caused by the pandemic, organizations have been able to adapt the new mode of online trading to be promoted.

Ciotti, Marco, et al. “The COVID-19 pandemic.” Critical reviews in clinical laboratory sciences 57.6 (2020): 365-388.

Daniel, John. “Education and the COVID-19 pandemic.” Prospects 49.1 (2020): 91-96.

Fraser, Nicholas, et al. “Preprinting the COVID-19 pandemic.” BioRxiv (2021): 2020-05.

Omer, Saad B., Preeti Malani, and Carlos Del Rio. “The COVID-19 pandemic in the US: a clinical update.” Jama 323.18 (2020): 1767-1768.

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The Argument for Open Research in the Time of COVID-19

Most research disciplines, regardless of whether in STEM or social sciences, consist of a common approach — taking a specific methodology or approach, applying some computation to analyze whatever data are collected to gain insights into a new topic and draw conclusions. How these approaches and analyses are recorded and made available is critical to assess, reproduce, and fully understand the research, any resulting data and insights.

When research is publicly funded, there is a solid argument for what’s produced to be openly available and the need for open research suddenly gains clarity and focus during a global public health crisis. Health professionals around the world need, and absolutely should have, access to any new scientific diagnostic approaches, as quickly as possible. Emerging or trusted computational tools for modeling disease epidemiology, or approaches for machine learning prognosis using clinical characteristics, should be made available for immediate reuse by others.

A global scientific collaboration has been lauded as scientists come together to perform research during the pandemic. The New York Times piece, “ Covid-19 Changed How the World Does Science, Together ” noted:

“While political leaders have locked their borders, scientists have been shattering theirs, creating a global collaboration unlike any in history. Never before, researchers say, have so many experts in so many countries focused simultaneously on a single topic and with such urgency. Nearly all other research has ground to a halt.”

Many funders and health organizations are demanding that research approaches and results be made open. Preprints have offered one solution, and their value during this challenging time has been evident in the huge volume of COVID-19 related content appearing online. For example, this collection of COVID-19 SARS-CoV-2 preprints on medRxiv and bioRxiv has more than 1900 manuscripts.

Now, protocols.io and Code Ocean are working to ensure that those research approaches remain open. These open access online tools are ideal repositories for all protocol and methodological approaches as well as computational pipelines and code. Online collaborative research tools are helpful to researchers who are restricted in how they can work and collaborate. For those at the frontline conducting scientific research, these tools serve as an ideal way to share their insights and approaches. Here’s how protocols.io and Code Ocean are supporting the research community during this unprecedented time:

protocols.io

A dedicated open methods community in protocols.io.

When methods and protocols relating to the SARS-CoV2 virus and COVID-19 started to appear on protocols.io earlier this year, the protocols.io team quickly realized the value of creating the “ Coronavirus Method Development Community ”, a shared workspace for new protocols relevant to the virus. An incredibly fast-growing community on protocols.io, this Open Community already has more than 300 members and is growing daily.

On the Coronavirus Method Development Community, many members are active, adding comments to already posted protocols or starting their own discussion threads. The protocols are many and varied, from COVID-19 clinical diagnostic PCR approaches, viral plaque assays, methods to culture SARS-CoV-2, and Coronavirus sequencing protocols (some of which were adapted as new ‘forked’ versions of Ebola sequencing protocols that were already available on protocols.io). Other protocols include mask building ideas, how to 3D print personal protective equipment and the World Health Organization’s recommended hand-rub formulations.

When asked about using protocols.io during the current crisis, Public Health Virologist Ian MacKay, a member of the protocols.io open community noted the following:

“ protocols.io makes it possible to rapidly put our tested methods onto an open-access platform. It permitted ongoing curation of the protocol, and it provided us a platform for further discussion with the ability to really drill down into the nitty-gritty about the protocol with other users, if needed. We used protocols.io for our SARS-CoV-2 PCR methods as soon as we could. We wanted those who might not have access to expertise in assay design, optimization and validation so they could benefit from our work. protocols.io provides a global collegiality that is in dire need at times like these.”

Interested in protocols.io and Code Ocean?

coronavirus mask walking dog secondary blog image

protocols.io Editorial Support

Alongside, and in support of, this motivated community, protocols.io has been working behind the scenes to grow and mobilize their team of editors to support researchers offering to import and check coronavirus-related protocols into the open community, then assigning the protocol back to the appropriate contact person.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the team at Code Ocean has announced unlimited cloud compute and storage for COVID-19-related projects. Code Ocean’s goal has always been to help accelerate the pace of research by providing researchers with a better way to develop, collaborate and share code and data. Science builds on transparency, replication and collaboration. Code Ocean is currently supporting researchers working on COVID-19 in the following two areas:

Rapid dissemination of interactive and open research results

Code Ocean provides in-browser access to compute capsules, permanent records of pre-built computational environments containing all software, code, data, and results for a project. Compute capsules allow researchers to instantly inspect and interact with published work, as well as dynamically update new code or datasets to explore new possibilities based on existing research.

One recent compute capsule accompanying a medRxiv preprint from the Global Policy Lab at The University of California, Berkeley is an example of the rapid and open research response to COVID-19. Hsiang et al . evaluated the effect of large-scale anti-contagion policies on the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis includes 49 packages and code in Python, R and Stata, and public epidemiological datasets from 6 countries, all of which is open access and fully reproducible. The study finds:

“We estimate that, to date, current policies have already prevented or delayed on the order of eighty-million infections. These findings may help inform whether or when ongoing policies should be lifted or intensified, and they can support decision-making in the over 150 countries where COVID-19 has been detected but not yet achieved high infection rates.”

As the authors state in the capsule:

“The easiest way to interact with our code and data is via this Code Ocean capsule, because all of the relevant setup described below has been done for you.”

When a research project is published in a compute capsule, researchers interested in the work can directly re-run the analysis interactively in a built-in computational workbench, including a command line interface, JupyterLab/Notebook, RStudio, and Shiny on cloud instances with a few clicks on Code Ocean. Alternatively, researchers can also export the entire capsule and rebuild the project (using a Docker image) on their own devices without a Code Ocean account.

