My blog posts around Thanksgiving are predictably dull: Turkey Genetics 101, The Peaceable Genomes of Pumpkins.
But 2020 is like no other year. Humanity is at war with the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2.
Images of overwhelmed hospitals and mobile morgues that dominated reporting from New York City in March are now coming from everywhere.
A mutation that's entered the US a few times from Europe doubled transmission rate without affecting severity, which is one reason why the percentage of fatal cases has fallen. Still, it's a huge absolute number, because of the fact that nearly 12 million Americans (as of today) have been infected. More than a quarter of a million have died.
And yet, some people still deny reality. Nurses tell of patients on their deathbeds still insisting that the pandemic is a hoax, that they're suffering from something else.
A Dangerous Meme
To continue reading, please go to my blog DNA Science at Public Library of Science, where this post first appeared.