The Best Pandemic Coverage So Far — From Memes to Long Reads
A collection of in-depth, insightful, shocking — and whimsical — reporting on Coronavirus in the West’s first month of lockdown.
What better way to spend a fortnight in lockdown than catching up on some reading? Boy, I’ve learned a lot in a couple of weeks — unfortunately, it’s all been via hot, hot takes on rising death tolls.
The last month has seen the world simultaneously unify, and split into nuanced groups — sand-head-buriers; daily-briefing flirters; People Who Have Found Their Calling In 24hr (Twitter) Data Analysis. No matter your team, in digital isolation you can find what you need. Most newly paywalled-media sites have seen fit to remove all Corona-related content from behind them, allowing everyone to access pandemic information and commentary for free. And, as ever, there are memes aplenty.
Here are the pieces from March 2020 that gripped me the most — whether for the depth of their coverage, an intriguing angle, or their promotion of resilience(/cuteness).
NB: I’ve started from mid-March; much of the coverage before that was made up of reactive updates on the latest sporting event to be closed, or like: “Weird! Bats! Glad it’s settling down over there, China!” However, here’s a special mention from all the way back on 28th January:
Act Now to Prevent an American Epidemic | by Luciana Borio and Scott Gottlieb — Wall Street Journal
11th March: John Burn-Murdoch’s first Coronavirus trajectory chart — Financial Times
Burn-Murdoch works in data visualisation at FT, and has been keeping a daily, visual record of the trajectory of countries with major outbreaks of Covid-19. His #dataviz helped many to begin to understand where we were headed.
You can see the latest numbers every day at his Twitter account— here’s the first chart he produced.
12th March: Finding Connection and Resilience During the Coronavirus Pandemic | by Robin Wright — The New Yorker
Wright’s was one of the first essays to track and outline the changes in culture from China into Europe, and what it might mean ongoing, as Western countries retreated into quarantine.
17th March: Big Brother Contestants Are Only Now Finding Out About the Coronavirus Pandemic | by Christopher Rosen — Vanity Fair
This isn’t the most in-depth or hard-hitting offering on the surface; however, watching the clip of Canadian housemates being told by producers is like reliving your own response at 100mph. The news was kept, for a short time, from all contestants in countries currently hosting a Big Brother series; their resulting bewilderment is almost tangible.
20th March: “No, We Should Not Encourage People to Hustle During a Quarantine” | by Rachel Charlene Lewis — Bitch Media
In response to tweets shouting “Shakespeare used his free time during the plague to write King Lear, guys!”, Lewis articulates us away from the new hyperdrive of a hustle culture that some of us were welcoming a break from. Her advice: “some of us just need to fucking breathe through this.”
20th March: long-awaited update from Dog Solutions — Twitter
At the end of a long week, we needed this brief reminder that… solutons is possible.
20th March: Watch out for this symptom of Corona virus: lazy ecofascism — Ketan Joshi
Joshi digs into the claims that Venice was being ‘reclaimed by nature’, and illuminates the lazy thinking behind the ‘humans are the virus’ meme — the same thinking that contributes to a lack of action on climate change.
23rd March: How to Talk to Coronavirus Skeptics | by Isaac Chotiner — The New Yorker
An interview with Naomi Oreskes, a professor of the history of science at Harvard, who quickly shows us not only how to talk to people about crucial science-based arguments, but also why they aren’t listening in the first place. And not simply individual citizens, but also the key reason any Republican administration — Trump aside — would purposely stall on this issue.
24th March: “I’m an American Stranded in Guatemala, and I’m Fine With That” | by Katherine Plumhoff — Slate
Plumhoff outlines first-hand how the response of the Guatemalan government made staying in a foreign land with no clear timeline, and limited access to, well, most things, preferable to going home to the USA.
25th March: How the Pandemic Will End | by Ed Yong — The Atlantic
Science writer Ed Yong looks at past flu pandemics, the SARS outbreak of 2003, and various predictions and projections for the near future, to examine a handful of convincing scenarios of how this could play out.
26th March: ‘People Are Dying’: 72 Hours Inside a N.Y.C. Hospital Battling Coronavirus | by Dr Colleen Smith, and reporters Robin Stein and Caroline Kim — The New York Times
Dr. Smith’s now-viral video diary, hosted by NYT, made visible the reality of the Emergency Room of Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, the so-called ‘epicenter’ of Covid-19 in the US.
27th March: Coronavirus is Pushing Reddit’s Relationship_Advice to a Breaking Point | by Ashley Reese — Jezebel
In a densely-populated corner of Reddit, Reese was able to explore answers to a frightening question on the minds of many — what are those quarantined in abusive households supposed to do? She also goes further to explore how the moderators of the forum are managing their own stress, dealing with the weight of such questions.
27th March: Where is the world at with a coronavirus vaccine? | by Nicole Kobie — Wired
An overview of who’s testing what and where in order to fast-track a reliable vaccine for SARS-CoV-2.
27th March: Joe Biden’s Former Economic Adviser on Why This Recession Got So Bad | by Kara Voght — Mother Jones
Jared Bernstein, adviser to Biden during his vice-presidency, explains fundamental differences between the ’08 recession and our current economic downturn — “go down to Disney World” isn’t going to cut it this time.
28th March: The Missing Six Weeks | by Ed Pilkington and Tom McCarthy — The Guardian US
The first diagnoses of Covid-19 in the US and South Korea were reported on the same day. This piece outlines their “polar opposite” responses, and posits that as a result of the six weeks that followed, the US’ “will be studied for generations as a textbook example of a disastrous, failed effort”.
28th March: Inside NHS Nightingale, the front line in the UK’s coronavirus battle | by Chris Stokel-Walker — Wired
An outline of the staggering effort going into building a 4000-bed field hospital in Central London; a joint effort of government, military, and industry.
28th March: Covid-19 and the NHS — “a national scandal” | by Richard Horton — The Lancet
On the same day as the above article, Richard Horton, editor of medical journal The Lancet, published a scathing critique of the UK's response to the crisis, quoting one health worker who’s calling for the entire NHS board to be sacked. Contrary to Dr. Jenny Harries’ public statements, health workers are reporting that they are without PPE, and challenged if they attest to this.
29th March: ‘Hedgehog’, a micro-piece for nine isolated musicians | by Yshani Perinpanayagam — Twitter
A musician sends sparse, cryptic pieces of sheet music to her friends, and asks them each to record themselves playing. This is the result.
That’s March’s roundup. Welcome to April 2020, everybody. Keep reading.