All capsules preserve the data used in the analysis even if this data is removed from the original public location in the future. Some capsules, including the example from Hsiang et al. above, also allow users to dynamically update the analysis with new data as they are being released.

Whether in-browser or rebuilt locally, interactive compute capsules can lower the barrier to examine and extend new research findings, potentially shortening decision-making cycles and helping with time-sensitive policies.

Convenient access to preconfigured cloud compute environments

In countries, campuses or labs experiencing disruptions or without access to research compute infrastructure, Code Ocean provides a web-based solution that can be accessed with only a laptop and the internet. Algorithms, simulations, and analyses in different programming languages can be easily shared and multiple collaborators added, enabling teams to continue research activities at a distance.

One difficulty with internal and external collaborations is onboarding collaborators. With Code Ocean, teams do not have to spend time setting up computational environments. Instead, new team members with different levels of technical experience can get started in the same computational environment right away.

For a complex disease like COVID-19, it takes time to gather the various pieces of the puzzle from researchers around the globe. Unfortunately, we’re in a race against time to better understand the pathology, the genetics that underpin the disease, and how best to control and treat, or vaccinate against COVID-19. Researchers need to avail themselves of tools that already exist to support and accelerate their ability to make progress in these vital efforts.

The combination of Code Ocean and protocols.io, along with other open tools, could significantly shorten the cycle to disseminate each advance and make the resulting efforts and insights reproducible. These tools reduce the iterations needed to confirm and build on results, whether formally published or preprinted, and they reduce the effort required to validate existing or emerging methods. Making the most of the combined power offered by research infrastructure tools that support and capture the development and dissemination of computational and/or experimental research processes, and facilitate research being built upon, will accelerate the overall pace of scientific discovery.

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Covid 19 Essay in English

Essay on Covid -19: In a very short amount of time, coronavirus has spread globally. It has had an enormous impact on people's lives, economy, and societies all around the world, affecting every country. Governments have had to take severe measures to try and contain the pandemic. The virus has altered our way of life in many ways, including its effects on our health and our economy. Here are a few sample essays on ‘CoronaVirus’.

100 Words Essay on Covid 19

200 words essay on covid 19, 500 words essay on covid 19.

COVID-19 or Corona Virus is a novel coronavirus that was first identified in 2019. It is similar to other coronaviruses, such as SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, but it is more contagious and has caused more severe respiratory illness in people who have been infected. The novel coronavirus became a global pandemic in a very short period of time. It has affected lives, economies and societies across the world, leaving no country untouched. The virus has caused governments to take drastic measures to try and contain it. From health implications to economic and social ramifications, COVID-19 impacted every part of our lives. It has been more than 2 years since the pandemic hit and the world is still recovering from its effects.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the world has been impacted in a number of ways. For one, the global economy has taken a hit as businesses have been forced to close their doors. This has led to widespread job losses and an increase in poverty levels around the world. Additionally, countries have had to impose strict travel restrictions in an attempt to contain the virus, which has resulted in a decrease in tourism and international trade. Furthermore, the pandemic has put immense pressure on healthcare systems globally, as hospitals have been overwhelmed with patients suffering from the virus. Lastly, the outbreak has led to a general feeling of anxiety and uncertainty, as people are fearful of contracting the disease.

My Experience of COVID-19

I still remember how abruptly colleges and schools shut down in March 2020. I was a college student at that time and I was under the impression that everything would go back to normal in a few weeks. I could not have been more wrong. The situation only got worse every week and the government had to impose a lockdown. There were so many restrictions in place. For example, we had to wear face masks whenever we left the house, and we could only go out for essential errands. Restaurants and shops were only allowed to operate at take-out capacity, and many businesses were shut down.

In the current scenario, coronavirus is dominating all aspects of our lives. The coronavirus pandemic has wreaked havoc upon people’s lives, altering the way we live and work in a very short amount of time. It has revolutionised how we think about health care, education, and even social interaction. This virus has had long-term implications on our society, including its impact on mental health, economic stability, and global politics. But we as individuals can help to mitigate these effects by taking personal responsibility to protect themselves and those around them from infection.

Effects of CoronaVirus on Education

The outbreak of coronavirus has had a significant impact on education systems around the world. In China, where the virus originated, all schools and universities were closed for several weeks in an effort to contain the spread of the disease. Many other countries have followed suit, either closing schools altogether or suspending classes for a period of time.

This has resulted in a major disruption to the education of millions of students. Some have been able to continue their studies online, but many have not had access to the internet or have not been able to afford the costs associated with it. This has led to a widening of the digital divide between those who can afford to continue their education online and those who cannot.

The closure of schools has also had a negative impact on the mental health of many students. With no face-to-face contact with friends and teachers, some students have felt isolated and anxious. This has been compounded by the worry and uncertainty surrounding the virus itself.

The situation with coronavirus has improved and schools have been reopened but students are still catching up with the gap of 2 years that the pandemic created. In the meantime, governments and educational institutions are working together to find ways to support students and ensure that they are able to continue their education despite these difficult circumstances.

Effects of CoronaVirus on Economy

The outbreak of the coronavirus has had a significant impact on the global economy. The virus, which originated in China, has spread to over two hundred countries, resulting in widespread panic and a decrease in global trade. As a result of the outbreak, many businesses have been forced to close their doors, leading to a rise in unemployment. In addition, the stock market has taken a severe hit.

Effects of CoronaVirus on Health

The effects that coronavirus has on one's health are still being studied and researched as the virus continues to spread throughout the world. However, some of the potential effects on health that have been observed thus far include respiratory problems, fever, and coughing. In severe cases, pneumonia, kidney failure, and death can occur. It is important for people who think they may have been exposed to the virus to seek medical attention immediately so that they can be treated properly and avoid any serious complications. There is no specific cure or treatment for coronavirus at this time, but there are ways to help ease symptoms and prevent the virus from spreading.

