motherjones--2020-04-28--Science Has an Ugly, Complicated Dark Side. And the Coronavirus Is Bringing It Out.

Bad science is a lot like a virus .
It starts small , but if it ’ s shared enough times , it can cause global disruption .
You may remember a kerfuffle last month over whether it is safe to take ibuprofen to treat coronavirus symptoms .
It is a prime example of how a series of unfortunate errors can lead to bad health policy .
It began harmlessly , when the Lancet Respiratory Medicine , a respected journal , published a 400-word letter from a group of European researchers that raised some safety concerns about the drug .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , according to at least one of the authors , a hypothesis , not a medical recommendation .
But much of the world treated the mere suggestion as if it were derived from the results of a clinical trial .
Within a week , the French health minister , followed by a spokesperson from the World Health Organization , recommended that people with COVID-19 don ’ t take ibuprofen .
A day later , after pushback from doctors and scientists , the WHO backtracked , saying it did “ not recommend against ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sparked widespread confusion , and for an institution that we ’ re all relying on for solid information , it was not a great look .
Good science requires time .
Peer review .
Replication .
But in the past few months , the scientific process for all things related to COVID-19 has been fast-tracked .
While that is , of course , understandable on some level—thousands are dying worldwide every day , after all—it ’ s not necessarily safe .
What was once a marathon has been compressed to a 400-meter dash @ @ @ @ @ @ @ academic journals race to publish , and the media races to bring new information to a scared and eager public .
And , at the same time , unverified opinions circulate widely on social media and on TV from so-called experts , which makes understanding the situation all the more difficult .
Bad science—or at the very least incomplete science—is simply slipping through the cracks .
Conducting and communicating research swiftly during a pandemic is , on its own , a positive thing .
But “ there ’ s speed , and then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ As we always say , ‘ Fast but wrong is just fast , ' ” says Dr. Irving Steinberg , an associate professor of clinical pharmacy and pediatrics at the University of Southern California School of Pharmacy and Keck School of Medicine .
( Steinberg wrote an article outlining the ibuprofen disaster in the Conversation , a nonprofit newsroom that publishes articles written by academics , earlier this month . )
To be clear , what I ’ m talking about here is more than over-the-counter pain killers , more than trolls on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ even much more than a president and some Fox News personalities touting unproven malaria drugs or bleach injections .
It ’ s a fundamental threat to trusted information outlets—academic journals , the media , and global health institutions—and , in turn , our own well-being .
Around the same time as the ibuprofen case , for instance , some bad information apparently circulated among President Trump ’ s advisers .
During a press conference on March 17 , a reporter asked why the United States didn ’ t import tests from the WHO @ @ @ @ @ @ @ When the White House coronavirus response coordinator , Dr. Deborah Birx , stepped in to answer , she cited a study published in a Chinese journal about the high false-positive rate of a Chinese diagnostic test : “ It doesn ’ t help to put out a test where 50 percent or 47 percent are false positives , ” she said .
But , as NPR first reported , the study Birx cited was retracted just days after it published on March 5 .
On top of that , there is no evidence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and NPR found that the 47 percent number , which appears in the abstract for the paper Birx mentioned , doesn ’ t even refer to the overall accuracy of the test ; it instead refers to the false-positive rate among asymptomatic individuals who had close contact with COVID-19 patients .
( The study appears to have been removed from its original URL , though the abstract still exists on the US National Library of Medicine ’ s PubMed database , where it ’ s been indicated that the paper was “ withdrawn.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to base any major health policy on one scientific study and it ’ s unclear if this study played a role in the country ’ s fiasco over testing—widely regarded as a major failure of the administration ’ s COVID-19 response—but it ’ s nonetheless alarming that it was repeated as fact by the very people we ’ re trusting to lead our country through the pandemic .
That said , the mixup isn ’ t entirely Birx ’ s fault ; after all , the study was published in a journal after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ marked on PubMed as withdrawn until weeks after the retraction occurred .
The real problem here is that this study even had the prominence it did .
As the co-founders of Retraction Watch , a blog that tracks academic retractions , wrote in a recent article for Wired , the case involving Birx “ is a particularly dismaying and consequential example of what happens when no one bothers to engage in scientific fact-checking.
” “ But , ” they cautioned , “ it will not be the last time that something we thought @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was in a published paper will turn out to be wrong.
” Part of the problem , experts tell me , is that the pandemic has brought on an absolute flood of manuscripts for review by academic journals , which editors are working around the clock to process .
That , mixed with the public ’ s hunger for new information and surging existential dread , is something like the perfect storm .
Normally , it can take several weeks to months for a study to go through the peer-review process .
There @ @ @ @ @ @ @ long it takes now , but we can assume it ’ s significantly shorter .
According to Primer , a San Francisco–based machine intelligence company that is tracking COVID-19 research , there have been more than 8,500 COVID-related papers published over the course of the outbreak .
A little over half of those studies were published on databases known as pre-print servers , meaning they haven ’ t yet been formally reviewed ; still , the media has picked up many of them before thorough vetting .
“ Without a doubt , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the Journal of the American Medical Association , the “ most significant day-to-day challenge ” brought on by the coronavirus is the sheer number of manuscripts the journal receives .
When we spoke last week , Bauchner said the journal had received 235 COVID-19-related manuscripts for consideration just the day before .
“ We ’ ll receive another hundred today , ” he said .
Since January 1 , JAMA has received about 2,000 research , opinion , and clinical papers .
They ’ ve published about 100 .
“ I ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you hear every ping , ” he said over the phone .
“ Every ping means another manuscript for me to look at.
” The Science editorial team , representing Science and the five other journals published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science , told me in an email that “ many of the COVID-19 submissions coming to the Science family have been rushed and don ’ t meet our standards for publication and broad dissemination.
” Since January 1 , 2020 , it said , Science has received more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with a steady rise in submissions most every week since that date.
” As of April 17 , it had published 14 of these papers .
Both journals , along with Springer Nature , which publishes Nature and thousands of other journals , assured me that although the process has been sped up , they ’ re maintaining their typical peer-review standards .
But it ’ s too soon to tell how successful the peer-review process will be in keeping the worst science out , both in these publications—among the most influential science @ @ @ @ @ @ @ average , according to Retraction Watch co-founder Dr. Ivan Oransky , the amount of time between when a paper is published and withdrawn is about three years .
As of Tuesday , at least six COVID-19 studies or letters have been retracted , according to Retraction Watch ‘ s database .
Retractions aside , the situation raises broad concerns about the rigor of published research itself .
“ What [ the pandemic ] has done is just made everyone rush to publication and rush to judgment , frankly , ” says Oransky , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the vice president of editorial at medical news and reference site Medscape and teaches medical journalism at New York University .
“ You ’ re seeing papers published in the world ’ s leading medical journals that probably shouldn ’ t have even been accepted in the world ’ s worst medical journals.
” Earlier this month , for instance , the New England Journal of Medicine published a 61-person study for an antiviral therapy called remdesivir to treat COVID-19 .
Of the 53 patients whose data could be analyzed , 36 saw @ @ @ @ @ @ @ There was no control group , and Gilead Sciences , the company that developed remdesivir , funded and conducted the study and helped write the first draft of the manuscript .
The study was by no means fraudulent , but it presented a clear conflict of interest .
“ I think it ’ s a good thing that it ’ s all out there and people are able to look at it , ” Oransky says , “ but it ’ s so inconsistent with what the New England Journal of Medicine claims @ @ @ @ @ @ @ When I asked the New England Journal of Medicine about this study and if the pandemic has affected its peer-review process , it told me in an email , “ For Covid-19 , everything is expedited tremendously and a process that can take weeks has been condensed to 48 hours or less in many cases.
” It added , “ Our goal is always to help provide physicians with the information they need to care for patients .
In many cases , that means publishing early phase studies that can help caregivers understand @ @ @ @ @ @ @ myself almost got caught up in this perfect messy-science storm earlier this month .
I came across a press release for a study from a researcher at the University of Ottawa in Canada , which suggested that the coronavirus may have spread to humans via stray dogs .
I had a few days to review the paper before it would publish in the peer-reviewed journal Molecular Biology and Evolution .
I contacted the author and we conducted an interview by email .
The results seemed fascinating , and I generally trust the peer-review @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But when I reached out to independent experts about the study , all three I connected with told me they had significant concerns about the research .
The conclusions of the study were unwarranted , David Robertson , a virologist at the University of Glasgow in the UK , told me .
“ I do not know how this has passed peer review particularly for such a reputable journal as MBE , ” he said in an email .
The responses surprised me ; I slacked my editor , “ I ’ ve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this before.
” We decided to abandon covering the study , but other media outlets wrote it up .
CNN , meanwhile , did cover the study , but with a headline that cut right to the controversy— ” Stray dogs and coronavirus : Just a hypothetical theory with no proof ” —and quoted a researcher who shared similar concerns to the experts I ’ d spoken with : “ I do not see anything in this paper to support this supposition , ” James Wood , head of the department of veterinary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the UK , told CNN , “ and am concerned that this paper has been published in this journal.
” The author of the paper , Xuhua Xia , responded by arguing that the media misreported his study .
He told me in an email , “ The paper was reviewed by five referees who are mostly excited about the paper .
MBE is a flagship journal of our society and does not accept papers lightly .
If Mr. James Wood or whoever has objections to the paper , he is welcome to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ MBE or other scientific journals , and I would certainly respond.
” He also suggested that Wood commented on his research in a bid for attention .
Some sources tell me press coverage in general—even if it includes criticism—can be a win for academics , especially those seeking tenure .
