…and here we are in October, with the President of the United States hospitalized for Covid-19. Not the timeline I would have expected us to follow back in March.
It looks as if the President’s infection was involved in one way or another with a superspreading event at the White House last Saturday. No one should be surpised that the coronavirus can spread this way. Scientists have been warning us for months now. Here’s a story I wrote back in June.
And if you’re curious about the various treatments President Trump is getting, including monoclonal antibodies, antivirals, and zinc, check out the New York Times Treatment Tracker. These are far from panaceas.
On Wednesday, I’ll be speaking about all this with the Science Writers of New York. The title of the talk is: “President Trump has COVID-19. Now what?” I really have no idea what exactly we’ll be discussing on Wednesday, given that a year’s worth of news happens every day now.
On a separate note: with the gift-giving season coming up, I’m clearing some shelf space. I’ve signed some copies of She Has Her Mother’s Laugh, which you can buy on Amazon. You can go to here for hardbacks and here for paperbacks. Look for the entry with the seller listed as “Carl Zimmer-Author.”
On the reporting front, it was all vaccines for me this month. We are moving into the final stages of testing for four different vaccines. Here’s my coverage of Astra-Zeneca and Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Novavax. As remarkable as this progress has been, however, kids may not get vaccines till the fall 2021–or even later. Sorry, parents.
I summed up the vaccine story as of now on Radio Times. Listen here. If you’re looking for something covid-related to watch, here’s the video recording of a recent panel I participated in, “Preprints and Peer Review in a Pandemic.” And here’s my recent panel, “Science Journalism During a Pandemic and Beyond.”
Coming up on October 5 at 4 pm ET, I’ll be speaking at One Day University. The title of my talk will be “Understanding Heredity: What We Know, And What We Don’t.” (Membership required.)
On November 2, I’ll be speaking with author Mark Honigsbaum about his book The Pandemic Century. (Here’s my review of the book in the New York Times Book Review.) The talk will be hosted by the Charleston to Charleston Literary Festival. Details here.
That’s all for now. Stay safe!
My next book is Life’s Edge: Searching for What It Means to Be Alive. It’s coming out in March 2021, but you can pre-order it now. You can find information and ordering links for my thirteen other books here. You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, and LinkedIn. If someone forwarded this email to you, you can subscribe to it here.
Best wishes, Carl
Originally published October 3, 2020. Copyright 2020 Carl Zimmer.