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A portrait of Shaun Barcavage, who holds his forehead as though in pain.

Thousands Believe Covid Vaccines Harmed Them. Is Anyone Listening?

All vaccines have at least occasional side effects. But people who say they were injured by Covid vaccines believe their cases have been ignored.

Shaun Barcavage, 54, a nurse practitioner in New York City, said that ever since his first Covid shot, standing up has sent his heart racing. Credit... Hannah Yoon for The New York Times

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By Apoorva Mandavilli

Apoorva Mandavilli spent more than a year talking to dozens of experts in vaccine science, policymakers and people who said they had experienced serious side effects after receiving a Covid-19 vaccine.

Published May 3, 2024 Updated May 4, 2024

Within minutes of getting the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine, Michelle Zimmerman felt pain racing from her left arm up to her ear and down to her fingertips. Within days, she was unbearably sensitive to light and struggled to remember simple facts.

She was 37, with a Ph.D. in neuroscience, and until then could ride her bicycle 20 miles, teach a dance class and give a lecture on artificial intelligence, all in the same day. Now, more than three years later, she lives with her parents. Eventually diagnosed with brain damage, she cannot work, drive or even stand for long periods of time.

“When I let myself think about the devastation of what this has done to my life, and how much I’ve lost, sometimes it feels even too hard to comprehend,” said Dr. Zimmerman, who believes her injury is due to a contaminated vaccine batch .

The Covid vaccines, a triumph of science and public health, are estimated to have prevented millions of hospitalizations and deaths . Yet even the best vaccines produce rare but serious side effects . And the Covid vaccines have been given to more than 270 million people in the United States, in nearly 677 million doses .

Dr. Zimmerman’s account is among the more harrowing, but thousands of Americans believe they suffered serious side effects following Covid vaccination. As of April, just over 13,000 vaccine-injury compensation claims have been filed with the federal government — but to little avail. Only 19 percent have been reviewed. Only 47 of those were deemed eligible for compensation, and only 12 have been paid out, at an average of about $3,600 .

Some scientists fear that patients with real injuries are being denied help and believe that more needs to be done to clarify the possible risks.

“At least long Covid has been somewhat recognized,” said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist and vaccine expert at Yale University. But people who say they have post-vaccination injuries are “just completely ignored and dismissed and gaslighted,” she added.

Michelle Zimmerman sits on the floor of a ballroom where she used to dance, with a pair of dancing shoes next to her. She wears a dark skirt and a red velvet shirt.

In interviews and email exchanges conducted over several months, federal health officials insisted that serious side effects were extremely rare and that their surveillance efforts were more than sufficient to detect patterns of adverse events.

“Hundreds of millions of people in the United States have safely received Covid vaccines under the most intense safety monitoring in U.S. history,” Jeff Nesbit, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said in an emailed statement.

But in a recent interview, Dr. Janet Woodcock, a longtime leader of the Food and Drug Administration, who retired in February, said she believed that some recipients had experienced uncommon but “serious” and “life-changing” reactions beyond those described by federal agencies.

“I feel bad for those people,” said Dr. Woodcock, who became the F.D.A.’s acting commissioner in January 2021 as the vaccines were rolling out. “I believe their suffering should be acknowledged, that they have real problems, and they should be taken seriously.”

“I’m disappointed in myself,” she added. “I did a lot of things I feel very good about, but this is one of the few things I feel I just didn’t bring it home.”

Federal officials and independent scientists face a number of challenges in identifying potential vaccine side effects.

The nation’s fragmented health care system complicates detection of very rare side effects, a process that depends on an analysis of huge amounts of data. That’s a difficult task when a patient may be tested for Covid at Walgreens, get vaccinated at CVS, go to a local clinic for minor ailments and seek care at a hospital for serious conditions. Each place may rely on different health record systems.

There is no central repository of vaccine recipients, nor of medical records, and no easy to way to pool these data. Reports to the largest federal database of so-called adverse events can be made by anyone, about anything. It’s not even clear what officials should be looking for.

“I mean, you’re not going to find ‘brain fog’ in the medical record or claims data, and so then you’re not going to find” a signal that it may be linked to vaccination, Dr. Woodcock said. If such a side effect is not acknowledged by federal officials, “it’s because it doesn’t have a good research definition,” she added. “It isn’t, like, malevolence on their part.”

The government’s understaffed compensation fund has paid so little because it officially recognizes few side effects for Covid vaccines. And vaccine supporters, including federal officials, worry that even a whisper of possible side effects feeds into misinformation spread by a vitriolic anti-vaccine movement.

‘I’m Not Real’

Patients who believe they experienced serious side effects say they have received little support or acknowledgment.

Shaun Barcavage, 54, a nurse practitioner in New York City who has worked on clinical trials for H.I.V. and Covid, said that ever since his first Covid shot, merely standing up sent his heart racing — a symptom suggestive of postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome , a neurological disorder that some studies have linked to both Covid and, much less often, vaccination .

He also experienced stinging pain in his eyes, mouth and genitals, which has abated, and tinnitus, which has not.

“I can’t get the government to help me,” Mr. Barcavage said of his fruitless pleas to federal agencies and elected representatives. “I am told I’m not real. I’m told I’m rare. I’m told I’m coincidence.”

Renee France, 49, a physical therapist in Seattle, developed Bell’s palsy — a form of facial paralysis, usually temporary — and a dramatic rash that neatly bisected her face. Bell’s palsy is a known side effect of other vaccines, and it has been linked to Covid vaccination in some studies.

But Dr. France said doctors were dismissive of any connection to the Covid vaccines. The rash, a bout of shingles, debilitated her for three weeks, so Dr. France reported it to federal databases twice.

“I thought for sure someone would reach out, but no one ever did,” she said.

Similar sentiments were echoed in interviews, conducted over more than a year, with 30 people who said they had been harmed by Covid shots. They described a variety of symptoms following vaccination, some neurological, some autoimmune, some cardiovascular.

