‘Emotions Are Filters Through Which We See Facts’: Coronavirus Outbreak Pushes All Our Fear-Based Hot Buttons

The Associated Press: Science Says: How Risky Is That Virus? Your Mind May Mislead
Anna Alexander, a property manager in Virginia Beach, Virginia, started the day Monday thinking that she might avoid shaking hands because of the coronavirus outbreak. Then somebody stuck out a hand to shake. She took it. “I'm a business person,” Alexander, 65, explained. “But if somebody else does it next time, I might try to be careful because of the coronavirus.” As the viral infections spread across the globe, everybody has to make a decision: How worried should I be about getting infected, and what should I do about it? (Ritter, 3/5)

The Washington Post: How The Coronavirus Compares With The Flu
For two months now, global health and government officials have been trying to stem the coronavirus outbreak, quarantining citizens, locking down towns and creating triage protocols in hospitals where the contagious, deadly novel virus has taken root. As of early March, the coronavirus outbreak had infected more than 90,000 people and killed more than 3,000 people globally, the majority of whom live in China, where the illness was first detected in December. More than 100 people in the United States have been diagnosed, including at least nine people who have died. (Mettler, 3/4)

The Associated Press: Virus Death Rate Still Uncertain As Mild Cases Are Missed
How deadly is the coronavirus that exploded from China? The answer reflects a hard reality about fast-moving outbreaks: As cases pop up in new places, the first to get counted are the sickest. A straight count of deaths reported worldwide suggests the new virus may be more deadly than the flu, according to the head of the World Health Organization. (Neergaard, 3/4)

Stat: How Blood Plasma From Recovered Patients Could Help Treat The New Coronavirus
When it comes to creating treatments for Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, the first line of defense may be a century-old technology: purified blood plasma. Medical literature published during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 includes case reports describing how transfusions of blood products obtained from survivors may have contributed to a 50% reduction in death among severely ill patients. In 1934, a measles outbreak at a Pennsylvania boarding school was halted when serum harvested from the first infected student was used to treat 62 fellow students. Only three of the 62 students developed measles — all mild cases. (Herper and Feuerstein, 3/5)

The Wall Street Journal: How To Prepare For The Coronavirus
Face masks? Zinc? Gloves? Americans are grasping for ways to brace for what public health experts say is inevitable: an outbreak of the new coronavirus. Public health experts advise staying calm and following the same precautions recommended for preventing flu or any other respiratory virus. Stick with the basics: Wash your hands, cover your coughs and sneezes, and stay at home from work or school when you’re sick. (Reddy, 3/4)

Dallas Morning News: How Should You Prepare Your Home For The New Coronavirus?
No cases of the new coronavirus have been confirmed in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Even so, public health officials are urging residents to prepare for local outbreaks. Health officials have said that while stocking up on products like face masks and hand sanitizer won’t necessarily protect you from the illness, there are ways to prepare for the spread of the virus, known as COVID-19. (Marfin and Keomoungkhoun, 3/4)

ABC News: Scientists Say They've Identified 2 Strains Of COVID-19 
Scientists from China said they've identified two strains of COVID-19 linked to the recent outbreak. Coronaviruses are a large family of RNA viruses, and when RNA viruses replicate quickly, they often mutate. Researchers analyzed 103 sequenced genomes using strains from China, and found that 70% of strains were one type, which they called "L." The "L" strain was more aggressive than the remaining 30% of strains, which were dubbed "S." (Schumaker, 3/4)

Reuters: Researchers Identify Two Coronavirus Strains As China Cases Dwindle
Scientists in China studying the outbreak of disease caused by the new coronavirus say they have found that two main strains of the virus are circulating in humans and causing infections. The researchers, from Peking University's School of Life Sciences and the Institut Pasteur of Shanghai under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, cautioned that their study looked only at a limited range of data, and said follow-up studies of larger data sets were needed to better understand the virus's evolution. (3/4)

Boston Globe: How The Coronavirus Is Making Us Lose Our Minds
At this point in the coronavirus outbreak, we need two metrics: the risk of contracting the disease, which in Massachusetts is currently “low,” per state officials; and the risk of contracting anxiety about the disease, which is currently move out of my way, lady, I saw that Purell first, per everyone doomsday prepping this past weekend.If a person with the actual coronavirus can potentially infect people as far as 6 feet away, a person who’s anxious about coronavirus can infect an entire Costco’s worth of shoppers with second-hand hysteria. (Teitell, 3/4)

