Talk:COVID-19 pandemic

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01. Superseded by #9

The first few sentences of the lead's second paragraph should state The virus is typically spread during close contact and via respiratory droplets produced when people cough or sneeze. Respiratory droplets may be produced during breathing but the virus is not considered airborne. It may also spread when one touches a contaminated surface and then their face. It is most contagious when people are symptomatic, although spread may be possible before symptoms appear. (RfC March 2020)

02. Superseded by #7

The infobox should feature a per capita count map most prominently, and a total count by country map secondarily. (RfC March 2020)

03. Obsolete

The article should not use {{Current}} at the top. (March 2020)

04. Do not include a sentence in the lead section noting comparisons to World War II. (March 2020)

05. Cancelled

Include subsections covering the domestic responses of Italy, China, Iran, the United States, and South Korea. Do not include individual subsections for France, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia and Japan. (RfC March 2020) Include a short subsection on Sweden focusing on the policy controversy. (May 2020)

Subsequently overturned by editing and recognized as obsolete. (July 2024)

06. Obsolete

There is a 30 day moratorium on move requests until 26 April 2020. (March 2020)

07. There is no consensus that the infobox should feature a confirmed cases count map most prominently, and a deaths count map secondarily. (May 2020)

08. Superseded by #16

The clause on xenophobia in the lead section should read ...and there have been incidents of xenophobia and discrimination against Chinese people and against those perceived as being Chinese or as being from areas with high infection rates. (RfC April 2020)

09. Cancelled

Supersedes #1. The first several sentences of the lead section's second paragraph should state The virus is mainly spread during close contact and by small droplets produced when those infected cough, sneeze or talk. These droplets may also be produced during breathing; however, they rapidly fall to the ground or surfaces and are not generally spread through the air over large distances. People may also become infected by touching a contaminated surface and then their face. The virus can survive on surfaces for up to 72 hours. Coronavirus is most contagious during the first three days after onset of symptoms, although spread may be possible before symptoms appear and in later stages of the disease. (April 2020)

Notes

On 17:16, 6 April 2020, these first several sentences were replaced with an extracted fragment from the coronavirus disease 2019 article, which at the time was last edited at 17:11.

010. The article title is COVID-19 pandemic. The title of related pages should follow this scheme as well. (RM April 2020, RM August 2020)

011. The lead section should use Wuhan, China to describe the virus's origin, without mentioning Hubei or otherwise further describing Wuhan. (April 2020)

012. Superseded by #19

The lead section's second sentence should be phrased using the words first identified and December 2019. (May 2020)

013. Superseded by #15

File:President Donald Trump suggests measures to treat COVID-19 during Coronavirus Task Force press briefing.webm should be used as the visual element of the misinformation section, with the caption U.S. president Donald Trump suggested at a press briefing on 23 April that disinfectant injections or exposure to ultraviolet light might help treat COVID-19. There is no evidence that either could be a viable method. (1:05 min) (May 2020, June 2020)

014. Overturned

Do not mention the theory that the virus was accidentally leaked from a laboratory in the article. (RfC May 2020) This result was overturned at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard, as there is consensus that there is no consensus to include or exclude the lab leak theory. (RfC May 2024)

015. Supersedes #13. File:President Donald Trump suggests measures to treat COVID-19 during Coronavirus Task Force press briefing.webm should not be used as the visual element of the misinformation section. (RfC November 2020)

016. Supersedes #8. Incidents of xenophobia and discrimination are considered WP:UNDUE for a full sentence in the lead. (RfC January 2021)

017. Only include one photograph in the infobox. There is no clear consensus that File:COVID-19 Nurse (cropped).jpg should be that one photograph. (May 2021)

018. Superseded by #19

The first sentence is The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is a global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). (August 2021, RfC October 2023)

019. Supersedes #12 and #18. The first sentence is The global COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an outbreak in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. (June 2024)

September 2019 in Italy

Per this

There are no robust data on the real onset of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection and spread in the prepandemic period worldwide. We investigated the presence of SARS-CoV-2 receptor-binding domain (RBD)–specific antibodies in blood samples of 959 asymptomatic individuals enrolled in a prospective lung cancer screening trial between September 2019 and March 2020 to track the date of onset, frequency, and temporal and geographic variations across the Italian regions. SARS-CoV-2 RBD-specific antibodies were detected in 111 of 959 (11.6%) individuals, starting from September 2019 (14%), with a cluster of positive cases (>30%) in the second week of February 2020 and the highest number (53.2%) in Lombardy. This study shows an unexpected very early circulation of SARS-CoV-2 among asymptomatic individuals in Italy several months before the first patient was identified, and clarifies the onset and spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Finding SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in asymptomatic people before the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy may reshape the history of pandemic.