All said they had been turned away by physicians, told their symptoms were psychosomatic, or labeled anti-vaccine by family and friends — despite the fact that they supported vaccines.

Even leading experts in vaccine science have run up against disbelief and ambivalence.

Dr. Gregory Poland, 68, editor in chief of the journal Vaccine, said that a loud whooshing sound in his ears had accompanied every moment since his first shot, but that his entreaties to colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to explore the phenomenon, tinnitus, had led nowhere.

He received polite responses to his many emails, but “I just don’t get any sense of movement,” he said.

“If they have done studies, those studies should be published,” Dr. Poland added. In despair that he might “never hear silence again,” he has sought solace in meditation and his religious faith.

Dr. Buddy Creech, 50, who led several Covid vaccine trials at Vanderbilt University, said his tinnitus and racing heart lasted about a week after each shot. “It’s very similar to what I experienced during acute Covid, back in March of 2020,” Dr. Creech said.

Research may ultimately find that most reported side effects are unrelated to the vaccine, he acknowledged. Many can be caused by Covid itself.

“Regardless, when our patients experience a side effect that may or may not be related to the vaccine, we owe it to them to investigate that as completely as we can,” Dr. Creech said.

Federal health officials say they do not believe that the Covid vaccines caused the illnesses described by patients like Mr. Barcavage, Dr. Zimmerman and Dr. France. The vaccines may cause transient reactions, such as swelling, fatigue and fever, according to the C.D.C., but the agency has documented only four serious but rare side effects .

Two are associated with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is no longer available in the United States: Guillain-Barré syndrome , a known side effect of other vaccines , including the flu shot; and a blood-clotting disorder.

The C.D.C. also links mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna to heart inflammation, or myocarditis, especially in boys and young men. And the agency warns of anaphylaxis, or severe allergic reaction, which can occur after any vaccination.

Listening for Signals

Agency scientists are monitoring large databases containing medical information on millions of Americans for patterns that might suggest a hitherto unknown side effect of vaccination, said Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, director of the C.D.C.’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

“We toe the line by reporting the signals that we think are real signals and reporting them as soon as we identify them as signals,” he said. The agency’s systems for monitoring vaccine safety are “pretty close” to ideal, he said.

Those national surveillance efforts include the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). It is the largest database, but also the least reliable: Reports of side effects can be submitted by anyone and are not vetted, so they may be subject to bias or manipulation.

The system contains roughly one million reports regarding Covid vaccination, the vast majority for mild events, according to the C.D.C.

Federal researchers also comb through databases that combine electronic health records and insurance claims on tens of millions of Americans. The scientists monitor the data for 23 conditions that may occur following Covid vaccination. Officials remain alert to others that may pop up, Dr. Daskalakis said.

But there are gaps, some experts noted. The Covid shots administered at mass vaccination sites were not recorded in insurance claims databases, for example, and medical records in the United States are not centralized.

“It’s harder to see signals when you have so many people, and things are happening in different parts of the country, and they’re not all collected in the same system,” said Rebecca Chandler, a vaccine safety expert at the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations.

An expert panel convened by the National Academies concluded in April that for the vast majority of side effects, there was not enough data to accept or reject a link.

Asked at a recent congressional hearing whether the nation’s vaccine-safety surveillance was sufficient, Dr. Peter Marks, director of the F.D.A.’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said, “I do believe we could do better.”

In some countries with centralized health care systems, officials have actively sought out reports of serious side effects of Covid vaccines and reached conclusions that U.S. health authorities have not.

In Hong Kong, the government analyzed centralized medical records of patients after vaccination and paid people to come forward with problems. The strategy identified “a lot of mild cases that other countries would not otherwise pick up,” said Ian Wong, a researcher at the University of Hong Kong who led the nation’s vaccine safety efforts.

That included the finding that in rare instances — about seven per million doses — the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine triggered a bout of shingles serious enough to require hospitalization.

The European Medicines Agency has linked the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to facial paralysis, tingling sensations and numbness. The E.M.A. also counts tinnitus as a side effect of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, although the American health agencies do not. There are more than 17,000 reports of tinnitus following Covid vaccination in VAERS.

Are the two linked? It’s not clear. As many as one in four adults has some form of tinnitus. Stress, anxiety, grief and aging can lead to the condition, as can infections like Covid itself and the flu.

There is no test or scan for tinnitus, and scientists cannot easily study it because the inner ear is tiny, delicate and encased in bone, said Dr. Konstantina Stankovic, an otolaryngologist at Stanford University.

Still, an analysis of health records from nearly 2.6 million people in the United States found that about 0.04 percent , or about 1,000, were diagnosed with tinnitus within three weeks of their first mRNA shot. In March, researchers in Australia published a study linking tinnitus and vertigo to the vaccines .

The F.D.A. is monitoring reports of tinnitus, but “at this time, the available evidence does not suggest a causal association with the Covid-19 vaccines,” the agency said in a statement.

Despite surveillance efforts, U.S. officials were not the first to identify a significant Covid vaccine side effect: myocarditis in young people receiving mRNA vaccines. It was Israeli authorities who first raised the alarm in April 2021. Officials in the United States said at the time that they had not seen a link.

On May 22, 2021, news broke that the C.D.C. was investigating a “relatively few” cases of myocarditis. By June 23, the number of myocarditis reports in VAERS had risen to more than 1,200 — a hint that it is important to tell doctors and patients what to look for.

Later analyses showed that the risk for myocarditis and pericarditis, a related condition, is highest after a second dose of an mRNA Covid vaccine in adolescent males aged 12 to 17 years.

In many people, vaccine-related myocarditis is transient. But some patients continue to experience pain, breathlessness and depression, and some show persistent changes on heart scans . The C.D.C. has said there were no confirmed deaths related to myocarditis, but in fact there have been several accounts of deaths reported post-vaccination .