But for nonacademics , this bothsidesism , as it is called , without a clear headline and framing , can create a mess , masking critique and leaving readers confused about what the truth is .
For instance , Maciej Boni , an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ modeling and epidemiology at Penn State University , says , “ Sometimes an article by a science writer can pit the ideas of an evolutionary biologist against an anti-evolutionist , making it seem like both sides have equal merit.
” “ I trust the peer review system , ” Boni adds .
“ I think it works pretty well .
And it ’ s in times like this , that there is some strain put on the peer review system and you see studies sneaking through that shouldn ’ t. ” Prominent science @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about the coronavirus pandemic for the Atlantic , notes that bad science has always slipped through : “ Peer-review is clearly important to the scientific process , but it is nowhere near a perfect shield against bad work being published.
” But the pandemic , he says , has just sped everything up—and the stakes are higher .
“ Under normal circumstances , science is always like this , ” Yong says .
“ Bad studies get published .
People talk about them in formal settings and informal ones , like Twitter , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ better sense of what is actually going on .
We ’ re seeing the same thing now , it ’ s just happening a lot faster.
” Making matters muddier , nonspecialists , often with bad information , are adding their own voices to the noise .
This , of course , is not exactly a new phenomenon .
But during the age of the coronavirus , there seems to be a rise in both Homeroom Chads widely offering their baseless opinions on your social media feeds , as well as academics or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ experts on the spread and treatment of COVID-19 .
For this latter group , their otherwise solid credentials can make it difficult for the lay public to know who to trust .
The most prominent case might be right inside the White House .
Earlier this month , in a private meeting , trade adviser Peter Navarro , who has no medical credentials , reportedly disagreed with the nation ’ s top infectious disease expert , Dr. Anthony Fauci , over concerns about antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine .
While Fauci has cautioned the public @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on hydroxychloroquine , Navarro reportedly disagreed .
When CNN anchor John Berman later asked Navarro what qualifications he has to weigh in on this matter , he said , “ I ’ m a social scientist .
I have a PhD and I understand how to read statistical studies.
” Since then , the FDA issued a warning against the use of hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment outside of a hospital or clinical trial .
“ When Peter Navarro , standing on a White House platform , says , ‘ Well , I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ m a social scientist , ’ he ’ s doing a disservice , ” says Andrew Rosenberg , director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists .
“ If he wants to say , ‘ Here ’ s my source of information , here ’ s the experts who work in this field , and here ’ s how I understand what they ’ re telling me , ’ that ’ s a different matter .
But that ’ s not what he ’ s doing.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the administration .
“ In a normal news cycle , science gets like less than 1 percent of the coverage , ” Boni says .
“ But in today ’ s news cycle , the only thing in the news is science .
So everybody , every economist , every physicist , every tech guru , everybody wants a piece of the attention if they think they can link themselves or link their own pastime , their background , to something that ’ ll be covered.
” For Boni , economists are particularly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ country ’ s bridges fell down , the economists would get right behind the civil engineers and tell them exactly what to do .
I mean , it ’ s absolutely amazing that they think they have a role in this discussion.
” For example , Boni tells me about hearing an episode of the podcast Deep Background , hosted by Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman , with Nobel Prize–winning economist Paul Romer as a guest .
Romer argued that epidemiologists are refusing to “ do the math ” and aren ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The criticism , coming from an economist , didn ’ t sit well with Boni .
“ I could tell he had the right intentions , ” he says .
“ But seeking him out as an expert , that ’ s 35 minutes of podcast time that Noah Feldman didn ’ t talk to another real expert.
” He argues that epidemiologists should be the ones making public health recommendations , not economists .
( Romer pushed back on this in an email to me , arguing that the policy response @ @ @ @ @ @ @ problem , and that it is “ appropriate ” for economists to weigh in on the subject . )
Other experts I spoke with agreed that nonspecialists are getting unwarranted time in the spotlight , though not all felt comfortable naming individuals on the record .
As JAMA ‘ s Bauchner puts it , “ What I have been surprised by—and I will not name names—is the prominence that some of the major media outlets have given people whom I think may be speaking in areas in which they are not noted experts.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ in journalism that if you read the news , one week , coffee is good for you ; the next week , it causes cancer .
“ At the end of the day , I actually think that ’ s all terrible journalism , but it probably won ’ t kill anybody , ” Oransky says .
But the same isn ’ t true about all COVID-19 coverage .
“ If you do the same kind of whiplash with people , which you do see journalism in science doing , you could kill @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is the perfect thing .
The next week , it ’ s going to kill you.
” This is essentially what happened in the case of ibuprofen : a vague idea prompted a recommendation from arguably the world ’ s leading health authority , followed by a reversal of that recommendation the following day .
It was the coffee joke but on a very real and high-impact scale .
So who do you blame ?
The scientists for writing the letter ?
The journal for publishing it ?
Journalists for covering what seemed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ health minister and the WHO for doing what they thought would save lives ?
Of all the experts I spoke to , no one had a good answer .
I realize I too am not a scientist , and I probably shouldn ’ t share my nonexpert takes either , but bear with me here anyway ; you ’ ve read this far .
The way I see it is that at every step of the process , there is a tradeoff between speed and accuracy .
It ’ s like a sliding @ @ @ @ @ @ @ totally certain and slow .
On the other you are totally uncertain and fast .
From a public health perspective , neither is optimal during a pandemic .
But whether you ’ re fast or slow , any miscalculation can cost lives .
As Oransky puts it , “ If we get this wrong , more people die—and that ’ s true of social-distancing measures , it ’ s true of treatments , it ’ s true of vaccine development .
And when I say ‘ we ’ I don ’ t mean @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as a people , as a society .
”

Bad science is a lot like a virus. It starts small, but if it’s shared enough times, it can cause global disruption.
You may remember a kerfuffle last month over whether it is safe to take ibuprofen to treat coronavirus symptoms. It is a prime example of how a series of unfortunate errors can lead to bad health policy. It began harmlessly, when the Lancet Respiratory Medicine, a respected journal, published a 400-word letter from a group of European researchers that raised some safety concerns about the drug. It was an opinion piece that was, according to at least one of the authors, a hypothesis, not a medical recommendation. But much of the world treated the mere suggestion as if it were derived from the results of a clinical trial. Within a week, the French health minister, followed by a spokesperson from the World Health Organization, recommended that people with COVID-19 don’t take ibuprofen. A day later, after pushback from doctors and scientists, the WHO backtracked, saying it did “not recommend against” the use of ibuprofen. The move sparked widespread confusion, and for an institution that we’re all relying on for solid information, it was not a great look.
What was once a marathon has been compressed to a 400-meter dash: Researchers race to deliver results, academic journals race to publish, and the media races to bring new information to a scared and eager public.
Good science requires time. Peer review. Replication. But in the past few months, the scientific process for all things related to COVID-19 has been fast-tracked. While that is, of course, understandable on some level—thousands are dying worldwide every day, after all—it’s not necessarily safe. What was once a marathon has been compressed to a 400-meter dash: Researchers race to deliver results, academic journals race to publish, and the media races to bring new information to a scared and eager public. And, at the same time, unverified opinions circulate widely on social media and on TV from so-called experts, which makes understanding the situation all the more difficult.
Bad science—or at the very least incomplete science—is simply slipping through the cracks.
Conducting and communicating research swiftly during a pandemic is, on its own, a positive thing. But “there’s speed, and then there’s rushing too much. As we always say, ‘Fast but wrong is just fast,'” says Dr. Irving Steinberg, an associate professor of clinical pharmacy and pediatrics at the University of Southern California School of Pharmacy and Keck School of Medicine. (Steinberg wrote an article outlining the ibuprofen disaster in the Conversation, a nonprofit newsroom that publishes articles written by academics, earlier this month.)
To be clear, what I’m talking about here is more than over-the-counter pain killers, more than trolls on social media spreading conspiracy theories, and even much more than a president and some Fox News personalities touting unproven malaria drugs or bleach injections. It’s a fundamental threat to trusted information outlets—academic journals, the media, and global health institutions—and, in turn, our own well-being.
Around the same time as the ibuprofen case, for instance, some bad information apparently circulated among President Trump’s advisers. During a press conference on March 17, a reporter asked why the United States didn’t import tests from the WHO at the start of the pandemic. When the White House coronavirus response coordinator, Dr. Deborah Birx, stepped in to answer, she cited a study published in a Chinese journal about the high false-positive rate of a Chinese diagnostic test: “It doesn’t help to put out a test where 50 percent or 47 percent are false positives,” she said. But, as NPR first reported, the study Birx cited was retracted just days after it published on March 5. On top of that, there is no evidence that the WHO tests were faulty, and NPR found that the 47 percent number, which appears in the abstract for the paper Birx mentioned, doesn’t even refer to the overall accuracy of the test; it instead refers to the false-positive rate among asymptomatic individuals who had close contact with COVID-19 patients. (The study appears to have been removed from its original URL, though the abstract still exists on the US National Library of Medicine’s PubMed database, where it’s been indicated that the paper was “withdrawn.”)
“There’s speed, and then there’s rushing too much. As we always say, ‘Fast but wrong is just fast.'”
It’d be foolish to base any major health policy on one scientific study and it’s unclear if this study played a role in the country’s fiasco over testing—widely regarded as a major failure of the administration’s COVID-19 response—but it’s nonetheless alarming that it was repeated as fact by the very people we’re trusting to lead our country through the pandemic. That said, the mixup isn’t entirely Birx’s fault; after all, the study was published in a journal after peer review and it wasn’t marked on PubMed as withdrawn until weeks after the retraction occurred. The real problem here is that this study even had the prominence it did.
