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The coronavirus pandemic has devolved into just another partisan battle. In the process, it has revealed how poorly served Americans are by their leaders and the media.

ACSH, among others, has been criticized as “racist” for using the “Wuhan virus” early in the pandemic, before COVID-19 became the universal descriptor. We were using a description based on location, like Lyme Disease, from Lyme, Connecticut, not a racial description.

To understand how severe and lethal COVID-19 really is, we need to know how many have been infected, which, in this equation, is the "denominator." An early study from Stanford of Santa Clara County says we may be underestimating how many cases there already are, which inaccurately gauges COVID-19’s infectivity and eventual mortality.

Early clinical trial results from Gilead show that its antiviral drug, remdesivir, has promise in treating patients with severe COVID-19. Though there are major caveats, there is good reason for cautious optimism.

Why are basic questions about the biology of SARS-CoV-2 so hard to answer?

Dr. Derek Lowe, arguably the finest and most influential chemistry blogger in the universe, has put together an excellent summary of the complex and confusing clinical data of hydroxychloroquine, which he published recently in his blog in Science and Translational Medicine. We thank Derek and AAAS for allowing us to reprint this important article.

Making good use of our time at home, murmurations, life in Beijing, what will be the new normal, and a boost from 4 lads from Liverpool.

Despite study after study, and the writings of expert after expert over the last 25 years, as a society we've failed to provide for our own security in the face of a potential public health threat. We have failed to supply and maintain our strategic national stockpile, we have consistently underfunded our public health infrastructure and we have underfunded our hospitals' preparedness. That's how we got to where we are today.

A South Korean company named Seoul Semiconductor claims to have developed an ultraviolet light-emitting diode (UV LED) that can kill 99.9% of SARS-CoV-2 in 30 seconds.

It's quite likely that the human toll from COVID-19 will not be as bad as the prediction models forecasted. That's because models contain simplifying assumptions that rarely hold true in the real world; our human response is probably the least predictable of all. And yet, while all models are useful, all models are also wrong.

If or when the economy collapses -- and especially if the virus keeps spreading anyway -- public sentiment will change quickly and drastically. Americans' trust in the medical establishment may be shaken. Like ventilators, the national supply of goodwill isn't unlimited.

The world anxiously awaits while clinical trials of remdesivir are in progress. The drug failed to stop Ebola. Does this mean it will also fail to stop coronavirus? No. According to a new study in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, the drug should work better. Here's why.

"Test here. Test now. Test, baby, test!" has become the conventional wisdom for handling the COVID-19 pandemic. But false positives and false negatives create substantial problems for mass testing.

There is a persistent belief that COVID-19 is "like seasonal flu." While there are similarities, the clinical course is very different.

The recently-passed Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act includes a surprise: a loophole for surprise billing in testing for COVID-19.

No, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is not a biological weapon. But that doesn't mean the virus didn't escape from a laboratory. A growing body of circumstantial evidence indicates that very well may be what happened.

The numbers associated with COVID-19, its infectivity, hospital admissions, deaths, are all being studied like tea leaves for any pattern or trend. And the numbers vary quite a bit. Those variations are often ascribed to the veracity of the source or some underlying agenda of hope or fearmongering, and occasionally to a mathematical error.

For those wanting to see the relative contribution of traffic and power generation to air pollution, consider this picture of Los Angeles. LA sits in a basin surrounded by mountains, I grew up there and can remember days when you can actually see the mountains.

Different countries may appear to have different death rates, but only because they have applied different sampling and reporting policies to their accounting efforts. It's not necessarily because they are managing the virus any better, or that the virus has infected fewer, or more, people.

The biology of the virus will help us learn how to fight it.

How well we do in assessing the economic outcomes of the COVID-19 lockdown will determine how well we do in the next match. And there will be a next match.

Q: Where do you go to find overpaid, under-sane professors, talking about chemistry when they know nothing about it?
A: MIT, the home of Dr. Stephanie Seneff, who has spent a career making up nonsense about glyphosate. And she's outdone herself this time: Glyphosate causes COVID. Nope, not kidding.

Fred Singer was an impressive scientist with a great list of achievements. He will be missed.

A new review article published in The Lancet concludes that school closures are ineffective at controlling coronavirus epidemics. What else could be wrong with the conventional wisdom about COVID-19?

Without a doubt, our world is now quieter since sheltering began, and we can imagine that the air smells sweeter. These are good things but purchased at the terrible costs of COVID-19 suffering and death and devastation of the global economy. The environmental scientist in me thought about lessons to be learned from our present situation.