NPR: Face Masks: Not Enough Are Made In America To Deal With Coronavirus
Mike Bowen's been a very busy man. Insanely busy. He's executive vice president of Texas-based Prestige Ameritech, one of the few manufacturers of respirators and surgical face masks still making them in the United States. "I've got requests for maybe a billion and a half masks, if you add it up," he says. That's right — 1.5 billion. (Noguchi, 3/5)

Bloomberg News: Some VA Stockpiles Of Protective Medical Masks Aren’t Usable
Some emergency stockpiles of respirator masks at the Department of Veterans Affairs have deteriorated in storage and can’t be used, according to an internal e-mail warning that the agency’s supplies may be overestimated. The warning about problems in caches of emergency supplies comes after the World Health Organization said Tuesday that disruptions to the global supply of personal protective equipment are putting lives at risk in the novel coronavirus outbreak. (Tozzi, 3/4)

The Washington Post: Coronavirus Conspiracy Theorists Blame U.S. For Outbreak. China Is Encouraging Them.
The United States is concealing the true scale of its coronavirus deaths. The United States should learn from China about how to respond to an epidemic. The United States was the origin of the coronavirus — and the global crisis was never China's fault. Welcome to the Chinese Internet this week. As new coronavirus cases and the sense of panic ebb in China, the country that was first struck by the disease has been gripped by a wave of nationalist pride, conspiracy theories, and a perennial mix of anti-American sentiments: suspicion, superiority, schadenfreude. (Shih, 3/5)

ABC News: Social Media Companies Partnering With Health Authorities To Combat Misinformation On Coronavirus 
Is 15 seconds enough time to learn better health and hygiene practices? The World Health Organization thinks so. Last week, the social media app TikTok, popular with youths and young adults, announced it would be partnering with the WHO in an effort to spread veritable information on the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, in addition to best public health practices. (Convertino, 3/5)

The Wall Street Journal: Hospitals Use Telemedicine To Minimize Contact With Virus Patients
Hospitals and doctors have a message for patients who want to come in because of fears they might be infected by the novel coronavirus: Try the phone first. Doctor groups, hospitals and health insurers are increasingly steering people with mild or no symptoms toward initial visits conducted by phone, interactive video or secure messaging. They are also starting to use the technology to care remotely for people with suspected or confirmed cases of Covid-19, the respiratory disease caused by the virus. (Mathews and Evans, 3/4)

NPR: Computer Models Of COVID-19 Outbreaks Could Help Stop Coronavirus
Scientists who use math and computers to simulate the course of epidemics are taking on the new coronavirus to try to predict how this global outbreak might evolve and how best to tackle it. But some say more could be done to take advantage of these modeling tools and the researchers' findings. "It is sort of an ad hoc, volunteer effort, and I think that's something that we could improve upon," says Caitlin Rivers, an infectious diseases modeler with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. (Greenfieldboyce, 3/4)

WBUR: Who Faces The Greatest Risk Of Severe Illness From Coronavirus? 
The person who died in Placer County, Calif., was described by officials as "an elderly adult with underlying health conditions." Most of the people who died in Washington were residents of Life Care Center, a nursing facility in Kirkland. All but three of the victims in Washington were over age 70. The younger people who died include one man in his 40s and two men in their 50s. Officials said these individuals had underlying medical problems that could have made them particularly susceptible to the virus, but officials would not detail what the problems were. (Greenfieldboyce, 3/4)

The Washington Post: Coronavirus Won’t Be Delivered To You
The number of confirmed cases of coronavirus continues to grow daily. Readers have asked whether the origin of mail and purchased items could affect them. The United States has more than 100 confirmed cases of coronavirus, and new infections are being reported daily. On Tuesday, Amazon said it recently had a Seattle-based employee test positive for covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. A spokesperson for Amazon told The Washington Post that the ill employee is in quarantine. (Beachum, 3/4)

PBS NewsHour: Your Guide To Understanding COVID-19
The new coronavirus known as COVID-19 has sickened more than 90,000 people and killed an additional 3,000 people worldwide, as public health officials scramble to learn more about the virus’ severity, and how to slow its spread. Some days, the flurry of questions about the outbreak seems to outpace new infections. Who is at risk? Are most cases mild? How do you find out if you have it? Why are people stockpiling facemasks? What can you do about chapped hands after washing them so many darn times? (Santhanam, 3/4)