As the co-founders of Retraction Watch, a blog that tracks academic retractions, wrote in a recent article for Wired, the case involving Birx “is a particularly dismaying and consequential example of what happens when no one bothers to engage in scientific fact-checking.”
“But,” they cautioned, “it will not be the last time that something we thought we knew about the coronavirus because it was in a published paper will turn out to be wrong.”
Part of the problem, experts tell me, is that the pandemic has brought on an absolute flood of manuscripts for review by academic journals, which editors are working around the clock to process. That, mixed with the public’s hunger for new information and surging existential dread, is something like the perfect storm.
Normally, it can take several weeks to months for a study to go through the peer-review process. There isn’t hard data on how long it takes now, but we can assume it’s significantly shorter. According to Primer, a San Francisco–based machine intelligence company that is tracking COVID-19 research, there have been more than 8,500 COVID-related papers published over the course of the outbreak. A little over half of those studies were published on databases known as pre-print servers, meaning they haven’t yet been formally reviewed; still, the media has picked up many of them before thorough vetting.
“Without a doubt,” according to Dr. Howard Bauchner, editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association, the “most significant day-to-day challenge” brought on by the coronavirus is the sheer number of manuscripts the journal receives. When we spoke last week, Bauchner said the journal had received 235 COVID-19-related manuscripts for consideration just the day before. “We’ll receive another hundred today,” he said. Since January 1, JAMA has received about 2,000 research, opinion, and clinical papers. They’ve published about 100.
“You’re seeing papers published in the world’s leading medical journals that probably shouldn’t have even been accepted in the world’s worst medical journals.”
“I’m watching my email fill—I can let you hear every ping,” he said over the phone. “Every ping means another manuscript for me to look at.”
The Science editorial team, representing Science and the five other journals published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, told me in an email that “many of the COVID-19 submissions coming to the Science family have been rushed and don’t meet our standards for publication and broad dissemination.” Since January 1, 2020, it said, Science has received more than 320 COVID-19-related research submissions, “with a steady rise in submissions most every week since that date.” As of April 17, it had published 14 of these papers.
Both journals, along with Springer Nature, which publishes Nature and thousands of other journals, assured me that although the process has been sped up, they’re maintaining their typical peer-review standards. But it’s too soon to tell how successful the peer-review process will be in keeping the worst science out, both in these publications—among the most influential science journals in the world—and others. On average, according to Retraction Watch co-founder Dr. Ivan Oransky, the amount of time between when a paper is published and withdrawn is about three years. As of Tuesday, at least six COVID-19 studies or letters have been retracted, according to Retraction Watch‘s database.
Retractions aside, the situation raises broad concerns about the rigor of published research itself. “What [the pandemic] has done is just made everyone rush to publication and rush to judgment, frankly,” says Oransky, a non-practicing medical doctor who is also the vice president of editorial at medical news and reference site Medscape and teaches medical journalism at New York University. “You’re seeing papers published in the world’s leading medical journals that probably shouldn’t have even been accepted in the world’s worst medical journals.”
Earlier this month, for instance, the New England Journal of Medicine published a 61-person study for an antiviral therapy called remdesivir to treat COVID-19. Of the 53 patients whose data could be analyzed, 36 saw improvement after 10 days of treatment. There was no control group, and Gilead Sciences, the company that developed remdesivir, funded and conducted the study and helped write the first draft of the manuscript. The study was by no means fraudulent, but it presented a clear conflict of interest. “I think it’s a good thing that it’s all out there and people are able to look at it,” Oransky says, “but it’s so inconsistent with what the New England Journal of Medicine claims that it’s always about.”
When I asked the New England Journal of Medicine about this study and if the pandemic has affected its peer-review process, it told me in an email, “For Covid-19, everything is expedited tremendously and a process that can take weeks has been condensed to 48 hours or less in many cases.” It added, “Our goal is always to help provide physicians with the information they need to care for patients. In many cases, that means publishing early phase studies that can help caregivers understand what is on the horizon.”
I myself almost got caught up in this perfect messy-science storm earlier this month. I came across a press release for a study from a researcher at the University of Ottawa in Canada, which suggested that the coronavirus may have spread to humans via stray dogs. I had a few days to review the paper before it would publish in the peer-reviewed journal Molecular Biology and Evolution. I contacted the author and we conducted an interview by email. The results seemed fascinating, and I generally trust the peer-review process to weed out problematic papers. But when I reached out to independent experts about the study, all three I connected with told me they had significant concerns about the research. The conclusions of the study were unwarranted, David Robertson, a virologist at the University of Glasgow in the UK, told me. “I do not know how this has passed peer review particularly for such a reputable journal as MBE,” he said in an email.
I slacked my editor, “I’ve never had experts refute a study like this before.” We decided to abandon covering the study, but other media outlets wrote it up.
The responses surprised me; I slacked my editor, “I’ve never had experts refute a study like this before.” We decided to abandon covering the study, but other media outlets wrote it up. CNN, meanwhile, did cover the study, but with a headline that cut right to the controversy—”Stray dogs and coronavirus: Just a hypothetical theory with no proof”—and quoted a researcher who shared similar concerns to the experts I’d spoken with: “I do not see anything in this paper to support this supposition,” James Wood, head of the department of veterinary medicine at the University of Cambridge in the UK, told CNN, “and am concerned that this paper has been published in this journal.”
The author of the paper, Xuhua Xia, responded by arguing that the media misreported his study. He told me in an email, “The paper was reviewed by five referees who are mostly excited about the paper. MBE is a flagship journal of our society and does not accept papers lightly. If Mr. James Wood or whoever has objections to the paper, he is welcome to submit a critique of the paper to MBE or other scientific journals, and I would certainly respond.” He also suggested that Wood commented on his research in a bid for attention.
Some sources tell me press coverage in general—even if it includes criticism—can be a win for academics, especially those seeking tenure. But for nonacademics, this bothsidesism, as it is called, without a clear headline and framing, can create a mess, masking critique and leaving readers confused about what the truth is. For instance, Maciej Boni, an associate biology professor who specializes in mathematical modeling and epidemiology at Penn State University, says, “Sometimes an article by a science writer can pit the ideas of an evolutionary biologist against an anti-evolutionist, making it seem like both sides have equal merit.”
“I trust the peer review system,” Boni adds. “I think it works pretty well. And it’s in times like this, that there is some strain put on the peer review system and you see studies sneaking through that shouldn’t.”
Prominent science journalist Ed Yong, who has written about the coronavirus pandemic for the Atlantic, notes that bad science has always slipped through: “Peer-review is clearly important to the scientific process, but it is nowhere near a perfect shield against bad work being published.” But the pandemic, he says, has just sped everything up—and the stakes are higher.
“Under normal circumstances, science is always like this,” Yong says. “Bad studies get published. People talk about them in formal settings and informal ones, like Twitter, and we sort of gradually approach a better sense of what is actually going on. We’re seeing the same thing now, it’s just happening a lot faster.”
“When Peter Navarro, standing on a White House platform, says, ‘Well, I understand this stuff, because I’m a social scientist,’ he’s doing a disservice.”
Making matters muddier, nonspecialists, often with bad information, are adding their own voices to the noise. This, of course, is not exactly a new phenomenon. But during the age of the coronavirus, there seems to be a rise in both Homeroom Chads widely offering their baseless opinions on your social media feeds, as well as academics or specialists in unrelated fields positioning themselves as experts on the spread and treatment of COVID-19. For this latter group, their otherwise solid credentials can make it difficult for the lay public to know who to trust.
The most prominent case might be right inside the White House. Earlier this month, in a private meeting, trade adviser Peter Navarro, who has no medical credentials, reportedly disagreed with the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, over concerns about antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine. While Fauci has cautioned the public not to jump ahead of the science on hydroxychloroquine, Navarro reportedly disagreed. When CNN anchor John Berman later asked Navarro what qualifications he has to weigh in on this matter, he said, “I’m a social scientist. I have a PhD and I understand how to read statistical studies.” Since then, the FDA issued a warning against the use of hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment outside of a hospital or clinical trial.
“When Peter Navarro, standing on a White House platform, says, ‘Well, I understand this stuff, because I’m a social scientist,’ he’s doing a disservice,” says Andrew Rosenberg, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “If he wants to say, ‘Here’s my source of information, here’s the experts who work in this field, and here’s how I understand what they’re telling me,’ that’s a different matter. But that’s not what he’s doing.”
The trend isn’t limited to the administration. “In a normal news cycle, science gets like less than 1 percent of the coverage,” Boni says. “But in today’s news cycle, the only thing in the news is science. So everybody, every economist, every physicist, every tech guru, everybody wants a piece of the attention if they think they can link themselves or link their own pastime, their background, to something that’ll be covered.”
“What I have been surprised by—and I will not name names—is the prominence that some of the major media outlets have given people whom I think may be speaking in areas in which they are not noted experts.”
For Boni, economists are particularly unrelenting offenders: “If all the country’s bridges fell down, the economists would get right behind the civil engineers and tell them exactly what to do. I mean, it’s absolutely amazing that they think they have a role in this discussion.” For example, Boni tells me about hearing an episode of the podcast Deep Background, hosted by Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman, with Nobel Prize–winning economist Paul Romer as a guest. Romer argued that epidemiologists are refusing to “do the math” and aren’t doing nearly enough testing in the US. The criticism, coming from an economist, didn’t sit well with Boni. “I could tell he had the right intentions,” he says. “But seeking him out as an expert, that’s 35 minutes of podcast time that Noah Feldman didn’t talk to another real expert.” He argues that epidemiologists should be the ones making public health recommendations, not economists. (Romer pushed back on this in an email to me, arguing that the policy response to the coronavirus is an inherently interdisciplinary problem, and that it is “appropriate” for economists to weigh in on the subject.)
