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Showing posts from May, 2020

The Virus By the Numbers

I'm writing this because there's some really insane stuff that's being said by people who should really know better, and I'm sick of discussing it one post or email at a time. So, this is my One Big Post that I'll point people toward rather than bringing it up again and again. In case you haven't noticed, we're in the middle of a pandemic. Just so that we're all using the same terminology:  The virus is Severe acute respiratory syndrome Coronavirus 2 . It's usually abbreviated SARS-CoV-2. It's a brand new kind of Coronavirus, so for a while, before it had this awkward name, people were calling it "novel coronavirus". (For the non-English speakers and D students, "novel" is another word for "new".) The disease that the virus causes is called Coronavirus Disease 2019 , and it's usually abbreviated COVID-19. It's called that because it was discovered in 2019. This came out of nowhere in China in late ...