How the Mainstream Science Press Failed Us in the Crucial Early Months of COVID-19

In the post here and the post here I documented how leading health agencies such as the WHO, the CDC and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases made crucial blunders during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Similar blunders were committed by the mainstream science press. 

The thought overlords of the ruling class of mainstream biology orthodoxy have so many privileges and advantages. Such a mainstream controls all the biology content on various slick publications, printed and online. These include things such as Discover magazine, Science magazine, New Scientist magazine, Scientific American and some newer online sites such as Quanta Magazine, the Conversation, Nautilus and Aeon.  But the mainstream science news press blew it in the crucial early months of the COVID-19 crisis.  Such a press should have acted as a watchdog, alerting us loud and clear when our national house was invaded by a very infectious pathogen. Instead, it seems the watchdog was largely asleep when our national house was invaded. 

Let us look at the performance of one of the leading mainstream  science publications, the slick online site called Quanta Magazine. It is easy for us to track that performance, because we can view chronologically the articles published in different categories. Quanta Magazine has no Medicine category and no Health category. But it does have a Biology category, so let's look at the articles published under that category during the first four months of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Here were the Biology category articles that Quanta Magazine published in January 2020 as a pandemic started to rage in China:

Unscrambled Eggs: Self-Organization Restores Cells’ Order

Biodiversity Alters Strategies of Bacterial Evolution

Hidden Computational Power Found in the Arms of Neurons

Why I’m Hosting The Joy of x Podcast

Secrets of Math From the Bee Whisperer

An Ethical Future for Brain Organoids Takes Shape

Glial Brain Cells, Long in Neurons’ Shadow, Reveal Hidden Powers

We had in these stories no mention of the COVID-19 crisis. On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization had officially declared coronavirus a "global health emergency."  Here were the Biology category articles that Quanta Magazine published in February 2020:

The Contrarian Who Cures Cancers

Immune Cell Assassins Reveal Their Nurturing Side

New Clues About ‘Ambigram’ Viruses With Strange Reversible Genes

In Brain Waves, Scientists See Neurons Juggle Possible Futures

The Animal Origins of Coronavirus and Flu

It was only in the last of these articles, published on February 25, 2020, that COVID-19 or coronavirus was mentioned in any substantive way.  Did the article raise an alarm bell telling us about the gathering storm that would eventually kill more than 750,000 Americans? No, the story failed to do that.  The story was mainly devoted to dogmatically asserting the theory that COVID-19 had naturally spread from animals to humans, as if such a theory was fact. That theory is now very much in doubt. In a recent survey of US intelligence agencies, a few of the agencies voiced support for such a theory, but only with "low confidence." An alternate theory that COVID-19 arose from some kind of lab leak or lab leak activity was supported with "moderate confidence" by one US intelligence agency. So the only theory now supported with "moderate confidence" or higher by a US intelligence agency is one contrary to the claims of the February 25, 2020 Quanta Magazine article. 

The article (written by a Professor Smith) failed to raise alarm bells about the severity of the crisis facing the United States on February 25, 2020. The article made it sound as if COVID-19 was some distant remote threat on the other side of the globe. On that date the virus was starting to spread like wildfire in the United States. The article contained only one very short paragraph devoted to the topic of how people can protect themselves from COVID-19, the paragraph below: 

"First of all, keep yourself safe by washing your hands, and avoid touching your face and eyes — practices that help avoid infection with either virus. You can catch a virus by directly breathing in virus-laden droplets in the air or by touching contaminated surfaces and then infecting your nose and eyes, whose mucous membranes serve as entry sites."

Our professor author failed to tell us to wear face masks, something very necessary for people to be wearing before vaccines were available. The author also failed to tell us to practice social distancing to reduce our chance of catching COVID-19.  We hear nothing about the importance of avoiding crowds to reduce the chance of catching COVID-19. The same mistake would be made by authorities throughout the US biology and medicine world until about April 3, 2020, when the CDC suddenly announced that everyone should be wearing face masks in places like stores, planes, trains and subways.  This was at an early crisis point before any vaccines were available. Very many tens of thousands of lives (and possibly hundreds of thousands of lives) could have been saved if biology and medical authorities had done their jobs properly during the crucial early months of February and March 2020. 