Other experts I spoke with agreed that nonspecialists are getting unwarranted time in the spotlight, though not all felt comfortable naming individuals on the record. As JAMA‘s Bauchner puts it, “What I have been surprised by—and I will not name names—is the prominence that some of the major media outlets have given people whom I think may be speaking in areas in which they are not noted experts.”
There’s a long-running joke in journalism that if you read the news, one week, coffee is good for you; the next week, it causes cancer. “At the end of the day, I actually think that’s all terrible journalism, but it probably won’t kill anybody,” Oransky says. But the same isn’t true about all COVID-19 coverage. “If you do the same kind of whiplash with people, which you do see journalism in science doing, you could kill people. One week, this drug is the perfect thing. The next week, it’s going to kill you.”
This is essentially what happened in the case of ibuprofen: a vague idea prompted a recommendation from arguably the world’s leading health authority, followed by a reversal of that recommendation the following day. It was the coffee joke but on a very real and high-impact scale. So who do you blame? The scientists for writing the letter? The journal for publishing it? Journalists for covering what seemed to be a newsworthy event? The health minister and the WHO for doing what they thought would save lives? Of all the experts I spoke to, no one had a good answer.
In the case of ibuprofen, who do you blame? The scientists for writing the letter? The journal for publishing it? Journalists for covering what seemed to be a newsworthy event?
I realize I too am not a scientist, and I probably shouldn’t share my nonexpert takes either, but bear with me here anyway; you’ve read this far. The way I see it is that at every step of the process, there is a tradeoff between speed and accuracy. It’s like a sliding scale: On one end you are totally certain and slow. On the other you are totally uncertain and fast. From a public health perspective, neither is optimal during a pandemic. But whether you’re fast or slow, any miscalculation can cost lives. As Oransky puts it, “If we get this wrong, more people die—and that’s true of social-distancing measures, it’s true of treatments, it’s true of vaccine development. And when I say ‘we’ I don’t mean journalists or scientists. I mean we as a people, as a society.”


motherjones--2020-04-28--Many Wealthy Parents Won’t Send Kids Back to School This Fall. That’s a Disaster Waiting to Happen.

As the weeks of home isolation drag on , the unfairness of remote learning is becoming clear .
While upper-middle-class families balance full workdays with homeschool sessions , many poor parents have neither the work flexibility nor the equipment to help their children keep up with lessons at home .
In some places , needy students just have gone silent .
Los Angeles schools recently reported that about a third of high school students aren ’ t logging on for remote school at all .
The widening gap has educators and parents eagerly anticipating the fall , when most of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ expected to reopen .
But there ’ s a key variable no one is talking about : The inequality problem won ’ t go away .
In fact , in many places , it ’ s going to get worse .
Here ’ s why : Even under the most optimistic scenarios , public health experts predict that a vaccine to stop the novel coronavirus will take about a year to 18 months to arrive—which means it ’ s unlikely that most of us will receive it before next summer .
That ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ For some parents of means , the prospect of sending kids back into the petri dish of school almost certainly will be too scary , so they will choose to delay .
And that choice will have serious downstream consequences .
Earlier this month , Kristen Howerton , author of the parenting book Rage Against the Minivan , asked her Twitter followers whether their children would be going back to school in the fall .
Many tweeted back strong reservations .
“ No way we go back to a regular classroom without a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We ’ ll be sending our kid to an online school .
Not ideal but there ’ s too much of a risk otherwise , particularly in a deep red area where people aren ’ t adhering to most of the distancing guidelines , ” said another .
How working parents will manage this is unclear—maybe families will band together into smaller at-home makeshift schools , hiring a teacher for just a few kids .
Of course , many families won ’ t have that option , which is where things get really @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leave the question of educational achievement aside and focus just on the transmission of the virus .
Already , it ’ s clear that Black and Hispanic communities are bearing the brunt of the disease .
As my colleagues Eddie Rios and Sinduja Rangarajan recently reported , in some places , the divide is especially stark : “ In Mississippi , where 90 percent of counties are particularly vulnerable , Black people make up 38 percent of the state ’ s population and a startling 66 percent of COVID-19 fatalities.
” In part @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in those communities—those who work in retail , package and food delivery , and in hospitals—don ’ t have the option to hide out from the virus at home .
Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo , an epidemiologist and biostatistician with the University of California-San Francisco ’ s medical school , expects that dynamic to continue as schools reopen .
“ Some people have the connections and resources to mitigate the effects of poor health , and if the schools are unsafe , those people will keep their children out , ” she told me .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to avoid that.
” If that prediction holds , unequal school attendance could result in even more cases of COVID-19 among poor communities of color .
That prospect worries Mercedes Carnethon , a professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern ’ s Feinberg School of Medicine .
She pointed out that while COVID-19 seems to be mild in most children , the real danger is that they can become disease vectors and bring it home .
“ If those crowded and multigenerational households include older adults and adults with the pre-existing heart and respiratory @ @ @ @ @ @ @ then the health of the family is threatened , ” Carnethon wrote to me in an email .
It ’ s not hard to imagine how racism will combine with this dynamic to perpetuate and even strengthen the worst stereotypes .
White middle and upper middle-class parents may avoid sending their kids to schools with large Black and Hispanic populations , because they will begin to associate the virus with those communities—and by doing so , they could actually make those stereotypes more true .
Then , of course , there are the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attendance .
If wealthy parents pull their kids out of public schools , they will likely take their PTA donations ample lobbying resources with them .
Affluent parents often foot the bill for “ extras ” ( think music , movement , and sports classes ) and even additional teachers .
Michael Rebell , director of the Center for Educational Equity at Columbia ’ s Teachers College , worries that in some places , the COVID-19 crisis could undo efforts to integrate schools—which is bad news for all students .
Abundant research shows @ @ @ @ @ @ @ racial and economic diversity at school .
“ If the more affluent parents keep their kids home for another semester or another year , they ’ re that much more distanced from public schools , and maybe they ’ re more likely to go to private schools or a different district , ” Rebell said .
Rebell wondered aloud about something that hadn ’ t even occurred to me : In some states , teacher shortages and high turnover rates already wreak havoc on the neediest schools .
What happens if teachers—especially those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ close to retirement—choose not to come back this fall ?
Less qualified teachers could replace them , or class sizes could increase , meaning less individual attention for students and greater risk that students in closer quarters will more easily transmit the virus .
Clyde Yancy , a cardiologist who studies racial inequities in health , points out that people who are more highly educated live longer and healthier lives .
If the quality of public schools declines because of wealthy parents ’ COVID-19 fears , needy students could lose out on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ education ( not to mention the nutrition they get through school food programs ) .
“ We have to appreciate the fact that access to quality education allows children to realize a different economic future , ” he told me .
“ If schools can ’ t provide that , then we ’ re in real trouble.
” In the end , reopening schools is not an all-or-nothing proposition .
Some leaders are already planning for how to minimize the risk of disease transmission in the classroom .
For example , California governor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ educational leaders in the state , has hinted at the possibility of restructuring the school day : Schools might stagger their schedules with morning and afternoon cohorts .
Students could eat lunch in their classrooms instead of congregating in the cafeteria .
But other questions remain : How will school buses work ?
What about gym class ?
How can pre-k and kindergarten teachers possibly prevent rambunctious littles from getting too close to each other ?
Maybe the biggest question is one of messaging : Will superintendents , state leaders , and public @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that it ’ s safe enough for all children to return to school ?
Unfortunately , in the absence of a vaccine or a breakthrough treatment , says Bibbins-Domingo , “ It ’ s going to be a tough sell.
” And less fortunate kids may end up paying the price .

As the weeks of home isolation drag on, the unfairness of remote learning is becoming clear. While upper-middle-class families balance full workdays with homeschool sessions, many poor parents have neither the work flexibility nor the equipment to help their children keep up with lessons at home. In some places, needy students just have gone silent. Los Angeles schools recently reported that about a third of high school students aren’t logging on for remote school at all.
The widening gap has educators and parents eagerly anticipating the fall, when most of the nation’s public schools are expected to reopen. But there’s a key variable no one is talking about: The inequality problem won’t go away. In fact, in many places, it’s going to get worse.
Here’s why: Even under the most optimistic scenarios, public health experts predict that a vaccine to stop the novel coronavirus will take about a year to 18 months to arrive—which means it’s unlikely that most of us will receive it before next summer. That’s an entire pre-vaccine school year. For some parents of means, the prospect of sending kids back into the petri dish of school almost certainly will be too scary, so they will choose to delay. And that choice will have serious downstream consequences.
Earlier this month, Kristen Howerton, author of the parenting book Rage Against the Minivan, asked her Twitter followers whether their children would be going back to school in the fall. Many tweeted back strong reservations. “No way we go back to a regular classroom without a vaccine,” wrote one. “We’ll be sending our kid to an online school. Not ideal but there’s too much of a risk otherwise, particularly in a deep red area where people aren’t adhering to most of the distancing guidelines,” said another. How working parents will manage this is unclear—maybe families will band together into smaller at-home makeshift schools, hiring a teacher for just a few kids. Of course, many families won’t have that option, which is where things get really messy.
First, let’s leave the question of educational achievement aside and focus just on the transmission of the virus. Already, it’s clear that Black and Hispanic communities are bearing the brunt of the disease. As my colleagues Eddie Rios and Sinduja Rangarajan recently reported, in some places, the divide is especially stark: “In Mississippi, where 90 percent of counties are particularly vulnerable, Black people make up 38 percent of the state’s population and a startling 66 percent of COVID-19 fatalities.”