Pervasive Misinformation

The rise of the anti-vaccine movement has made it difficult for scientists, in and out of government, to candidly address potential side effects, some experts said. Much of the narrative on the purported dangers of Covid vaccines is patently false, or at least exaggerated, cooked up by savvy anti-vaccine campaigns.

Questions about Covid vaccine safety are core to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign. Citing debunked theories about altered DNA, Florida’s surgeon general has called for a halt to Covid vaccination in the state.

“The sheer nature of misinformation, the scale of misinformation, is staggering, and anything will be twisted to make it seem like it’s not just a devastating side effect but proof of a massive cover-up,” said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, a vice dean at Johns Hopkins University.

Among the hundreds of millions of Americans who were immunized for Covid, some number would have had heart attacks or strokes anyway. Some women would have miscarried. How to distinguish those caused by the vaccine from those that are coincidences? The only way to resolve the question is intense research .

But the National Institutes of Health is conducting virtually no studies on Covid vaccine safety, several experts noted. William Murphy, a cancer researcher who worked at the N.I.H. for 12 years, has been prodding federal health officials to initiate these studies since 2021.

The officials each responded with “that very tired mantra: ‘But the virus is worse,’” Dr. Murphy recalled. “Yes, the virus is worse, but that doesn’t obviate doing research to make sure that there may be other options.”

A deeper understanding of possible side effects, and who is at risk for them, could have implications for the design of future vaccines, or may indicate that for some young and healthy people, the benefit of Covid shots may no longer outweigh the risks — as some European countries have determined.

Thorough research might also speed assistance to thousands of Americans who say they were injured.

The federal government has long run the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program , designed to compensate people who suffer injuries after vaccination. Established more than three decades ago, the program sets no limit on the amounts awarded to people found to have been harmed.

But Covid vaccines are not covered by that fund because Congress has not made them subject to the excise tax that pays for it. Some lawmakers have introduced bills to make the change.

Instead, claims regarding Covid vaccines go to the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program . Intended for public health emergencies, this program has narrow criteria to pay out and sets a limit of $50,000, with stringent standards of proof.

It requires applicants to prove within a year of the injury that it was “the direct result” of getting the Covid vaccine, based on “compelling, reliable, valid, medical, and scientific evidence.”

The program had only four staff members at the beginning of the pandemic, and now has 35 people evaluating claims. Still, it has reviewed only a fraction of the 13,000 claims filed, and has paid out only a dozen.

Dr. Ilka Warshawsky, a 58-year-old pathologist, said she lost all hearing in her right ear after a Covid booster shot. But hearing loss is not a recognized side effect of Covid vaccination.

The compensation program for Covid vaccines sets a high bar for proof, she said, yet offers little information on how to meet it: “These adverse events can be debilitating and life-altering, and so it’s very upsetting that they’re not acknowledged or addressed.”

Dr. Zimmerman, the neuroscientist, submitted her application in October 2021 and provided dozens of supporting medical documents. She received a claim number only in January 2023.

In adjudicating her claim for workers’ compensation, Washington State officials accepted that Covid vaccination caused her injury, but she has yet to get a decision from the federal program.

One of her therapists recently told her she might never be able to live independently again.

“That felt like a devastating blow,” Dr. Zimmerman said. “But I’m trying not to lose hope there will someday be a treatment and a way to cover it.”

Apoorva Mandavilli is a reporter focused on science and global health. She was a part of the team that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of the pandemic. More about Apoorva Mandavilli

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Ralph Baric, Whose Virology Techniques Were Used in Wuhan, Testified That Lab Leak Was Possible

By Katherine Eban

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In 2015, Ralph S. Baric, arguably the world’s most accomplished coronavirologist, published groundbreaking research with Shi Zhengli, the leading coronavirus researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

They had mixed components of different coronaviruses and created an artificial virus, or chimera, that could infect human cells. The research helped crystallize the threat posed by bat coronaviruses lurking in nature. But the experiments were dangerous too. In 2014, while their research was underway, the Obama administration enacted a pause on so-called gain-of-function research that could increase the virulence or transmissibility of certain viruses. Baric and Shi even flagged the dangers of the research themselves, writing, “Scientific review panels may deem similar studies…too risky to pursue.”

The experiments were done in Baric’s well-secured laboratory in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Afterward, however, Shi’s team at the WIV continued to utilize Baric’s cutting-edge research techniques. Their work was funded in part with a US research grant.

Amid competing theories about the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19—including whether it could have originated in a Wuhan laboratory—Baric has become a figure of intense interest. After all, he had pioneered techniques the WIV was using, including one that allows researchers to invisibly splice components of viruses together without leaving a trace.

For the last three years, as the COVID-19 origins debate has grown increasingly toxic, a small army of global sleuths and Freedom of Information petitioners have taken aim at Baric’s emails and research documents, hoping to uncover information about the true genetic-engineering capabilities of the WIV scientists, the ongoing research they were pursuing, and the viral genome sequences they had in their possession prior to the pandemic.

Through it all, Baric has kept mostly silent—until now. On January 22, he gave a six-hour interview to investigators from two Republican-led House committees: the Oversight and Accountability’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, and Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. Though the committees have not yet made his testimony public, Vanity Fair has exclusively reviewed his statements. While not formally under oath, Baric was required by federal law to answer truthfully. (Through a University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill spokesperson, Baric declined to comment for this article.)

While there is little in the 212-page transcript that is likely to markedly shift the debate on how COVID-19 originated, the picture that emerges is of an American scientist who is deeply wary of his Chinese counterparts and has no way of knowing if or how they may have made use of the groundbreaking research techniques he developed.

Perhaps most notably, Baric testified that he had specifically warned Shi Zhengli that the WIV’s critical coronavirus research was being conducted in labs with insufficient biosafety protections. When he urged her to move the work to a more secure biosafety level 3 (BSL-3) lab, he testified that she did not heed his recommendation. Because the WIV continued to perform coronavirus research at what he considers an inappropriately low biosafety level, Baric said of a laboratory accident, “You can’t rule that out…. You just can’t.”

