How a nation can adapt to the new realities of coexisting with the coronavirus
In mid-March, at the outset of this strange new era, a group of health care workers, pandemics experts and infectious disease specialists came together on a collaborative public health project to counter the tidal wave of misinformation already swamping the mediasphere about the coronavirus.
Now that much has been learned about COVID-19 and the dangers it continues to pose, we’ve published the first authoritative health guidebook about the the virus and the New Normal we’re about to enter:
Given our goal of saving lives and sharing the latest research and recommendations from health and medical officials, we’ll be publishing entire chapters from the book here over the coming days.
Co-authored by an emergency room physician at Yale University School of Medicine and a science journalist, the book sets out to answer these urgent questions:
• What’s the best way to protect myself from COVID-19?
• How do I protect my grandparents or elderly parents from catching it?
• What are the signs that I might have the virus?
• How can I reduce my stress levels from all this?
• What kind of face mask should I wear in public, and when?
• Should I worry about sending my children back to school?
• How should I prepare before returning to my job?
• How do I get through these shutdowns without going crazy?
• What are the best cleaning techniques to protect my home?
• How should I adjust my shopping habits?
- What will the New Normal look like?
Why a book?
Some of you may wonder why write a book about Covid-19, given that a lot has changed about our understanding of the disease over the months. As we say in the Introduction:
Today we face the most enormous global health crisis of the past century. And yet in some ways the Internet is making it harder to get reliable information about the coronavirus pandemic because of all the hoaxes, mistruths, and junk science on social media.
Certain vested interests have added to the problem, suggesting from their cloistered residences that it’s fine for people to return to everyday life as if the pandemic never happened.
Many government sites don’t make things easy, either, offering guidance to the public in dense medical jargon. And there is even concern among many health experts that the CDC has been muzzled. “Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, the CDC has been inexplicably absent, and Americans are suffering and dying for it,” Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, wrote in the health news publication STAT.
No money is being made from the publication of this book, as we try to get it into the hands of citizens, business leaders, public officials and decision-makers around the world to spread the book’s positive message:
We’re all in this together. We’re all part of the solution. And we hold our fate in our own hands. When armed with the facts, we can make the right choices that protect both ourselves and our fellow citizens.