In part, that’s because many people in those communities—those who work in retail, package and food delivery, and in hospitals—don’t have the option to hide out from the virus at home. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, an epidemiologist and biostatistician with the University of California-San Francisco’s medical school, expects that dynamic to continue as schools reopen. “Some people have the connections and resources to mitigate the effects of poor health, and if the schools are unsafe, those people will keep their children out,” she told me. “Other communities will have less ability to avoid that.”
“Some people have the connections and resources to mitigate the effects of poor health, and if the schools are unsafe, those people will keep their children out.”
If that prediction holds, unequal school attendance could result in even more cases of COVID-19 among poor communities of color. That prospect worries Mercedes Carnethon, a professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine. She pointed out that while COVID-19 seems to be mild in most children, the real danger is that they can become disease vectors and bring it home. “If those crowded and multigenerational households include older adults and adults with the pre-existing heart and respiratory diseases that lead to worse outcomes, then the health of the family is threatened,” Carnethon wrote to me in an email. It’s not hard to imagine how racism will combine with this dynamic to perpetuate and even strengthen the worst stereotypes. White middle and upper middle-class parents may avoid sending their kids to schools with large Black and Hispanic populations, because they will begin to associate the virus with those communities—and by doing so, they could actually make those stereotypes more true.
Then, of course, there are the academic and extracurricular effects of unequal school attendance. If wealthy parents pull their kids out of public schools, they will likely take their PTA donations ample lobbying resources with them. Affluent parents often foot the bill for “extras” (think music, movement, and sports classes) and even additional teachers.
Michael Rebell, director of the Center for Educational Equity at Columbia’s Teachers College, worries that in some places, the COVID-19 crisis could undo efforts to integrate schools—which is bad news for all students. Abundant research shows a positive correlation between student achievement and racial and economic diversity at school. “If the more affluent parents keep their kids home for another semester or another year, they’re that much more distanced from public schools, and maybe they’re more likely to go to private schools or a different district,” Rebell said.
Rebell wondered aloud about something that hadn’t even occurred to me: In some states, teacher shortages and high turnover rates already wreak havoc on the neediest schools. What happens if teachers—especially those who are most experienced and may be close to retirement—choose not to come back this fall? Less qualified teachers could replace them, or class sizes could increase, meaning less individual attention for students and greater risk that students in closer quarters will more easily transmit the virus.
Clyde Yancy, a cardiologist who studies racial inequities in health, points out that people who are more highly educated live longer and healthier lives. If the quality of public schools declines because of wealthy parents’ COVID-19 fears, needy students could lose out on the chance to improve their long-term health through education (not to mention the nutrition they get through school food programs). “We have to appreciate the fact that access to quality education allows children to realize a different economic future,” he told me. “If schools can’t provide that, then we’re in real trouble.”
In the end, reopening schools is not an all-or-nothing proposition. Some leaders are already planning for how to minimize the risk of disease transmission in the classroom. For example, California governor Gavin Newsom, with the input of educational leaders in the state, has hinted at the possibility of restructuring the school day: Schools might stagger their schedules with morning and afternoon cohorts. Students could eat lunch in their classrooms instead of congregating in the cafeteria. But other questions remain: How will school buses work? What about gym class? How can pre-k and kindergarten teachers possibly prevent rambunctious littles from getting too close to each other?
Maybe the biggest question is one of messaging: Will superintendents, state leaders, and public health experts manage to convince wealthier parents that it’s safe enough for all children to return to school? Unfortunately, in the absence of a vaccine or a breakthrough treatment, says Bibbins-Domingo, “It’s going to be a tough sell.” And less fortunate kids may end up paying the price.


motherjones--2020-04-29--Confused by This Anti–Joe Biden Meme? The Creator Says You Just Don’t Get the Joke.

According to Brad Troemel , anyone who didn ’ t get that the fake Biden ad he made was a work of satire was just missing the joke .
Last Wednesday , Troemel , a Brooklyn-based artist , made and posted the latest entry in what he describes as a regular “ art practice of crafting weapons-grade liberal cringe ” memes .
This one was a fake , but plausibly high-grade , ad bearing a glowing image of Joe Biden with superimposed text reading “ His Brain ?
No .
His Heart.
” Troemel ’ s posts usually earn hundreds @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this one went much further .
Both Biden and Trump supporters shared the meme , making a small Twitter account ’ s post of it alongside the words “ 100 % real ” go viral .
Former Trump campaign adviser Karen Giorno tweeted it , writing , “ No joke .
This is a real ad approved by @ JoeBiden for President .
Just to be clear…the Biden Campaign wants us to know that they know that we know he has dementia but we should elect him anyway because he has…wait for it…HEART @ @ @ @ @ @ @ weekend , Twitter took enforcement action on the image , appearing to block users from posting or reposting the image .
A Twitter spokesperson said the company had ruled that the meme violated its Elections Integrity Policy , which bans content that misrepresents having an affiliation with a campaign .
While the policy has exceptions for parody , they specifically carve out parody accounts , not parody content .
The spokesperson declined to answer more detailed questions about how the image violated its policy .
In a statement to the Verge , Bill @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden campaign , didn ’ t mention the meme ’ s comedic origins , but focused on its popularity on the right : “ While the President continues to assail our free press as ‘ fake news ’ —once again it is his campaign spreading lies and disinformation .
Sadly , we don ’ t expect any better.
” Troemel—who aligns left politically , is critical of capitalism and has a history of both political donations and posts in support of Bernie Sanders—laughed at the Biden campaign ’ s criticism of the ad @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on Sunday responding to the chain of events .
“ It ’ s not every day you make some art that prompts a public response from both Joe Biden and Donald Trump , ” he boasted , before launching into an explanation of the political beliefs and history that animated his making of the meme .
Troemel argued that it was incorrect to ban the ad on the grounds that it ’ s misleading : “ The ad is real .
Not in the sense that it was released by the Biden campaign @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the sense that it ’ s true.
” In the video , Troemel went on to highlight what he described as Biden ’ s decayed mental and moral faculties , citing the former vice president ’ s voting record on things like the authorization of the Iraq War , Patriot Act , and the 1994 crime bill , along with his attacks on Anita Hill and his long and ever-increasing catalog of on-camera gaffes and misstatements .
“ The DNC and the Biden campaign are the ones responsible for your familiarity with this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ re the ones who have been fucking campaigning on it , ” Troemel continued .
“ This image wouldn ’ t be shared if it wasn ’ t so believable.
” The post ’ s believable pitch comes as a key part of Troemel ’ s efforts to make work parodying center-left politics by “ accelerating [ liberal beliefs ] ever so much , so that you reveal their inner workings by saying the quiet part loud.
” Previous examples have satirized politicians including Amy Klobuchar , Hillary Clinton , and other establishment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ artists like Troemel have long caused headaches for tech platforms , as they try to sort out the sometimes extremely blurred line between art and misinformation .
Fact-checkers for tech platforms have partially censored apolitical artwork showing digitally augmented landscapes , blocking the spread of Instagram posts depicting rainbow-tinted mountains .
Irony presents an even greater challenge .
Comedian Brandon Wardell was temporarily suspended from Twitter last month over a joke in which he changed his account information to appear as though he was Biden and then tweeted “ ughhhh im dead.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s meme is inconsistent with previous decisions to leave up videos that appear to have been created as deliberate misinformation by the right-wing .
In November 2018 , the company opted to take no action on a video of Jim Acosta blocking a White House intern from grabbing a microphone he was using during a press conference that had been doctored to make it appear as though he had pushed her .
In May 2019 , it also left up a video altered to make Nancy Pelosi appear drunk .
Troemel ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ between parody and misinformation so much that the more gullible and the less steeped in internet irony have a hard time seeing the joke , to the point where some critics wonder if he ’ s gone too far .
Jennifer Grygiel , a communications professor at Syracuse University who specializes in social media and memes , thinks he has .
“ He seems to want to cross his arms and say that everyone is so stupid , ” Grygiel said on the phone , skeptically .
“ He may claim that he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s lost control of his art.
” Adrian Chen similarly noted in a 2017 New Yorker profile that while Troemel ’ s work “ can embody the freewheeling creativity that is the best part of Internet culture , it often falls into the trap of the troll who mistakes a lack of accountability for freedom , provoking with obnoxious antics simply for the sake of generating a reaction , then laughing in your face when you fall for the joke.
” In Troemel ’ s view , whether or not people get @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or hurts Trump by hurting Biden , is not his problem .
Nor does he believe that doing any of that is the job of his art .
To people who complain , he has a ready response : “ I ’ ve got some bad news for you .
You might not like art as much as you think you do .
The purpose of art isn ’ t to cheerlead credit card company lackeys .
It ’ s to respond to the time in which you exist .
”

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.
According to Brad Troemel, anyone who didn’t get that the fake Biden ad he made was a work of satire was just missing the joke.
Last Wednesday, Troemel, a Brooklyn-based artist, made and posted the latest entry in what he describes as a regular “art practice of crafting weapons-grade liberal cringe” memes. This one was a fake, but plausibly high-grade, ad bearing a glowing image of Joe Biden with superimposed text reading “His Brain? No. His Heart.”
Satire and parody works by artists have long caused headaches for tech platforms.
Troemel’s posts usually earn hundreds or even thousands of likes, but this one went much further. Both Biden and Trump supporters shared the meme, making a small Twitter account’s post of it alongside the words “100% real” go viral. Former Trump campaign adviser Karen Giorno tweeted it, writing, “No joke. This is a real ad approved by @JoeBiden for President. Just to be clear…the Biden Campaign wants us to know that they know that we know he has dementia but we should elect him anyway because he has…wait for it…HEART?!?!”