In an email turned over to the Select Subcommittee as part of its investigation, Baric told Peter Daszak, president of the scientific nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, that it was “a load of BS” to suggest that the WIV conducted coronavirus research in labs with sufficient biosafety protocols.

Baric told congressional investigators that he believes it’s far more likely that SARS-CoV-2 spilled over naturally from animals to humans, given the sheer abundance of viruses in nature. But he also said in his testimony that he disagrees with the most widely promulgated spillover argument: that the virus leapt from infected animals to people at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where it first burst into public view in December 2019. The argument does not hold up, he said, because genomic evidence suggests that COVID-19 was already circulating in the human population by mid-to-late October. “Clearly, the market was a conduit for expansion,” he testified. “Is that where it started? I don’t think so.”

Baric also weighed in on a controversy that has pitted Dr. Anthony Fauci against Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), who has leveraged his credentials as an eye doctor to position himself as a crusader against America’s scientific and medical establishments. In contentious Senate hearings, Fauci has repeatedly denied Paul’s claims that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which Fauci led at the time, had funded gain-of-function research at the WIV. However, Baric told investigators that the experiment in dispute, in which technicians created a chimeric virus that made lab mice sicker, was “absolutely” gain-of-function research: “You can’t argue with that.” He also said he felt that the experiment’s results should have triggered regulatory review.

The federal grant money for the experiment in question, which was conducted at the WIV sometime between 2018 and 2019, was funneled through EcoHealth Alliance. It was Daszak, EcoHealth’s president, who organized an open letter in the Lancet medical journal early in the pandemic that helped paint the lab-leak hypothesis as a baseless conspiracy theory. Today, the Select Subcommittee is expected to release a report that calls for NIH to recommend that EcoHealth Alliance, and Daszak personally, be debarred from receiving federal funds. As part of its investigation into COVID-19’s origins, the Select Subcommittee is holding a series of hearings. Daszak is scheduled to testify publicly today, and Fauci is set to do so on June 3.

America’s intelligence agencies remain divided over whether SARS-CoV-2 came from a natural spillover or a lab accident. US Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra recently said the question may “never” be answered “unless China opens up some more.”

The single biggest issue to jump from the pages of Baric’s testimony is his persistent concern over unsafe research practices at the WIV. Some of Shi’s research papers, he said, “actually stated that they were doing the culturing work under BSL-2.” BSL-3 labs typically require negative pressure air flow, HEPA air filtration systems, and full Tyvek suits for lab workers—all to protect against leaks. BSL-2 laboratories do not require specialized air filtration or full gowns.

Throughout his interview, Baric took pains to emphasize to congressional investigators that he had not simply turned over his research techniques to his colleagues at the WIV. Referring to his 2015 research with Shi, he said, “Although we published the approaches for how to build molecular clones of coronaviruses, we never had anyone from Dr. Shi’s lab or any of the Wuhan Institute of Virology come to our lab and train. We never taught them.”

His trust was violated on at least one occasion, he said. In order to test the ability of different viruses to infect humans, Baric had engineered mice with lungs that contained a human gene. He said he shared these mice with the WIV under a contractual agreement that they only be used there. Then, during the pandemic, he said he discovered that his mice were being offered for sale by a commercial company. The profiteering, he told investigators, was “infuriating.”

As Baric recounted to congressional investigators, Shi’s earlier work was “very vague about safety conditions. They said they followed Chinese regulations.” But in two subsequent papers, said Baric, “They actually stated that they were doing the culturing work under BSL-2…. And then they continued that even into September of 2020, which I thought was irresponsible.” (Neither Shi Zhengli nor a spokesperson for the Wuhan Institute of Virology responded to requests for comment.)

Baric told the committee that, from his earliest days working with zoonotic coronaviruses, he always understood there was a real if “rare” chance that one could prove infectious to humans. “And if that’s your hypothesis, then you do it under BSL-3,” he said. “So I kind of set the standard in the United States.”

But the WIV, he said, operated under a looser set of biosafety protocols. “Their regulations state pretty clearly that they don’t consider culturing bat viruses at BSL-2 as a biosafety concern,” he said. “I also had that verbally confirmed by Zhengli Shi at a meeting in Harbin, when I was telling her she should move it all to BSL-3 and the reasons why.” (Less than a year into the pandemic, the Chinese government passed legislation that tightened the nation’s laboratory safety practices.)

The dispute over biosafety arose again in 2018, as Baric and Shi worked with Daszak on a grant proposal to collect SARS-like bat coronaviruses and insert a genetic component called a furin cleavage site that would enable them to more easily infect human cells. The proposal has since drawn attention because, when SARS-CoV-2 subsequently emerged in Wuhan, it possessed a furin cleavage site, making it unique among SARS-related coronaviruses. The 2018 proposal was submitted by Daszak to the Pentagon research and development agency DARPA.

Last December, a Freedom of Information research group called U.S. Right to Know released margin comments from an early draft of the grant proposal. In one, Peter Daszak tagged his collaborators and said, “Ralph. Zhengli. If we win this contract, I do not propose that all of this work will necessarily be conducted by Ralph, but I do want to stress the US side of this proposal so that DARPA are comfortable with our team. Once we get the funds, we can then allocate who does what exact work, and I believe that a lot of these assays can be done in Wuhan as well.”

The early draft stipulated that the research would be done at a BSL-2 level, making it “highly cost-effective.” Baric objected to this in a margin comment of his own: “IN the US, these recombinant SARS CoV are studied under BSL3, not BSL2, especially important for those that are able to bind and replicate in primary human cells. In china, might be growin these virus under bsl2. US researchers will likely freak out.” In the finished proposal, BSL-2 was changed to BSL-3.

Baric told congressional investigators that he wrote the margin comment to Daszak “to make sure he pays attention.” He added, “First, I’m informing him, just in case he doesn’t know, that a lot of the virus discovery work and culturing work that the Chinese do with zoonotic coronaviruses is done at BSL-2…. I’m letting him know there’s a difference.”