During the month of March 2020 hospital beds in New York City were starting to be filled with COVID-19 patients, and there would be more than 4000 US COVID-19 deaths by the end of that month, with US COVID-19 deaths rising to a total of about 14,000 by April 7, 2020.  Here were the Biology category articles that Quanta Magazine published during that month of March 2020:

Biodiversity May Thrive Through Games of Rock-Paper-Scissors

Machine Learning Takes On Antibiotic Resistance

Nature Versus Nurture? Add ‘Noise’ to the Debate.

The Brain Reshapes Our Malleable Senses to Fit the World

A Rapid End Strikes the Dinosaur Extinction Debate

Billion-Year-Old Algae and Newer Genes Hint at Land Plants’ Origin

None of these articles made any substantive mention of the COVID-19 epidemic that was spreading like wildfire in the US.  Around April 3 the crisis had got so bad in the US that the CDC had started to advise that face masks be worn. In the first two weeks of April 2020, the death toll more than quintupled, rising from about 5000 on April 1 to more than 30,000 by April 15, 2020 (according to the source here). Here in chronological order were the Biology category articles that Quanta Magazine published during that month of April  2020:

Where Do New Genes Come From?

Some Animals Have No Microbiome. Here’s What That Tells Us.

Why Sex? Biologists Find New Explanations.

What Other Coronaviruses Tell Us About SARS-CoV-2

The last of these articles appeared on April 29, 2020, and was written by the same Professor Smith who wrote the previously mentioned February 25, 2020 article. Although the article was written on the topic of coronavirus and COVID-19,  Professor Smith still failed to give the public much of any clear useful advice about protecting themselves from the deadly virus that was by this time skyrocketing out of control in the United States.  No advice is given in the text about the benefits of social distancing or avoiding crowds.  We read only this in the way of protective advice: "This only emphasizes the importance of protective measures — masks, gloves, hand washing — for people who face prolonged exposure to the virus."  But what does that mean? Does "prolonged exposure" refer only to people like hospital workers or grocery workers, or does it refer to people going shopping for a half-hour or going on a 60-minute train trip? We can't tell, so the advice isn't very useful.  

The article did not do much to alert us to the gravity of the crisis at the time the article was published. The text says, "The disease could become milder with time." Instead of grave headlines or sentences alerting us that the death rate had risen in the US by roughly ten times (from about 5000 to more than 50,000) during the past month, we have two images of Professor Smith that both show a big happy-looking smile.  Included in the article is a 56-minute video in which Professor Smith talks about COVID-19, apparently without giving any useful advice on how to avoid catching it.  Her talk is all extremely dry wonky jargon-filled professor talk in which she answers very technical questions that only professors or doctors might ask. 

An alternate way of searching for Quanta Magazine's articles on COVID-19 is to use this link to search for all of their articles with a tag of COVID-19.  The link does not reveal any important articles other than the ones I've mentioned during the first six months of 2020. Only in August of 2020 do we find a Quanta Magazine article with a headline that sounds very concerned about COVID-19. The article is entitled 

"COVID-19 Is Raging. How Safe Is Your Backyard Party?" Why did it take 140,000 US deaths before we got a "gee, we have a serious pandemic here" article title in Quanta Magazine?  When it came to alerting the public of the peril of COVID-19 in the first four months of 2020, and providing useful advice preventing infection, Quanta Magazine's performance can be described as "way too little, way too late."

I could go on and discuss at length similar failures that occurred in other mainstream science publications in the first four months of 2020, but it would probably be too depressing for you to read.  Using a Google search phrase of "COVID-19 site:www.scientificamerican.com" and using the Tools option to limit queries to a time between January 1, 2020 and April 1, 2020, I got about 10 pages of search results giving links to about 100 articles or news items on COVID-19 published in Scientific American. Not one had any kind of title anything like "How to Protect Yourself from COVID-19" or "How to Avoid  COVID-19." When I change the Google search to make it  articles on the Scientific American site between January 1, 2020 and October 31, 2020, and look through ten pages of search results, I get about 100 articles, but none of them have titles suggesting that they will tell you how to protect yourself from COVID-19. Finally on the eleventh page of search results I find an article from October 2020 entitled "How to Avoid COVID When Voting."  Where were all the "How to Avoid COVID" articles in Scientific American in the first eight months of the pandemic?