Humanengr (talk) 18:27, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

There are now some words under Timeline, but frankly that isn't enough. It's a published, peer-reviewed article in a leading Italian journal. The implications of this revelation are profound. This information suggests Wuhan was city that identified Covid, and wasn't necessarily the origin of Patient Zero, so that pretty much necessitates a re-write of the History sectionChumpih (talk) 05:58, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

@Chumpih: I'm occupied elsewhere at the moment. Would you care to give it a go? Humanengr (talk) 06:23, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Only just saw this. Done here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=COVID-19_pandemic&diff=988993798&oldid=988932113 -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 12:54, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: Re your removal of the passage below (inserted by Gtoffoletto): that material satisfies WP:MEDRS. Kindly reinsert.

Retroactive analysis of blood samples from 959 asymptomatic individuals enrolled in a lung cancer screening trial in Italy between September 2019 and March 2020 identified SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in 111 samples (11.6% of the total) including samples taken as early as September 2019.

thx, Humanengr (talk) 21:00, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Humanengr, primary sources that are being used to make extraordinary claims do not satisfy MEDRS. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:32, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

I strongly agree. The primary report is unconvincing scientifically (they did not sufficiently demonstrate that the antibodies are SARS-CoV-2 specific, only that they bind to SARS-CoV-2) and scientific consensus remains that the SARS-CoV-2 zoonosis occurred in China in late 2019. — soupvector (talk) 00:12, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing and Soupvector: Thx … I see LiveScience frames it with caveats as: The new coronavirus may have been circulating in Italy since September 2019 … But public health experts say that more analysis is needed for that timeline to be confirmed. … [T]he [WHO's] actual pandemic timeline … remains murky. … [An expert in epidemiology and biostatistics not involved in the study said the results] "have to be confirmed with different antibody tests," that look for the prevalence of antibodies that target other parts of the coronavirus. … Still, "it's not totally outside the realm of possibility." The WHO said on Monday (Nov. 16) that they are reviewing the results of the study and contacting the authors to arrange for further analysis of the samples, according to Reuters. Humanengr (talk) 04:45, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Updated with the new Reuters article as secondary source. Focusing on the WHO review of the results. There are several other reports of earlier cases included in the section and this seems to be the only one being further investigated by the WHO so I think it is notable and should be included. Also: the study is peer reviewed and from a reputable institution. If we remove this one study we should remove all other primary studies in this section claiming prior identification. But I don't think this is such an extraordinary claim at this point. The consensus seems to be that there was circulation of the virus prior to its identification in Wuhan. See diff -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 12:14, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

I cleaned some of this out yesterday, and I did seriously think about removing them all. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:43, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

I've looked at your addition, and aside from formal MEDRS problems, I don't think it captures the news story. The story, in plainer language, sounds more like this:

In November 2020, some Italian researchers claimed to find antibodies (but not the coronavirus) in stored blood samples taken from asymptomatic cancer patients in September 2019, months before this virus was identified. The WHO has asked Italian researchers to ship their blood samples to the WHO, so that the WHO can re-do the serology test and see whether these are antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 or merely antibodies that cross-react with SARS-CoV-2."

Or, you know, test error, because the serology tests for COVID-19 aren't very good, which is why the advice to most people is to not get one; to not rely on the results if you do get one; and if you must get one, to get two different ones, so that if the one test picks up on the common cold that you had, then maybe the next one, which will look at a different set of antibodies, won't make the same mistake. (It is very important that they be different tests, not just the same test run twice.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:02, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