After a congressional investigator observed, “It appears there may have been a willingness, not necessarily by you, to do some of this work in the BSL-2 in China,” Baric responded, “There was no willingness on my part to do any of this work…. Let me make that clear.” He subsequently clarified, “My role was to study a couple of the viruses that the Wuhan Institute of Virology found that they were willing to share with me.”

DARPA rejected the grant, but questions have persisted over whether WIV scientists carried out the proposed research anyway. Baric told congressional investigators that he doesn’t know whether the WIV continued the research or got other funding for it. He added that he does not believe SARS-CoV-2 was engineered and discounted a 2022 paper making that argument as “biostatistical BS.” Alex Washburne, one of the paper’s authors, told Vanity Fair, “Baric doesn’t provide any scientific evidence or reasoning that would lead us to revisit our results or change our theory.”

In May 2021, Baric signed an open letter in the journal Science affirming that the lab and natural origin hypotheses are both viable and calling for further investigation. A fellow scientist, Columbia University virologist Ian Lipkin, questioned him about why he signed the letter. In response, Baric told the subcommittee, “I sent him a couple of papers that the Chinese had published where they were doing virus discovery work under BSL-2 conditions, which is one of the main reasons why I felt that the potential laboratory escape hypothesis shouldn’t be, in essence, put under the rug.”

Baric’s signing of that letter also precipitated a testy email exchange with Daszak over the WIV’s safety standards, obtained by Vanity Fair. Daszak enumerated to Baric the various ways in which China’s lab safety standards did not lag far behind US standards. He added, “We checked with Zhengli, who let us know that she used ‘BSL-2 with negative pressure and appropriate PPE.’”

This brought a withering response from Baric. “Bsl2 with negative pressure, give me a break.” He pointed out that even Shi’s most recent papers never defined the safety precautions used. “Yes china has the right to set their own policy. You believe this was appropriate containment if you want but don’t expect me to believe it. Moreover, don’t insult my intelligence by trying to feed me this load of BS.”

Reached for comment, Daszak told Vanity Fair that the WIV performed its animal infection experiments “at BSL-3, as per work at Dr. Baric’s lab in the USA.” He also stated that the research rejected by DARPA was “never done,” and said that the proposal called for only work that “did not involve any infectious materials” to be done in a BSL-2 facility at the WIV. Regarding the Subcommittee’s call for the NIH to recommend debarring him and EcoHealth Alliance from receiving federal funds, he said he hadn’t yet seen the report and couldn’t comment on it. However, he stated that EcoHealth Alliance has “cooperated fully and expeditiously with the NIH on additional oversight measures since 2020” and shared a letter from last October in which the NIH deemed the nonprofit compliant with oversight requirements.

Another signatory to the May 2021 letter was Dr. Michael Worobey, who has since become a leading proponent of the theory that the virus spilled over from infected animals at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market.

In 2022, Worobey and a team of international scientists published an influential research paper that used a geospatial analysis of early infections in Wuhan to make a case for the market spillover theory. Using data collected by Chinese scientists, Worobey’s team later also published evidence in a preprint that virus-susceptible mammals, such as raccoon dogs, were present at the market.

When prominent virologists state that the preponderance of evidence points to a natural origin, they are often referring to Worobey’s research. Baric, for his part, told congressional investigators that Worobey’s geospatial study has a “major problem” with its timeline. He told the subcommittee, “The only thing we have really solid data [for] is that the market was the site of amplification in late December, January. That’s still two months from the origin date, based on a molecular clock, which means it was circulating somewhere before it got there. And the question is, where was it?”

Baric said the earliest cases are “almost impossible” to document because many were asymptomatic. “It’s a fundamental problem with the papers that are reported to prove—they write it too strong, I think, but they’re very passionate about their data. And to be fair to them, it is the best data that’s out there.” He went on to critique the papers’ claim of two independent jumps from different infected animals at the market based on the presence of two different lineages of the virus. “It’s a stretch,” he said, adding that his view is shared by “a lot of virologists that look at that data and go, mmm.”

Calling the evidence for a market origin “powerful,” Worobey told Vanity Fair that he thinks the first jump from animals to humans happened in November. Baric, he said, “possesses essentially no expertise in the subjects of the papers he is commenting on…. It is irresponsible for him to share these views with anyone without also making it clear that he is in no better position than the average educated person to judge this work.”

In his testimony, Baric was equivocal on the question of whether WIV scientists could have possessed SARS-CoV-2, or a very close progenitor, prior to the pandemic. There “was evidence that they were building chimeras” and “doing some discovery work about the functions of spike genes of zoonotic strains that they discovered later on, but I don’t know if they did any of the engineering or anything.”

Without further disclosure from China, the answer may be unknowable. As Baric told congressional investigators, “If you had access to the laboratory notebooks, if you had access to the safety records of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, if you had access to the sequence databases, the level of assurance that you would have would be greater. No question.”

“Which we didn’t really have?” a congressional investigator asked.

“Which we don’t really have,” Baric responded. “That’s very true.”

