The virus is mutating!

This post will attempt to answer the following questions:

  1. Is the coronavirus mutating?
  2. What does that mean?
  3. Should I be worried about this?
  4. What can I do if the virus is mutating?

As if things aren’t scary enough with the illness, deaths, fear of invisible virus particles, and economic meltdown the news media has done what they do best and added to our collective anxiety. May 5th there was a report published in the Los Angeles Times that a “a now-dominant strain of the coronavirus could be more contagious than [the] original.”. This was based on the online posting of a pre-print of a research study that describing a new “strain” of the novel coronavirus. This new “strain”, the team wrote, “began spreading in Europe in early February.” Whenever it appeared in a new place, including the U.S., it rapidly rose to dominance. Its success, the team suggested, is likely due to a single mutation, which is now “of urgent concern.”

Continue reading “The virus is mutating!”

Why contact tracing is so crucial

It was what seems like years ago that I locked myself in my basement sick with COVID-19. It was way back when when the numbers were all going up, no one knew how to make a homemade face mask, and most people had never heard of Zoom. While I was down there in my basement feverish and achy I had an experience that I did not put a lot of thought into at the time. I was too bewildered and overwhelmed by the state of the world to pay too much attention but one phone call I received may turn out to be the secret to safely opening our society up again.

Continue reading “Why contact tracing is so crucial”