Over the weekend, Twitter took enforcement action on the image, appearing to block users from posting or reposting the image. A Twitter spokesperson said the company had ruled that the meme violated its Elections Integrity Policy, which bans content that misrepresents having an affiliation with a campaign. While the policy has exceptions for parody, they specifically carve out parody accounts, not parody content. The spokesperson declined to answer more detailed questions about how the image violated its policy.
In a statement to the Verge, Bill Russo, deputy communications director for the Biden campaign, didn’t mention the meme’s comedic origins, but focused on its popularity on the right: “While the President continues to assail our free press as ‘fake news’—once again it is his campaign spreading lies and disinformation. Sadly, we don’t expect any better.”
Troemel—who aligns left politically, is critical of capitalism and has a history of both political donations and posts in support of Bernie Sanders—laughed at the Biden campaign’s criticism of the ad in a video he posted to Instagram on Sunday responding to the chain of events. “It’s not every day you make some art that prompts a public response from both Joe Biden and Donald Trump,” he boasted, before launching into an explanation of the political beliefs and history that animated his making of the meme.
Troemel argued that it was incorrect to ban the ad on the grounds that it’s misleading: “The ad is real. Not in the sense that it was released by the Biden campaign. But it’s real in the sense that it’s true.” In the video, Troemel went on to highlight what he described as Biden’s decayed mental and moral faculties, citing the former vice president’s voting record on things like the authorization of the Iraq War, Patriot Act, and the 1994 crime bill, along with his attacks on Anita Hill and his long and ever-increasing catalog of on-camera gaffes and misstatements.
“The DNC and the Biden campaign are the ones responsible for your familiarity with this type of messaging, because they’re the ones who have been fucking campaigning on it,” Troemel continued. “This image wouldn’t be shared if it wasn’t so believable.”
“The ad is real…real in the sense that it’s true.”
The post’s believable pitch comes as a key part of Troemel’s efforts to make work parodying center-left politics by “accelerating [liberal beliefs] ever so much, so that you reveal their inner workings by saying the quiet part loud.” Previous examples have satirized politicians including Amy Klobuchar, Hillary Clinton, and other establishment Democrats.
Satire and parody works from artists like Troemel have long caused headaches for tech platforms, as they try to sort out the sometimes extremely blurred line between art and misinformation. Fact-checkers for tech platforms have partially censored apolitical artwork showing digitally augmented landscapes, blocking the spread of Instagram posts depicting rainbow-tinted mountains. Irony presents an even greater challenge. Comedian Brandon Wardell was temporarily suspended from Twitter last month over a joke in which he changed his account information to appear as though he was Biden and then tweeted “ughhhh im dead.”
Twitter’s move to censor Troemel’s meme is inconsistent with previous decisions to leave up videos that appear to have been created as deliberate misinformation by the right-wing. In November 2018, the company opted to take no action on a video of Jim Acosta blocking a White House intern from grabbing a microphone he was using during a press conference that had been doctored to make it appear as though he had pushed her. In May 2019, it also left up a video altered to make Nancy Pelosi appear drunk.
Troemel’s Biden meme apparently blurs the line between parody and misinformation so much that the more gullible and the less steeped in internet irony have a hard time seeing the joke, to the point where some critics wonder if he’s gone too far. Jennifer Grygiel, a communications professor at Syracuse University who specializes in social media and memes, thinks he has.
“He seems to want to cross his arms and say that everyone is so stupid,” Grygiel said on the phone, skeptically. “He may claim that he’s helping democracy, but he’s lost control of his art.”
Adrian Chen similarly noted in a 2017 New Yorker profile that while Troemel’s work “can embody the freewheeling creativity that is the best part of Internet culture, it often falls into the trap of the troll who mistakes a lack of accountability for freedom, provoking with obnoxious antics simply for the sake of generating a reaction, then laughing in your face when you fall for the joke.”
In Troemel’s view, whether or not people get the joke, and whether it helps or hurts Trump by hurting Biden, is not his problem. Nor does he believe that doing any of that is the job of his art.
To people who complain, he has a ready response: “I’ve got some bad news for you. You might not like art as much as you think you do. The purpose of art isn’t to cheerlead credit card company lackeys. It’s to respond to the time in which you exist.”


motherjones--2020-04-29--Rebuilding, 6 Feet Apart: How Southern Communities Are Balancing Disaster Relief With a Pandemic

There wasn ’ t time to react when the tornado hit John Harvey ’ s property .
It was Easter Sunday .
Harvey ’ s house is just beyond Collins , Mississippi , over by Terrible Creek .
He was sitting on his hearth when the chimney began to shake ; for a couple too-long minutes , there was a terrifying blur of debris and rain , and then it was over .
Stunned but unharmed , Harvey made his way out onto his front porch , shaking himself off .
A tree had been hurled into the bed of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ near-perfect “ U ” shape between the cab and the back wheels .
Another tree had crashed into the left corner of his porch .
Remnants of the white oaks and poplars that had stood watch over his family for more than a century were now scattered across his land , in a baffling snarl of branches and leaves and twigs .
He blinked , trying to adjust to his new landscape .
He turned around and went inside to call his daughter on his cellphone to let her know he was safe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has to take his four-wheeler down to the edge of his property , but now that the impeding trees had fallen away , he was able to get through from inside his house , an ironic luxury .
For the rest of the night , he hunkered down in his bedroom , one of two remaining dry rooms .
The next morning , a crew of about a dozen men— ” neighbors , friends , beer buddies ” —arrived with chainsaws , a skid steer loader , and a mini excavator to clear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a path had formed .
The men did not wear masks or worry too much about social distancing ; it wasn ’ t that they weren ’ t aware of the virus or were unconcerned , but they were also attuned to the pressing need to help a man who was trapped , and then do the same for their other neighbors in need .
“ They ’ re just really good people , ” Harvey says .
In Collins , a small town of nearly 2,500 just southeast of Jackson , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s hard to balance the threat of an invisible virus against unthinkable destruction from a storm that physically shattered homes .
So far , COVID-19 has had a fairly unremarkable presence in the area .
Since March 11 , according to the Mississippi Department of Health , there have been 54 confirmed cases in Covington County , where Collins is located , and no fatalities , as of publication .
The tornadoes that blew through the Southeast over Easter weekend were of historic proportions , killing at least 36 people across 10 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ confirmed there were at least 105 storms across more than 770 miles .
Over the past few weeks , more than 35 families in the Collins area , most of whom lost everything in the tornado , have taken up residence at the local Best Western .
“ They ’ re in shock , they don ’ t know where to go or what do to next , ” says Rachel Pickering , who owns the hotel .
“ The trailers , they just blew away—there ’ s nothing left of those but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dining room in the morning for coffee and pastries—all other breakfast foods have been suspended in an effort to limit the spread of the coronavirus—and then head out to sort through the wreckage , searching for what ’ s left of their former lives , or to pick up food or clothing at nearby churches .
They return at dusk , exhausted .
Pickering says the Red Cross has been helping foot some of the bills for rooms .
At the state ’ s Emergency Management Department , people file in and out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
As Greg Sanford , director of Covington County ’ s branch , points out , a lot of folks , especially elderly people , don ’ t often use computers , so they come to the office in person to fill out necessary forms online with some oversight .
It ’ s a system that works well there , but these days it is occasionally upended by the coronavirus .
One day , someone walked into the department who had been exposed , and “ we had to lock the door and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ come in .
We had to do everything curbside , ” Sanford tells me .
“ We ’ ve got to protect ourselves .
We want to make sure people are protecting themselves too when they come to our offices , ” though he adds that most people come in wearing masks .
When disaster befalls any community in the South , but especially a small rural one , there ’ s an instinct to come together .
Now , though , that instinct is at odds with the spirit of social distancing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tested a string of Southern communities , blowing through metropolitan hubs like Nashville and small towns like Collins .
And each , in their ways , has had to navigate the tricky terrain of balancing the urgency of disaster relief with a burgeoning pandemic that demands a slow , consistent discipline .
“ It ’ s a struggle to know how to help , ” says Kendra Miller , who lives with her husband and children in Summit , Mississippi , another small town about an hour southwest of Collins .
“ Before @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tornado , you ’ d be out there digging in the rubble along with everybody else trying to find belongings and helping without even thinking anything of it , drinking out of the same hose together , those types of things.
” In the early days of the pandemic , focus “ shifted from the world to the health of my family , ” Miller tells me .
“ And then the tornadoes hit , and it was like , ‘ Okay , we ’ re safe , we ’ re good , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s need out there.
’ So now we ’ re at a place where we ’ re able to reach out and say , ‘ How do we help others ? '
” For the Millers , that ’ s meant offering up the two small one-bedroom , one-bathroom cabins on their property to their 6-year-old daughter ’ s first grade teacher , whose family ’ s home was destroyed in the storms .
But it ’ s been hard to explain to her children why they have to stay six feet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ ve grown up around , people who may be hurting .
Miller ’ s husband , Kendal , has been going to the neighboring town of Jayess to serve food in the days since the storm , and their daughter begged her parents to let her tag along and help .
They relented , telling her that she had to wear gloves and a handkerchief tied below her eyes and that she couldn ’ t hug anyone there .
“ It ’ s hard , our heart and her heart is to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their knee , you wan na run over and pick them up , ” she says .
“ Now you have to do that with a certain type of wisdom.
” It ’ s a hard sort of wisdom for a kid to untangle .
In Nashville , the storms came the night before Super Tuesday .
The first coronavirus case in the city was confirmed two days later , on March 5 .
