March 4, 2020

A nice piece demystifying the concept of mutations:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-020-0690-4

Also some really optimistic news from China which leads to me to believe that local epidemics are reversible with careful case finding, contact tracing & social distancing. It is surreal to be in an American city, with a rapidly expanding epidemic where this is not yet happening. My opinion is that widely available rapid testing of all symptomatic people regardless of contact history, rather than the narrow CDC case definition, is the necessary next step. I am somewhere between hopeful and confident that this is coming soon. It is important to understand that the impact of improved screening on incident cases will not be immediately evident and the next few weeks will capture the transmission that are occurring as we speak:

https://www.vox.com/…/3/2/21161067/coronavirus-covid19-china