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.

This is a trimmed down version of my last article with just the cites from the Imperial college paper to show that in the UK we are indeed using a simulated flu pandemic to guide UK policy and that it differs in almost every detail from the real disease. I know this is hard to understand or believe. But please check my cites carefully and you will see they do.

Before I go any further, if you are in the UK, be sure to protect yourself. This disease is not airborne (except for certain medical procedures). For details see my

Political critics can argue that the U.S.

(Inside Science) -- Imagine putting your hand in a pile of poop. It stinks and squishes. What do you do next?

Most likely, you'll scrub that hand with plenty of soap -- and you don't need public health officials or a germ theory of disease to tell you that's the right thing to do. But when you touch the handrail on an escalator, it's much harder to remember that you could be picking up coronavirus germs.

The isolation that most of the civilized world has been subjected to, during the past few weeks, has produced a number of nasty effects, first and foremost on our economies, but it has also had a few positive ones. One of them is, at least in my case, an urge to use the extra time I have in my hands in a creative way.