Science is often easy in hindsight and two years from now we will likely know the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 from bats to humans. For now, it is mostly speculation.

An intermediate animal host may have been snakes or pangolins, but the real common ancestor of SARS-CoV-2 goes back for as long as coronavirus was recognized as distinct from the common cold - the 1960s.

The International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents has already retracted a March 20th paper analyzing hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19, the disease that can result from the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that originated in Wuhan, China late last year.

When is it right to turn over 5 million acres of public land for exploitation by energy corporations? 

The Obama administration did just that, with corn ethanol, and environmental groups wrapped him in the flag of renewable biofuels despite science showing it was worse for the environment than gasoline. A generation earlier they had also wrapped natural gas in the flag of environmentalism and continued to do so until it began to replace coal.(1) During the Bush administration, a Republican.

Then it was time for lawsuits.

These days I have been writing a chapter of a book on machine learning for physics, and in so doing I have found myself pondering on how to best explain, in very simple terms, the nocuous effect that model uncertainty may have on the result of a classification task. So I decided to create a toy example with the purpose of introducing the discussion.

The example is meant to have two attractive properties: be analytically solvable in closed form - meaning that one may compute with paper and pencil all the relevant results - and be described by simple-to-interpret graphs. Below I will describe what I came up with, but first let me explain what are the points I wish to focus on.

First, as a reminder to all of you, do protect yourself using the simple methods recommended by the WHO, not just physical distancing. Learn how to wash your hands thoroughly, and avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth with unwashed hands, also cover a cough with your elbow not a hand.

COVID-19 is not like flu. It's only transmitted via the larger droplets that fall to the ground in seconds. These methods only reduce your risk of flu but are very effective in stopping COVID-19. These methods work and can save you from a potentially serious disease and may even save your life. They also protect others who might get the disease from you.

It's long been hiding in plain sight that Russia funnels money to activist groups in the U.S. that will help their causes. Russia's top two exports are food and energy so it was no surprise when activists began to claim that hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") would lead to earthquakes and cause the earth to deflate, or that 400 miles of Keystone XL pipeline in addition to 20,000 miles of pipeline already on top of an aquifier would be risky too environmentally hazardous. 

The early "evolutionary paths" SARS-CoV-2, the 2019 coronavirus that leads to COVID-19 in humans have been traced using phylogenetic network techniques and shows how it spread from Wuhan to Europe and America.

While there are too many rapid mutations in coronaviruses, they are in the same family as the common cold, to ever find a Patient Zero or even a settled family tree, analysis of the first 160 complete virus genomes to be sequenced from human patients show the original spread of the new coronavirus through its mutations. 

Wealthy elites from Manhattan have been retreating to their vacation homes while year-round residents wish they would stay away. Urban residents are being treated look poor refugees during pandemics, famine, and war. They will bring the problem with them, it is believed. 

While it may seem like an odd stance for progressive elites in the northeast to take about their fellow man, it is likely the first time that these issues were anything except academic to them. And they are not wrong for believing that people from cities are more likely to be carriers.

But while cities are more likely to be carriers, they are also more likely to have infrastructure to handle it.(1) 

There is no question that travel restrictions and social distancing have helped reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2, that coronavirus strain that originated in Wuhan, China late last year and then spread worldwide.

What about quarantine?

A new review hopes to shed some light but because the review is primary of modeling papers - many of which looked like estimates and some more like guestimates - it may be only partially useful from an applied health policy perspective. The real answers may not be known for years.

This is one of the biggest differences between the UK policy and the WHO recommendations. The UK think that Covid19 is very infectious like flu, and only for a very short time and that if you have it then likely everyone in your house already has it or will get it soon.

But the data from China and now many other places is the opposite. Covid19 is mildly infectious for a long time. It can be infectious through to death if you die and up to two weeks after recovery if you recover.

If you catch it early, often nobody else has got it from the first case. This story is often in the news - couples where one has it and the other doesn’t. Prince Charles got it for instance, and his wife Camilla didn’t get it.