References

I agree this is all speculative, the sourcing is weak and a WP:REDFLAG is fluttering in the wind. Let's wait to see if any decent WP:MEDRS sources emerge on this topic, before taking Wikipedia down this path. Have trimmed. Alexbrn (talk) 21:09, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing serology tests for COVID-19 aren't very good, which is why the advice to most people is to not get one do you have a source for this? I think your characterisation of serological tests is grossly inaccurate. Serology test are among the most sensitive and specific we have at the moment. They are useless at detecting COVID-19 early but they are extremely accurate tests at detecting patients that have had COVID-19 in the past. Alexbrn sourcing is week/ decent sources I think your assumption of gross incompetence by the Tumori Journal (an international, peer reviewed journal by an important and reputable institution) is unsubstantiated. But no problem waiting for additional confirmation. No rush. -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 12:46, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Gtoffoletto nobody said anything about "gross incompetence", but Wikipedia has medical sourcing guidelines for a reason. We wouldn't generally use primary research now matter how prestigious the publication was in which it appeared! Alexbrn (talk) 13:11, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Alexbrn I might have misread your tone sorry. In general, I don't think those are medical claims. Per my understanding of MEDRS they probably fall in a grey area between the "general" and "biomedical" category (they have no clinical consequence for example) so I think basic RS sourcing should be sufficient. However, I don't disagree with a wait and see approach here. -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 13:19, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Serology testing is rarely 100% specific within a subcategory. If we were talking about PCR testing of actual viral genetic material it would be a different matter. I think the wait-and-see approach would be ideal. We don't have a deadline. MartinezMD (talk) 18:06, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Just to correct the record: I found a reliable source to back up my statements. Covid-19 serological tests have a specificity of 99% or more in many cases. https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19-emergency-use-authorizations-medical-devices/eua-authorized-serology-test-performance They will not return a positive result even for other coronaviruses. False positives are extremely rare. MartinezMD -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 14:33, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

"Correct the record"?!? That's called cherry-picking - in another orchard! The context here is the report in Tumori Journal that describes the assay used as "in house", described in a preprint that has been languishing for 3 months in medRxiv without peer review or publication (see my comments in a section below from earlier today). In citing the FDA list as you did, you might have noted that multiple tests listed there have PPV < 80%; you might have also acknowledged in the same context that the assay used in this Italian report has not been approved for widespread use in the USA or EU. That reliable source (FDA) shows that serologic tests are highly variable, i.e. unreliable in general, though there are some exceptionally accurate ones - but the one used in the study being discussed here is NOT one of those highly reliable ones listed on that page you cited. — soupvector (talk) 02:02, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

@Soupvector: my point was that we shouldn't discard all serological tests in general as they can be exceptionally accurate (not sure why some tests with very low performance have been approved although speed is a crucial factor to fight a pandemic so it may sometimes justify lower accuracy). Thanks for pointing out that the serological test used in the study was an in house assay. I was not aware of that. We will see if their results can be replicated by others. -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 10:02, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Remove duplicated content

The previous discussion on this topic was archived following extensive discussion and mostly positive feedback. This article remains a complete mess. So let's recap and try again.

Problem: we are currently not following the established HIV/AIDS standard for virus topics. We have 3 pages with overlapping content and a lot of unnecessary duplication.

We can compare:

• Epidemiology of HIV/AIDS vs. COVID-19 Pandemic (virus/disease is not touched in the article or the lead. The page should relate only to the epidemiological aspects of the virus)
• HIV/AIDS vs. COVID-19 (this page should the disease caused by the virus - medical/clinical aspects)
• HIV vs. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (this page should treat only the virus - virology)

Solution: to realign this page to the HIV standard we have created a SANDBOX PROPOSAL for this page (please consider the modifications are based on the content from some weeks ago. We would reapply them to the current content to keep any relevant edit).

The proposal is structured as follows:

• Before lead: introduce the About template stating: This page is about the worldwide spread of and responses to COVID-19. For detailed information about the disease, see Coronavirus disease 2019. For the virus that causes the disease, see Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2.
• Lead: clean up to only treat epidemiological content

1. Epidemiology
2. Transmission
3. Signs and symptoms
4. Cause
5. Diagnosis
6. Prevention
7. Mitigation
8. Treatment
9. History
10. National responses
11. International responses
12. Impact
13. Information dissemination
14. See also

No content will be lost. As everything we are removing is already treated in the other pages (and usually better) and is just unnecessary duplication (with sometimes contradictory/out of date information).

