This concise book explains in understandable terms how scientists, as they have struggled to comprehend Covid-19, have been identifying the main ways the coronavirus is spread and the primary factors associated with severe illness and death. This growing evidence can help us determine the best ways to reduce risk as well as anxiety and fear. By examining 12 common myths and 12 lesser known facts about Covid-19 (most recently updated on January 27, 2022, and also available in a Spanish version), the author explores:
● How this
respiratory coronavirus is mainly spread through close and prolonged contact
● How most infections occur within
clusters of people in indoor settings with poor air circulation: households, workplaces, nursing homes, prisons...And what can be done about it
● Why Covid-19 vaccines are such a game-changer
● The extremely low risk of infection while being outdoors and from surfaces
● Why a child is more likely to die from walking to school than from Covid-19, and the relatively low risk of children infecting others
● Why “facial distancing” is more helpful than “social distancing”
● The value and limitations of other prevention measures including masks, gloves, thermometer guns, hand sanitizers, quarantine periods, vaccines, and “herd immunity” approaches
● Why having asthma does not increase risk of severe illness or death from Covid-19 (and, surprisingly, even lowers risk)
● Is it safe to work out again at the gym?
● What about “airborne” transmission: do we need to do anything differently?
● The not necessarily very high risk of old age, by itself, absent serious health conditions
● Is it safe to travel by airplane?
● The need to focus on levels of Covid-19
deaths (and severe illness) vs
cases, even when surges inevitably occur
● The confusion regarding “asymptomatic” and “pre-symptomatic” infected persons
● The impact of shelter-in-place measures, school closings and other responses to the coronavirus, and
● What can be learned from previous pandemics:
Daniel Halperin, Ph.D. is Adjunct Full Professor at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health in Chapel Hill. He received his doctoral and post-doctoral epidemiological training at the University of California at Berkeley. Dr. Halperin has conducted public health and anthropological research for over forty years in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and other regions, and previously taught at Harvard School of Public Health, the University of California, and the Ponce School of Medicine in Puerto Rico. He served over five years as Senior HIV Prevention Advisor at the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Dr. Halperin co-authored a
New York Times “Editor’s Choice” book on the AIDS pandemic and has published 15 articles on Covid-19, and over 55 peer-reviewed papers on infectious diseases generally in leading scientific journals, as well as a numerous opinion pieces in the
Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle and elsewhere.
