Author: TheGuardian

There are questions central to the COVID-19 pandemic that scientists across the world long to be able to answer. Where exactly did the coronavirus come from? How can it be treated with medication? When is it safe for the public to go back to “normal”? Often, they have unsatisfying answers, and purveyors of misinformation have stepped in. In the United States, misinformation can come straight from the White House. Unfounded claims from disavowed doctors, controversial studies and outright falsehoods have also found oxygen, often among supporters of the president. Here are some of the most commonly repeated claims. Claim:...

Here is the dilemma: an employee is working successfully and healthfully from home for the past couple of months as her employer has been shut down due to coronavirus. But then the lockdown is lifted and the employer opens back up for business. The employee goes to work. A week later she tests positive. Was it the employer’s fault? That question is going to come up over the next few months, a lot. And many small businesses could face enormous liabilities if the answer is even a possible maybe. Cashflow and customer demand concerns aside, the liability issue is...

After the 2007-09 financial crisis, the imbalances and risks pervading the global economy were exacerbated by policy mistakes. So, rather than address the structural problems that the financial collapse and ensuing recession revealed, governments mostly kicked the can down the road, creating major downside risks that made another crisis inevitable. And now that it has arrived, the risks are growing even more acute. Unfortunately, even if the Greater Recession leads to a lackluster U-shaped recovery this year, an L-shaped “Greater Depression” will follow later in this decade, owing to 10 ominous and risky trends. The first trend concerns deficits...

With more plans to loosen restrictions imposed due to coronavirus, leaders are concerned about the potential for a resurgence or second wave. Here is what we know from the rest of the world about the risk of COVID-19 coming back. Will there be a second wave? Epidemics of infectious diseases behave in different ways but the 1918 influenza pandemic that killed more than 50 million people is regarded as a key example of a pandemic that occurred in multiple waves, with the latter more severe than the first. It has been replicated – albeit more mildly – in subsequent...

What became known as COVID-19, or the coronavirus, started in late 2019 and early 2020 in the Chinese city of Wuhan as a cluster of pneumonia cases with an unknown cause. The cause of the pneumonia was found to be a new virus – severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, or SARS-CoV-2. The illness caused by the virus is COVID-19. Now declared as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO), the majority of people who contract COVID-19 suffer only mild, cold-like symptoms. WHO said about 80% of people with COVID-19 recover without needing any specialist treatment. Only about...

Donald Trump posted highly incendiary tweets stoking protests against physical distancing and other coronavirus stay-at-home measures in three states led by Democratic governors on April 17, days ahead of a planned protest in Wisconsin. “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” the US president wrote in capital letters on Friday, April 17. “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” He followed up with a third tweet: “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!” – a reference to Virginia’s governor, Ralph Northam, last week signing into law new measures on gun control. Trump has repeatedly ignored his own entreaty to put partisan politics aside during...