I'll ping some of the users involved in the previous discussion. I hope I have summarised the arguments from the previous discussion and that the proposal and the rationale behind it are clearer now. Tenryuu Moxy Bakkster Man Ovinus_Real Sdkb RealFakeKim Doc James. - {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 13:21, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

• Support - see proposal and rationale above -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 13:21, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
• Ambivalent. Let me point out concerns/opinions on the sandbox proposal:

1. No hatnote. It's agreed that we don't need any hatnotes.

2. The lead ultra-shortening is gonna be controversial. Personally, I support it. As I've stated before in other talk sections, I want the xenophobia statement to be shortened, since it will be vague to reserve a chunk of bytes for an incident that don't seem to deserve a chunk of bytes in the lead.

3. Why? Understanding how COVID-19 spreads, the symptoms, and prevention is an important part. The H1N1 pandemic article has "Signs and symptoms," "Diagnosis," "Cause," and "Treatment," so why not this? I think it's fine and there's nothing particularly vague. Sure this article must focus on the EPI, but a little context would suffice.

GeraldWL 14:01, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

@Gerald Waldo Luis: thanks for the comments. I'll reply point by point.

1. The hatnote is optional (I've removed from the proposal the other ones which have been since removed). I think this hatnote help users and editors understand where to find the information they need.
2. This is just the initial restructuring. To avoid major discussions we are simply removing duplicated content at the moment. We can then continue editing the finer details starting from those new foundations.
3. The COVID-19 disease article covers spread, symptoms and prevention etc. (just like HIV/AIDS). This page is about Epidemiology/Overall Pandemic (just like Epidemiology of HIV/AIDS). The H1N1 pandemic is treated differently than the HIV/AIDS precedent because I don't think there is a specific article regarding the disease caused by H1N1 (it is a general Influenza-like illness). So we basically have a 2 article structure with the pandemic and the H1N1 virus article instead of a more complete 3 article structure like HIV/AIDS and COVID-19. There is no H1N1 disease article so some related content is within the H1N1 pandemic article. We could still add a small single section describing the general info regarding the disease if we want to "tie in" the other articles but we shouldn't have 50% of the article duplicating the COVID-19 Disease article. -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 15:44, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

• I still Oppose the current sandbox proposal, as the concerns I and others articulated remain unaddressed. Since you reiterated yourself, I'll reiterate my objection (with slight copy edits):

This would be a really drastic change. While I agree with the general thrust of reducing the amount of information in this article that pertains mainly to the disease, the current sandboxed proposal uses less of a scalpel and more of a massive sledgehammer on this page, cutting out a ton that pertains to the pandemic, not just the disease. You're proposing cutting out lines like (from the lead) COVID-19 mainly spreads through the air when people are near each other long enough, primarily via small droplets or aerosols, as an infected person breathes, coughs, sneezes, sings, or speaks, and the entire section on a vaccine, which is fully about its development within the context of the pandemic. I could support there being less information about transmission/symptoms/diagnosis/prevention/treatment, but just chopping out those sections entirely is too much. Similarly, for the diagnosis section, efforts to improve testing are inherently related to the battle to control the spread of the pandemic, and thus fit within this page's scope. I'm sure I would find additional examples if I looked more thoroughly. I also have concerns, on a public health level, about removing entirely information like the fact that ventilation can reduce transmission—we can reduce the amount of that information here, perhaps transcluding high-level summaries from other pages, without eliminating it entirely.

The one thing I'd add is that I don't find the HIV/AIDs precedent argument all that compelling. COVID-19 pages have presumably received orders of magnitude more attention than those pages, so if anything, they should consider following the precedents we set here. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 17:21, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: The sentence you quoted is a perfect example of what we are duplicating and the problems related to that. That's a verbatim duplication from the COVID-19 (disease) article. It says nothing about the pandemic. It should be treated (thoroughly) in the disease article. The other example relating to the vaccine section is another good example. It should absolutely not be a duplication. The topic should be treated very differently across the two pages (disease=medical aspects of the vaccines, pandemic=epidemiological aspects of the vaccines). Once again: this article is about the pandemic. Not the disease. Otherwise we should just merge the two pages and be done with it. In essence that is what you are proposing, a merge of COVID-19 and COVID-19 Pandemic, which I would oppose. -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 10:31, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