I went to college in Middle Tennessee , and for a week after the storms , my feeds were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the streets in Nashville and another city to the east , Cookeville , clearing debris or pitching in and lining up at local restaurants that were offering to feed those affected .
On March 12 , Tennessee entered a state of emergency due to the coronavirus .
In North Nashville , home to a vibrant Black community , a grassroots racial justice group called Gideon ’ s Army quickly began going door to door throughout the neighborhood to discern what was immediately needed for storm cleanup and triage from there .
When the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ began to escalate , they had to come up with new strategies for doling out supplies , spreading information , and keeping their volunteers and the folks they serve safe .
It did change a fundamental dynamic that Gideon ’ s Army believes in : So much of its power rests in its dedication to being in the community and investing resources in building trust , which requires a lot of face time .
Now , it had to let people come to them .
Members organized no contact deliveries and much of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Wilson , chief programs officer , knows that not everyone in North Nashville who needs help has online access .
The plan is to post flyers and use graffiti art to get the word out that they ’ re still working—just at a distance .
“ COVID is a disaster on top of a disaster , so it ’ s caused us to stay in triage mode , and just make sure everybody has their emergency needs fulfilled until we can really focus on long-term recovery , ” Wilson says .
Assuring stable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ problem .
There is still a lot of debris out in the neighborhoods , still so many damaged houses , and organizers are afraid to send their folks out to do construction work ( though they will tarp up roofs that need it , as storms continue throughout the Southeast ) .
Recently , one woman who needed shelter for herself and her three children reached out to the group , asking if it had a tent she could use .
The family had planned to sleep in a park that night .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , founder of Gideon ’ s Army ] heard that , she went straight to that family and within an hour he had them at a hotel for the night in a safe place to sleep , ” Wilson says .
“ We do everything we can to make sure the families that we serve are not sleeping on the street.
” So far , the group has helped eight families get into already-paid-for hotel rooms because they lost their housing .
Navigating a global pandemic on top of a large-scale natural disaster @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Army , but having such a solid foundation has made pivoting to take the coronavirus into account much easier .
“ It was a natural instinct for us to jump right into this work because this is the work that we were already doing , ” Wilson tells me .
“ We were already feeding the community , we were already out canvassing the community , we were already doing these things—it ’ s just that now it has to be more logistical and more organized and more accountable.
” Eighty miles away @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a pretty similar scene of communal support .
The tornadoes that wrecked North and East Nashville also ravaged the lesser-known metropolitan , home of Tennessee Technological University .
A Facebook page , Cookeville Strong , seems to be the heartbeat of recovery in Putnam County—the page has 26,500 members and people post daily , offering free packs of diapers and infant formula and homemade masks , promoting times when drive-thru COVID-19 testing is available at the county health department , organizing free meals at churches .
Others post advice for applying for FEMA @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Still others post updates about reunions with their lost pets , or status updates on those who were hospitalized for injuries sustained during the storms or photos of found belongings around town .
The sheer range of posts is evidence of a community struggling on multiple fronts .
“ Now people don ’ t have their jobs or homes , ” says Caroline Moore , who lives in New York but came home to Cookeville to wait out the pandemic with her parents .
“ It ’ s just heartbreaking.
” Cleanup is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ went out one weekend to the fairgrounds to volunteer .
There—from six feet away—a woman named Debbie instructed her to sign a waiver ( keep the pen , please ) , pick up supplies , including fresh gloves , and head to a specific address where the remains of a demolished house had been bulldozed down .
She worked alongside a couple from Knoxville .
They kept their distance , but the comfort of each other was stabilizing amid the emotion of sorting through a stranger ’ s belongings , brushing dirt from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ single shoe .
Chattanooga , in East Tennessee , only a couple hours ’ drive south from Cookeville , was hit by tornadoes the same night they tore through Mississippi .
There , two people died , and according to Mayor Andy Berke , about 140 people were displaced and are now living in hotels and shelters .
“ There ’ s a whole bunch of problems going on , ” Berke tells me .
“ At the same time , we ’ ve got COVID-19 as a global pandemic , we have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ economy , we have the mental toll this is taking on our community , particularly when it comes to fear , and on top of that , we had the storms…this is a lot for any community.
” In the early morning after the storms , careful communication and organization were key .
Morning Pointe of Chattanooga , a nursing home , had to be evacuated after its roof had been decimated .
Responders had to shelter residents in place until transportation could be arranged via several vans to maintain social distancing , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ medicine schedules .
“ You can ’ t just put everyone in the same place , ” Berke says .
“ You got ta figure out how to get masks on people , where to put people , try to stay as best you can within the CDC guidelines.
” Berke fears the economic consequences of the pandemic on top of a natural disaster .
Tennessee is a state without an earned income tax ; it relies on other taxes to meet its public funding needs .
“ COVID-19 also lowered our tax @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We have mainly real estate taxes , but a big piece of our revenues come from sales taxes and hotel/motel taxes .
COVID-19 affects both health and the economy , and then on top of that , you add a tornado , the need for government response is heightened at a moment when the tax revenues are being lowered.
” Amid all the upheaval , Berke stresses the need for “ social cohesion ” while adhering to social-distancing practices—whether that ’ s through social media or through volunteering to help with tornado cleanup @ @ @ @ @ @ @ community to be looking out for each other , even when they themselves are hurting.
” Still , according to data from the Dartmouth Atlas Project , Chattanooga has the second-fastest-growing rate of confirmed coronavirus cases .
Tennessee began to relax some of its pandemic-related practices on Monday , even as the state saw its highest jump in single-day confirmed cases the day prior .
As of Tuesday , the state had 10,052 confirmed cases and 188 fatalities .
For now , the recovery effort continues .
Back in Mississippi last week , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the insurance adjuster was low-balling him .
He asked a friend he trusts , a contractor , to come out and assess the damage after the adjuster had gone , just to be sure the estimates lined up .
When his friend arrived , he told Harvey that he had a cough and a low fever , but he felt good enough to take a look around and crunch the numbers later .
He promised Harvey he would get to work on the house as soon as he could .
Harvey encouraged his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but because the contractor had heard that there was a shortage of tests , he said he didn ’ t want to take one—leave those to the folks who are really sick or have preexisting conditions .
A doctor from nearby Laurel had appeared on TV a few nights before saying as much .
After some coaxing , the contractor eventually went and got a test .
He is awaiting the results .
If you ask him , though , Harvey will say he ’ s not too concerned about contracting the virus—even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no matter his partial colectomy from last year .
He ’ s most concerned with rebuilding his life , piece by piece .

There wasn’t time to react when the tornado hit John Harvey’s property.
It was Easter Sunday. Harvey’s house is just beyond Collins, Mississippi, over by Terrible Creek. He was sitting on his hearth when the chimney began to shake; for a couple too-long minutes, there was a terrifying blur of debris and rain, and then it was over.
Stunned but unharmed, Harvey made his way out onto his front porch, shaking himself off. A tree had been hurled into the bed of his black pickup truck, crushing a near-perfect “U” shape between the cab and the back wheels. Another tree had crashed into the left corner of his porch. Remnants of the white oaks and poplars that had stood watch over his family for more than a century were now scattered across his land, in a baffling snarl of branches and leaves and twigs. He blinked, trying to adjust to his new landscape. He turned around and went inside to call his daughter on his cellphone to let her know he was safe. Usually, to get signal he has to take his four-wheeler down to the edge of his property, but now that the impeding trees had fallen away, he was able to get through from inside his house, an ironic luxury. For the rest of the night, he hunkered down in his bedroom, one of two remaining dry rooms.
It wasn’t that they weren’t aware of the virus or were unconcerned, but they were also attuned to the pressing need to help a man who was trapped, and then do the same for their other neighbors in need.
The next morning, a crew of about a dozen men—”neighbors, friends, beer buddies”—arrived with chainsaws, a skid steer loader, and a mini excavator to clear Harvey’s driveway. By midday, a path had formed. The men did not wear masks or worry too much about social distancing; it wasn’t that they weren’t aware of the virus or were unconcerned, but they were also attuned to the pressing need to help a man who was trapped, and then do the same for their other neighbors in need. “They’re just really good people,” Harvey says.
In Collins, a small town of nearly 2,500 just southeast of Jackson, concerns over the coronavirus fluctuate; it’s hard to balance the threat of an invisible virus against unthinkable destruction from a storm that physically shattered homes. So far, COVID-19 has had a fairly unremarkable presence in the area. Since March 11, according to the Mississippi Department of Health, there have been 54 confirmed cases in Covington County, where Collins is located, and no fatalities, as of publication.
The tornadoes that blew through the Southeast over Easter weekend were of historic proportions, killing at least 36 people across 10 states. The National Weather Service has confirmed there were at least 105 storms across more than 770 miles.
Over the past few weeks, more than 35 families in the Collins area, most of whom lost everything in the tornado, have taken up residence at the local Best Western. “They’re in shock, they don’t know where to go or what do to next,” says Rachel Pickering, who owns the hotel. “The trailers, they just blew away—there’s nothing left of those but the slab.” Guests filter into the dining room in the morning for coffee and pastries—all other breakfast foods have been suspended in an effort to limit the spread of the coronavirus—and then head out to sort through the wreckage, searching for what’s left of their former lives, or to pick up food or clothing at nearby churches. They return at dusk, exhausted. Pickering says the Red Cross has been helping foot some of the bills for rooms.
