Coronavirus Information

COVID Awareness and Information

What is a pandemic? An epidemic? And how do we classify the level of disease spread?
What is an infectious dose and what does it have to do with my risk of infection?
What do we mean by virulence and infectiousness?
What are R0 values and why are they important to understanding disease spread and herd immunity?
Why are there so many types of COVID vaccines?
What are the known risk factors for severe COVID-19?
How do the number of new COVID-19 cases in the current surge compare to past surges?
Why are reinfections and breakthrough infections so common with the omicron BA.5 subvariant, but with much lower risk of severe disease? And what does this tell us about antibodies and cytotoxic T cells?
Why are N95 respirators so much more effective than cloth masks or even surgical masks? And what about KN95 respirators?
What is long COVID and who is at risk?

Misinformation Awareness

Information about SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 therapies have long been plagued with misinformation. Some of this misinformation was innocent in origin (e.g., people speculating on the nature of the virus and possible treatments in the absence of reliable data) while there are also many examples of malicious misinformation disseminated for political and/or economic gain.