• Relevant discussion: Wikmoz has proposed merging Symptoms of COVID-19 back into Coronavirus disease 2019#Signs and symptoms with some transclusion in this discussion. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 20:34, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
• I support the proposal but I have to point out that there is no "standard" for virus articles. Graham Beards (talk) 10:46, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
• Ambivalent is a good description of my feelings.
  • There is no "precedent" or "standard" that we need to be following.
  • If we were going to follow a precedent, then HIV isn't the obvious one, IMO. The articles in Category:2019 measles outbreaks or the featured article 1966 New York City smog would make better models, as they deal with a temporary flare-up of an endemic health problem.
  • I think the most important thing is that a person who comes to this page is able to get a complete picture. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:07, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: If you look at the measles example (I don't think the NY City Smog case is comparable) it follows the exact logical structure proposed here:

• Epidemic/Pandemic 2019 measles outbreaks
• Disease page Measles
• Virus page Measles morbillivirus

This is simply the most logical structure to follow so most other virus/epidemics follow this structure. This page should not "give the complete picture". Otherwise we would need to merge Pandemic and Disease into a single page. And the topic is too vast and complex to do that. -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 10:15, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Comment: I strongly agree with the premise that content duplication within COVID-19 articles is bad and we should attempt to resolve redundancy. However, I'd suggest a more surgical approach that takes each section under consideration individually. It's definitely more time consuming but I think it will lead to a better outcome. I kicked off a discussion here to address 'Signs and symptoms'. Maybe similar planning discussions can be had for each of the above-noted sections. - Wikmoz (talk) 21:15, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

@Wikmoz: as I mentioned in the other discussion [1], since this page is about the pandemic and not the disease, sections called "signs and symptoms" or "Transmission" have no place here. I think the most we can have if we want to give some context is a section condensing the primary info regarding the virus/disease. Asection called "Cause" might be appropriate with a very brief overview. But everything else must go. Do you see any information in the sections removed in the proposal that relate to the pandemic and not the disease/virus? I think we all agree the duplication must go. We need to move past this FOMO. We are not loosing any content. Let's move on. -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 13:03, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

I think we're solving the duplicate content problem correctly by transcluding. To the broader point you've made about the pandemic topic including content about the disease, I think it's necessary and helpful to readers but can be improved by reducing disease sections to one or two paragraphs. I took a pass at a first step reorganization of COVID-19 pandemic that consolidates the disease-specific sections (note: I missed transmission in the mockup). No content is deleted. It makes the logical distinction clear and consolidates the disease content. Let me know what you guys think. The next step would be to shorten/transclude where appropriate. I've left Prevention alone as I think the section is equally relevant to the disease and pandemic. - Wikmoz (talk) 02:11, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

I think brief overviews should be given to provide context for the pandemic and the transclusions help in doing that, as long as they're one or two paragraphs (not that I think we'll actually break PEIS again, but I'm thinking very conservatively here). I think a question we should ask ourselves is: "How much information should we be giving a somewhat interested reader who won't click on any links to more relevant articles?" —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 06:19, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

From a recent experience over at COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, citations that are being transcluded in an excerpt should not rely on a named reference outside of the excerpt. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 06:21, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

I agree this goes in the right direction but is still too much (as Tenryuu said in more technical terms). It is basically a small duplication of the COVID-19 article within the Pandemic article. If the pandemic article references the COVID-19 article then it should only include its lead (the summary of the most important info). And nothing more than that. Wikmoz could you try a version like this?-- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 09:48, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

p.s. the lead of the pandemic article should be trimmed of all content that does not relate to the pandemic/epidemic such as signs and symptoms of the disease or we will have fixed the duplication in the body but the lead will keep its duplication problems. -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 09:52, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

It's very a small step. Just wanted to be sure it's in the right direction. If there are no objections, I'll roll it forward tonight. The discussion can continue on how much content is appropriate for inclusion in the 'Disease' section and how it's summarized in the lead. I still think it's helpful to readers to keep brief summaries of key disease details (and links to relevatnt disease articles) available within the pandemic topic. And if it's organized under a single H1, it's easy to skip. - Wikmoz (talk) 18:25, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

@Wikmoz: I agree it's a step in the right direction (although you forgot to include the transmission section within the disease section). If there are no objections I would start taking this first step. I've used this discussion to propose a second full proposal below. -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 19:52, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Second Proposal

Some of the feedback lamented a lack of context in the proposal above. Based on the discussions I have added a new "disease" section that transcludes the lead from the COVID-19 article. This avoids content duplication while offering users information on the disease and a convenient way of finding out more if that's what the reader is looking for.