At the state’s Emergency Management Department, people file in and out daily, signing up for federal aid. As Greg Sanford, director of Covington County’s branch, points out, a lot of folks, especially elderly people, don’t often use computers, so they come to the office in person to fill out necessary forms online with some oversight. It’s a system that works well there, but these days it is occasionally upended by the coronavirus. One day, someone walked into the department who had been exposed, and “we had to lock the door and we couldn’t allow anyone to come in. We had to do everything curbside,” Sanford tells me. “We’ve got to protect ourselves. We want to make sure people are protecting themselves too when they come to our offices,” though he adds that most people come in wearing masks.
Guests filter into the dining room in the morning for coffee and pastries—all other breakfast foods have been suspended to limit the spread of the coronavirus—and then head out to sort through the wreckage.
When disaster befalls any community in the South, but especially a small rural one, there’s an instinct to come together. Now, though, that instinct is at odds with the spirit of social distancing and other protective measures as tornadoes have tested a string of Southern communities, blowing through metropolitan hubs like Nashville and small towns like Collins. And each, in their ways, has had to navigate the tricky terrain of balancing the urgency of disaster relief with a burgeoning pandemic that demands a slow, consistent discipline.
“It’s a struggle to know how to help,” says Kendra Miller, who lives with her husband and children in Summit, Mississippi, another small town about an hour southwest of Collins. “Before COVID-19, if you heard of a tornado, you’d be out there digging in the rubble along with everybody else trying to find belongings and helping without even thinking anything of it, drinking out of the same hose together, those types of things.”
In the early days of the pandemic, focus “shifted from the world to the health of my family,” Miller tells me. “And then the tornadoes hit, and it was like, ‘Okay, we’re safe, we’re good, we’re healthy, but there’s need out there.’ So now we’re at a place where we’re able to reach out and say, ‘How do we help others?'”
For the Millers, that’s meant offering up the two small one-bedroom, one-bathroom cabins on their property to their 6-year-old daughter’s first grade teacher, whose family’s home was destroyed in the storms. But it’s been hard to explain to her children why they have to stay six feet away from people, especially people they’ve grown up around, people who may be hurting. Miller’s husband, Kendal, has been going to the neighboring town of Jayess to serve food in the days since the storm, and their daughter begged her parents to let her tag along and help. They relented, telling her that she had to wear gloves and a handkerchief tied below her eyes and that she couldn’t hug anyone there. “It’s hard, our heart and her heart is to serve—you see someone fall down and skin their knee, you wanna run over and pick them up,” she says. “Now you have to do that with a certain type of wisdom.” It’s a hard sort of wisdom for a kid to untangle.
In Nashville, the storms came the night before Super Tuesday. The first coronavirus case in the city was confirmed two days later, on March 5. I went to college in Middle Tennessee, and for a week after the storms, my feeds were a constant scroll of Tennesseans out in the streets in Nashville and another city to the east, Cookeville, clearing debris or pitching in and lining up at local restaurants that were offering to feed those affected. On March 12, Tennessee entered a state of emergency due to the coronavirus.
“Before COVID-19, if you heard of a tornado, you’d be out there digging in the rubble along with everybody else trying to find belongings and helping without even thinking anything of it, drinking out of the same hose together, those types of things.”
In North Nashville, home to a vibrant Black community, a grassroots racial justice group called Gideon’s Army quickly began going door to door throughout the neighborhood to discern what was immediately needed for storm cleanup and triage from there. When the number of coronavirus cases in the area began to escalate, they had to come up with new strategies for doling out supplies, spreading information, and keeping their volunteers and the folks they serve safe. It did change a fundamental dynamic that Gideon’s Army believes in: So much of its power rests in its dedication to being in the community and investing resources in building trust, which requires a lot of face time. Now, it had to let people come to them.
Members organized no contact deliveries and much of their communication moved online. But Tee Wilson, chief programs officer, knows that not everyone in North Nashville who needs help has online access. The plan is to post flyers and use graffiti art to get the word out that they’re still working—just at a distance. “COVID is a disaster on top of a disaster, so it’s caused us to stay in triage mode, and just make sure everybody has their emergency needs fulfilled until we can really focus on long-term recovery,” Wilson says.
Assuring stable housing is a particularly complex but urgent problem. There is still a lot of debris out in the neighborhoods, still so many damaged houses, and organizers are afraid to send their folks out to do construction work (though they will tarp up roofs that need it, as storms continue throughout the Southeast). Recently, one woman who needed shelter for herself and her three children reached out to the group, asking if it had a tent she could use. The family had planned to sleep in a park that night. “As soon as Rasheedat [Fetuga, founder of Gideon’s Army] heard that, she went straight to that family and within an hour he had them at a hotel for the night in a safe place to sleep,” Wilson says. “We do everything we can to make sure the families that we serve are not sleeping on the street.” So far, the group has helped eight families get into already-paid-for hotel rooms because they lost their housing.
Navigating a global pandemic on top of a large-scale natural disaster is unprecedented work for Gideon’s Army, but having such a solid foundation has made pivoting to take the coronavirus into account much easier. “It was a natural instinct for us to jump right into this work because this is the work that we were already doing,” Wilson tells me. “We were already feeding the community, we were already out canvassing the community, we were already doing these things—it’s just that now it has to be more logistical and more organized and more accountable.”
Eighty miles away, in Cookeville, there’s a pretty similar scene of communal support. The tornadoes that wrecked North and East Nashville also ravaged the lesser-known metropolitan, home of Tennessee Technological University. A Facebook page, Cookeville Strong, seems to be the heartbeat of recovery in Putnam County—the page has 26,500 members and people post daily, offering free packs of diapers and infant formula and homemade masks, promoting times when drive-thru COVID-19 testing is available at the county health department, organizing free meals at churches. Others post advice for applying for FEMA disaster aid or navigating insurance claims. Still others post updates about reunions with their lost pets, or status updates on those who were hospitalized for injuries sustained during the storms or photos of found belongings around town. The sheer range of posts is evidence of a community struggling on multiple fronts.
“Now people don’t have their jobs or homes,” says Caroline Moore, who lives in New York but came home to Cookeville to wait out the pandemic with her parents. “It’s just heartbreaking.”
“Now people don’t have their jobs or homes. It’s just heartbreaking.”
Cleanup is ongoing in Cookeville. Moore says she went out one weekend to the fairgrounds to volunteer. There—from six feet away—a woman named Debbie instructed her to sign a waiver (keep the pen, please), pick up supplies, including fresh gloves, and head to a specific address where the remains of a demolished house had been bulldozed down. She worked alongside a couple from Knoxville. They kept their distance, but the comfort of each other was stabilizing amid the emotion of sorting through a stranger’s belongings, brushing dirt from DVDs, dolls, knives, a single shoe.
Chattanooga, in East Tennessee, only a couple hours’ drive south from Cookeville, was hit by tornadoes the same night they tore through Mississippi. There, two people died, and according to Mayor Andy Berke, about 140 people were displaced and are now living in hotels and shelters. “There’s a whole bunch of problems going on,” Berke tells me. “At the same time, we’ve got COVID-19 as a global pandemic, we have a work stoppage that is affecting our economy, we have the mental toll this is taking on our community, particularly when it comes to fear, and on top of that, we had the storms…this is a lot for any community.”
In the early morning after the storms, careful communication and organization were key. Morning Pointe of Chattanooga, a nursing home, had to be evacuated after its roof had been decimated. Responders had to shelter residents in place until transportation could be arranged via several vans to maintain social distancing, all while clinical staff worked to maintain medicine schedules. “You can’t just put everyone in the same place,” Berke says. “You gotta figure out how to get masks on people, where to put people, try to stay as best you can within the CDC guidelines.”
Berke fears the economic consequences of the pandemic on top of a natural disaster. Tennessee is a state without an earned income tax; it relies on other taxes to meet its public funding needs. “COVID-19 also lowered our tax base,” he says. “We have mainly real estate taxes, but a big piece of our revenues come from sales taxes and hotel/motel taxes. COVID-19 affects both health and the economy, and then on top of that, you add a tornado, the need for government response is heightened at a moment when the tax revenues are being lowered.”
She worked alongside a couple from Knoxville. They kept their distance, but the comfort of each other was stabilizing amid the emotion of sorting through a stranger’s belongings.
Amid all the upheaval, Berke stresses the need for “social cohesion” while adhering to social-distancing practices—whether that’s through social media or through volunteering to help with tornado cleanup. “We need members of our community to be looking out for each other, even when they themselves are hurting.” Still, according to data from the Dartmouth Atlas Project, Chattanooga has the second-fastest-growing rate of confirmed coronavirus cases. Tennessee began to relax some of its pandemic-related practices on Monday, even as the state saw its highest jump in single-day confirmed cases the day prior. As of Tuesday, the state had 10,052 confirmed cases and 188 fatalities.
For now, the recovery effort continues. Back in Mississippi last week, Harvey was trying to suss out if the insurance adjuster was low-balling him. He asked a friend he trusts, a contractor, to come out and assess the damage after the adjuster had gone, just to be sure the estimates lined up. When his friend arrived, he told Harvey that he had a cough and a low fever, but he felt good enough to take a look around and crunch the numbers later. He promised Harvey he would get to work on the house as soon as he could. Harvey encouraged his friend to get a COVID-19 test, but because the contractor had heard that there was a shortage of tests, he said he didn’t want to take one—leave those to the folks who are really sick or have preexisting conditions. A doctor from nearby Laurel had appeared on TV a few nights before saying as much. After some coaxing, the contractor eventually went and got a test. He is awaiting the results.
If you ask him, though, Harvey will say he’s not too concerned about contracting the virus—even though he’s over 65, no matter his partial colectomy from last year. He’s most concerned with rebuilding his life, piece by piece.
Additional reporting from Collins, Mississippi, by Hanna Lane Miller.