Who Can You Trust?

I've taken a step back from writing about COVID-19 for the past couple of days. Not that I've stopped reading voraciously, but trying to sum up everything is overwhelming. But now I feel a little selfish about that decision. I may not be an epidemiologist or a virologist, but I have the benefit and privilege of having an education that makes it easy for me to interpret scientific and medical reports.

Quote: Maria V. Snyder, author

In undergrad, I earned a Bachelors of Science in Biology, while volunteering in a cytogenetics lab and being paid to deliver specimens (blood, sputum, feces etc) and setup cultures for microbiology in a general hospital lab. Then I spent 5 years earning a PhD in biomedical science with a concentration in genetics and developmental biology, followed by further post doctoral training in genetics. My research ranged from in vitro biochemistry (engineering and purifying proteins to test their affect on the cellular process of RNA splicing) to mouse husbandry. Then I spent a year creating continuing medical education programs for doctors and nurses on topics related to dermatology, allergy and diabetes. And I've spent the past nearly 13 years as an educator.

But most people don't have that luxury. Maybe they've taken one biology class once in high school. Maybe they've never taken biology. Should everyone be trying to make sense of the rapid fire barrage of COVID19 info?

I think Hobbes gets it.

Ideally, yes. The more educated folks are about what's going on, the better off we will be as a society. No one expects you to be an expert or to easily understand all the lingo. That's what professional science communicators are for.

But let me start with a few words of caution. Understand that not everyone who claims they have a doctorate of some kind is actually qualified to speak on what's going on.

Sometimes those people have made up their degree or purchased it from an online degree mill or earned it in something completely unrelated to public health. Other times people who legitimately went through rigorous training to become an MD or PhD will spout dangerous and misleading information. All of these folks tend to be motivated by a few things - desire for recognition / power and desire for monetary gain. I'll concede that some may even think they are helping people - after all the Dunning Kruger effect is a very real thing.

DKE-19 is seriously making it hard to keep up with COVID-19

That being said - why should you trust me? I have nothing to gain by talking about science - other than relieving some of the busyness of my mind. My main motivation for writing is that I want as many people to be safe as possible. Since I can't wish this nightmare away, writing about what I do know is the next best thing.

So I think I need to make baby steps. Rather than covering every report that comes out, I'm going to start by compiling a list of reputable resources for folks to follow. There are a lot of great science writers out there - people with actual backgrounds in research and medicine - who can be trusted. If you don't already use Twitter, I would strongly recommend using it to get information directly from the folks on the front lines of research and hospitals. Here goes...

World Health Organization aka WHO - an organization of physicians and clinical researchers and epidemiologists based in Geneva Switzerland who track all kinds of diseases and compile best practices from data collected around the globe (also follow them on Twitter)

Centers for Disease Control aka CDC - the US government agency responsible for tracking diseases (Twitter)

Johns Hopkins School of Public Health - There's a ton of experts working at JHU and several of them (lead by Lauren Gardner) built a very cool COVID19 tracker. (Twitter)

Anthony Fauci, MD - Dr. Fauci is the head of the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) and President Trump's COVID19 task force. While he doesn't have his own social media accounts, he's all over social media these days.

Trevor Bradford, PhD - He's a molecular epidemiologist, meaning he tracks how viruses mutate and helps link specific patient samples to determine how infections spread. (Twitter)

David Gorski, MD, PhD - He's a surgeon and the creator of the blog Science Based Medicine. He has championed clinical practice based on actual evidence, rather than anecdote or historical precedence for years. He does a really good job of explaining why certain claims are crap. (Twitter)

Ed Yong, MPhil - He's a British science journalist with a masters degree in biochemistry. He started out writing for Nat Geo on a blog called Not Exactly Rocket Science, but is currently working for The Atlantic. He follows a lot of great physicians and scientists on his Twitter so you could get additional ideas of who to follow there.

This by no means is an exhaustive list, but it's a place to start. I'm going to sign off here with a quote from my high school choir teacher, Mr. Eckstein.

Let's be careful out there.