• Lead: clean up to only treat epidemiological content

1. Disease (only lead of COVID-19 transcluded)
2. Epidemiology
3. Cause
4. Mitigation
5. History
6. National responses
7. International responses
8. Impact
9. Information dissemination
10. See also

Bold text shows differences from current page structure

See the second proposal in action here. - {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 19:54, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

• Support - see proposal and rationale above -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 19:54, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
• Comment - I don't have a strong opinion but I generally don't see a need to eliminate the disease subheadings. The content is very relevant and helpful to see at a glance without having to navigate to other pages. Given the large number of different 'main article' topics for the disease, the subsections with links are really helpful. Now that the disease sections are consolidated under a single heading, it's easy to skip on mobile web. I do think we need to merge and shorten the content under Diagnoses and Treatment. There's a bunch of original content here so a careful merge will take some time. - Wikmoz (talk) 23:57, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Now that we have consolidated the disease section (a big step in the right direction) the most pressing matter isn't removing those subsections but cleaning up the lead of the article. It should not duplicate the COVID-19 page and focus exclusively on the topic at hand: the pandemic.

Even after consolidation the reason why I would still clean up the disease section is the following: the table of contents currently contains 60 elements! This page is about the pandemic so it isn't true that this content is very relevant. From the pandemic page if you want to know more about the disease you should skip to COVID-19 not directly to the specific subpages discussing in detail the symptoms for example. You would first start with a general overview and then move even deeper from there. Remember that on average people read an article for a few minutes and only read the lead (see: WP:MOSLEAD). The COVID-19 lead covers the crucial aspects of the disease. A person can then delve deeper from there and we would simplify this article a lot. Less is more. -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 12:13, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

Timeline

This should be in the summary, comments? Toto11zi (talk) 16:59, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Covid-19 was spreading in Italy as early as September 2019, while first case was identified in December 2019 in Wuhan, China.

References

Only if it's first covered in the body. As it is, primary research chanelled via a news source is only marginally reliable - would be best to wait for something stronger I think. Alexbrn (talk) 17:37, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) No, I don't think we should include this. This is actually weak evidence. What they've demonstrated is that there was "a" Coronavirus going around Italy; they have not demonstrated that "this" coronavirus was in Italy. This result has been seen in basically every country that has looked at old/stored blood samples.

The DNA studies show that this virus probably didn't exist form before about November 2019. I believe that it's still the mainstream view that "this" virus probably came to Italy via Germany in January 2020.[2] Other, similar coronaviruses have probably been infecting people for at least a thousand years. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:42, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

I find myself agreeing w/ above editor, it is weak evidence--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 18:22, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing (talk), have you read the paper? SARS-CoV-2 is the strain of coronavirus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), here's the statement from paper:

This study shows an unexpected very early circulation of SARS-CoV-2 among asymptomatic individuals in Italy several months before the first patient was identified, and clarifies the onset and spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

This is strong evidence, not weak. You said "This result has been seen in basically every country that has looked at old/stored blood samples.", can you provide source for your statement? You also wrote that "The DNA studies show that this virus probably didn't exist form before about November 2019", can you provide source for your statement? 24.6.214.3 (talk) 23:43, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps you'd be better off starting with some lay-oriented sources like these:

• Coronavirus antibody tests too unreliable to analyze for public health purposes, Oregon officials say
• Why a positive Covid-19 antibody test doesn't mean much of anything yet
• New Covid-19 Antibody Study Results Are In. Are They Right?
• Antibody Test, Seen as Key to Reopening Country, Does Not Yet Deliver
• cross-reactivity with other antibodies, especially ones that target other coronaviruses, is another concern. “There are six different coronaviruses known to infect humans,” says Thea. “And it’s entirely possible if you got a garden-variety coronavirus infection in November, and you did not get covid-19, you could still test positive for the SARS-CoV-2 antibodies.”

As for what's wrong with this paper, they checked two points in time, determined that their test produced positive results, and said "Eureka! SARS-CoV-2 has been here at both points in time!" But they did not prove that their test works, i.e, that it is specific for the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 and never, ever reacts to the multiple coronaviruses that produce the common cold in humans. One way they could have proved the test works is by finding samples at a point in time that did not produce positive results on their test.