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Persuasive Essay About Covid19
Are you looking to write a persuasive essay about the Covid-19 pandemic? Writing a compelling and informative essay about this global crisis can be challenging. It requires researching the latest information, understanding the facts, and presenting your argument persuasively. ... Examples of Argumentative Essay About Covid 19.
The Origins of Covid-19
Key Events in the Effort to Determine the Origins of the Covid-19 Pandemic. The joint WHO-China technical report published in March 2021 rated a zoonotic spillover as a "likely to very likely ...
A Narrative Review of COVID-19: The New Pandemic Disease
Nearly every 100 years, humans collectively face a pandemic crisis. After the Spanish flu, now the world is in the grip of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). First detected in 2019 in the Chinese city of Wuhan, COVID-19 causes severe acute respiratory distress syndrome. Despite the initial evidence indicating a zoonotic origin, the contagion ...
An Ethical Anaylsis of the Arguments Both For and Against COVID-19
In the COVID-19 pandemic, the utilitarian argument has been applied to vaccine mandates. ... During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a wide range of public health decisions made with the intent of limiting morbidity and mortality. Masking, travel restrictions, and quarantining after exposure fall into both categories. A prudent individual ...
Opinion
The journal Cell recently published a paper on pandemic diseases and how Covid-19 has come upon us, by a scientist named Dr. David M. Morens and one co-author. Dr. Dr.
How to Write About Coronavirus in a College Essay
Writing About COVID-19 in College Essays. Experts say students should be honest and not limit themselves to merely their experiences with the pandemic. The global impact of COVID-19, the disease ...
Opinion
South Korea beat back that potentially catastrophic outbreak, and continued to greatly limit its cases. They had fewer than 1,000 deaths in all of 2020. In the United States, that would translate ...
Essay: COVID-19 and humanity's interconnectedness
The grocery stores I was used to seeing fully stocked were cleared of essential supplies, like milk and hand sanitizer. Many of my favorite local restaurants transitioned to delivery-only, while others closed. The implications of this coronavirus pandemic became evident. Talk of layoffs and businesses struggling to make payroll became the norm.
An opinion on opinions in a pandemic
Notably, the COVID-19 pandemic has been likened to war by the very nature that it requires collective action and cooperation in order to defeat the enemy named SARS-CoV2. Holmes' attempt was to ...
PDF COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on social relationships and health
This essay examines key aspects of social relationships that were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. It focuses explicitly on relational mechanisms of health and brings together theory and emerging evidence on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic to make recommendations for future public health policy and recovery.
The Pandemic Did Not Affect Mental Health the Way You Think
July 4, 2021. You've probably heard that the coronavirus pandemic triggered a worldwide mental-health crisis. This narrative took hold almost as quickly as the virus itself. In the spring of ...
Thinking the Pandemic: Philosophical Perspectives
Thinking the Pandemic: Philosophical Perspectives 481 Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia, Vol. 77, No. 2-3 (2021): 477-486 author argues that the individual and social ethical lessons learned in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic may be relevant for examining the challenges related to climate change. The affirmative answer, however, is
Impact of COVID-19 on people's livelihoods, their health and our food
Reading time: 3 min (864 words) The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a dramatic loss of human life worldwide and presents an unprecedented challenge to public health, food systems and the world of work. The economic and social disruption caused by the pandemic is devastating: tens of millions of people are at risk of falling into extreme poverty ...
The causes and consequences of COVID-19 ...
We investigate the relationship between media consumption, misinformation, and important attitudes and behaviours during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. We find that comparatively more misinformation circulates on Twitter, while news media tends to reinforce public health recommendations like social distancing. We find that exposure to social media is associated with ...
Arguments against mask requirements during the coronavirus (COVID-19
This page captures the main arguments that have been advanced against mask requirements during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. These arguments come from a variety of sources, including public officials, journalists, think tanks, economists, scientists, and other stakeholders. ... This may worsen the burden of covid-19 if infected people ...
Argumentative Essay about Covid 19
Argumentative Essay about Covid 19. This essay sample was donated by a student to help the academic community. Papers provided by EduBirdie writers usually outdo students' samples. COVID-19 is an emerging public health problem, which started in China at the end of 2019 and gradually affected the majority of countries including India (1).
Frontiers
Rahn et al. offer a comparative view of compliance and risk perception, examining three hazard types: COVID-19 pandemic, violent acts, and severe weather. With a sample of 403 Germans (age range: 18-89 years, 72% female), they studied how age, gender, previous hazard experience and different components of risk appraisal (perceived severity ...
An Introduction to COVID-19
COVID-19 has reached to more than 150 nations, including China, and has caused WHO to call the disease a worldwide pandemic. By the time of 2nd week of April 2020, this COVID-19 cases exceeded 18,738,58, although more than 1,160,45 deaths were recorded worldwide and United States of America became the global epicentre of coronavirus.
Essay: COVID-19 pandemic impacts how we view, access mental health care
COVID-19 pandemic impacts how we view, access mental health care. We have all felt the devastating effects of the coronavirus disease pandemic (COVID-19) on our families and communities. It is ...
Essay on COVID-19 Pandemic
Essay on COVID-19 Pandemic. Published: 2021/11/08. Number of words: 1220. As a result of the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) outbreak, daily life has been negatively affected, impacting the worldwide economy. Thousands of individuals have been sickened or died as a result of the outbreak of this disease. When you have the flu or a viral infection, the ...
The Argument for Open Research in the Time of COVID-19
A global scientific collaboration has been lauded as scientists come together to perform research during the pandemic. The New York Times piece, " Covid-19 Changed How the World Does Science, Together " noted: "While political leaders have locked their borders, scientists have been shattering theirs, creating a global collaboration unlike ...
Pandemic preparedness and response: exploring the role of universal
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, several international initiatives have been developed to strengthen and reform the global architecture for pandemic preparedness and response, including proposals for a pandemic treaty, a Pandemic Fund, and mechanisms for equitable access to medical countermeasures. These initiatives seek to make use of crucial lessons gleaned from the ongoing pandemic by ...
Covid 19 Essay in English
100 Words Essay on Covid 19. COVID-19 or Corona Virus is a novel coronavirus that was first identified in 2019. It is similar to other coronaviruses, such as SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, but it is more contagious and has caused more severe respiratory illness in people who have been infected. The novel coronavirus became a global pandemic in a very ...
Thousands Believe Covid Vaccines Harmed Them. Is Anyone Listening
The F.D.A. is monitoring reports of tinnitus, but "at this time, the available evidence does not suggest a causal association with the Covid-19 vaccines," the agency said in a statement.
Virologist Testified Lab Leak Was Possible in Wuhan: "You Can't Rule
The argument does not hold up, he said, because genomic evidence suggests that COVID-19 was already circulating in the human population by mid-to-late October. "Clearly, the market was a conduit ...