Shoulda been a tweet: COVID mysteries (skip this if experiencing coronavirus overload)

I’m sure that the last thing a lot of people want to read about is the coronavirus. This post is mainly a link to an article I found interesting. Maybe I should just chuck these articles into a spreadsheet, but I have a lot of spreadsheets/databases that went dormant about 3 minutes after I created them. This is one I’d like to revisit. If you’re feeling COVID overload, I’d give this one a miss.

Ok.

I was never good with stats and data, but I find them interesting. The art and science of it all is on full display with epidemiologists and policy-makers trying to understand the coronavirus and the best way to counter it.

Why have some places seemingly been hit harder than others? Age, culture (for example, bowing vs. a lot of hugging), climate, policy response, prevalence of public transportation, etc.)? This article in the New York Times by Hannah Beech, Alissa J. Rubin, Anatoly Kurmanaev and Ruth Maclean provides a great overview of the questions that epidemiologists are trying to answer.

Here’s the headline:

The Covid-19 Riddle: Why Does the Virus Wallop Some Places and Spare Others?

Experts are trying to figure out why the coronavirus is so capricious. The answers could determine how to best protect ourselves and how long we have to.

Side note – the New York Times includes that sub-headline. I’ve always thought of the lede (burying the lede – not sure why it isn’t lead) as being in the actual text. Riddles upon riddles.