#Thread
My brilliant friend @dudek_amanda is a post doc at Stanford. She has her PhD in Virology from Harvard.
This is what she thinks is important to tell people right now:

"There are a lot of complicated aspects to the emergence of a new virus and the evolution of an outbreak that SHOULD NOT be oversimplified.....'

"People with no background in biology/virology/ epidemiology/ public health really need to stop acting like they are experts just because they have read some articles online."

"Good for you for educating yourself on what is happening, but that does not qualify you to advise people on a topic you have no background in. Spreading misinformation during a time like this can be very dangerous.
As a virologist here are my thoughts:..."

"Yes this outbreak is worse than I initially thought it would be. This is for a few reasons, all of which are hard to know initially when a brand new virus emerges."

"This difficulty is magnified by our country listening to the human equivalent of the dog surrounded by fire meme rather than the epidemiology/ public health/ virus experts."

"1) This virus is more contagious than most viruses such as the flu. This means that for each person that is infected, it can spread to many more people, so the number of cases grows exponentially."

"2) We now know people are contagious before they show symptoms. That means that testing people who are already sick is not effective enough, because it has already spread before you know who to quarantine."

"This is why everyone should stay away from each other as much as possible right now. You might not know you are sick and can be spreading it without knowing."

"3) This means we need to test everybody. However, when a new virus emerges this isn’t always as easy as it sounds. There are many coronaviruses out there circulating all the time (the common cold can be caused by coronaviruses)."

"Also coronaviruses are RNA viruses, so they mutate extremely quickly. This can make accurate diagnostic tests difficult, so it's important that we know the tests we are using are ACCURATE rather than jumping the gun w/ a test that will give false positives and false negatives."

"A bunch of data points from a garbage test gives you garbage data and in a virus outbreak that can be just as dangerous."

"4) Although there are a lot of great scientists working on this complicated problem, it is unlikely that a highly effective vaccine or drug will be available in the near future."

"Again, this family of viruses mutates quickly & so it is very difficult to make vaccines and drugs that the virus can’t mutate to be resistant to. To be clear, I’m not saying it’s impossible or that people shouldn’t try- I’m being realistic about the difficulties involved here."

"1 and 2 are a perfect storm for a real bad pandemic because the number of cases is out of control before you even realize it. This is the equivalent of a raging forest fire rather than a controlled burn."

"This is what happened in Italy and is likely to happen here if we aren’t careful. I’m not trying to fear-monger, I am trying to get those in denial and those that are throwing around conspiracy theories to recognize the seriousness of the situation."

"Be careful so that our vulnerable citizens can stay safe. Be careful that we don’t allow our healthcare system to get overloaded. Be careful of misinformation. And be careful to not turn on each other out of fear."
#coronavirus #trustthescientists #SCIENCENOTSILENCE

"But, I think now the more important message is that we have a lot of individual outbreaks happening all over the US, and states need to do the best for their area...."

"....like California has gone way down in cases, so we should start opening back up, but mass seems to be at the peak so they should not loosen social distancing."