So: They tested September 2019, got positive results, and said 'it started in at least September 2019'. Why didn't they then go back and do tests from blood samples in September 2018? Or September 2015? My bet is that their answer is either money ("Nobody gave us enough grant money to do that") or fear ("Everybody will laugh at us if we said SARS-CoV-2 was in Italy five years ago, and it'll prove that our exciting research results about September 2019 are wrong"), but the fact is that they have not proven that SARS-CoV-2 is present in those samples. They have only proven that their under-validated test finds antibodies in those samples. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:12, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

If you are interested in this subject, then https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.27.20161976v2 (and this related post) will likely also interest you. Antibodies against some vaccines cross-react against others, so a vaccine against one infection might have some value in reducing risk for another. (I wonder how many of the lung cancer patients got a pneumonia vaccine shortly joining that Italian trial. Maybe a disproportionate number of the ones with cross-reactive antibodies?) WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:06, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Be careful WhatamIdoing you are spreading incorrect data. You can see all serological tests approved by the FDA and their specificity data on the FDA website: https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19-emergency-use-authorizations-medical-devices/eua-authorized-serology-test-performance Most of those tests have specificity values around 99%. They will not return a positive result for other coronaviruses. False positives are extremely rare. -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 14:30, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

I think WAID is adhering to scientific consensus; as an expert in this area I don't think it's misinformation to say that serological assays are highly variable and difficult to interpret, generally (for example, antibody tests that have been granted EUA by FDA have PPV as low as 70% assuming point prevance of 5%). The Apolone report in Tumori Journal is particularly dubious, depending on an in-house assay that has not been validated rigorously (the assay validation study they cite has languishing in medRxiv for 3 months). While we cannot know the timing of the SARS-CoV-2 zoonosis with any certainty at this point, the Apolone study in Tumori Journal is neither compelling scientifically nor broadly accepted by scientific consense - just the opposite, IMHO. It's interesting enough to be bandied about in lay press, it's worth considering scientifically, but the scientific community will wait for something more rigorous before shifting consensus. — soupvector (talk) 14:51, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Yes I agree the test being used is a crucial variable. Not all serological tests are the same. The good ones are very reliable though. Didn't know exactly which was used in the study. As agreed elsewhere we should wait and see here with regards to the Italian study (results are being validated by the WHO). -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 16:03, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

True. Not all serological tests are the same. But that FDA page you cited also says "A second test, typically one assessing for the presence of antibodies to a different viral protein, generally would be needed". The overall tenor of the page you cite is not as positive as you are presenting in this discussion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:57, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

I might have a distorted view given I'm in the EU. The serological tests I've encountered so far have always had high (theoretical) performance. But they were mostly from major producers. Maybe the market is not quite as varied as in the US. In any case, I think we should not discount all serological tests a priori. If the study was based on Abbott's Architect tests (such as ISTAT's national seroprevalence study) we would have a pretty solid result (Sensitivity 100% Specificity 99.6% PPV at 5% 93.4% NPV at 5% 100%). In this case: no idea what they actually used... so we will see -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 18:04, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Au contraire - we do have some idea about the test they used. It was NOT a test from a major manufacturer, not a test with FDA EUA or EU CE IVD mark, and it was not a test with peer-reviewed validation. Instead, it was (in the authors' words) an "in house" assay with citation of a preprint that hasn't yet been peer-reviewed or accepted by any journal 3 months after deposition in medRxiv. — soupvector (talk) 18:31, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

^ This. Even if you believe – which no reputable scientific body does, and even most of the less-than-reputable ones agree – that "having antibodies" is the same as "was infected by the virus", this particular assay is not proof of anything. The WHO is not re-testing their blood samples just for grins and giggles. They're re-testing because they think these results are wrong. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:16, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

I think they are retesting because the result is very unexpected but the authors are reputable enough to warrant further investigation. We'll see what they find. Whatever they find will be an interesting result. -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 18:37, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

I think you will find that it's more complicated than that. These tests measure whether antibodies react with some part of SARS-CoV-2. They do not measure whether SARS-CoV-2 is or was present. To quote from that page, they're measuring "how likely it is that a person who receives a positive result from a test truly does have antibodies to SARS-CoV-2". This is probably not obvious to most people, but it is possible to have "antibodies to SARS-CoV-2" without actually ever having been infected by SARS-CoV-2.

Leaving aside the meaning of the test (i.e. whether it means you actually had an infect, whether it means those antibodies will protect you), even small errors matter at this scale. For most of the tests, around 99% of the people who get a positive result have antibodies that cross-react. About 1% don't. This means that if you test every person in moderately large country such as Italy, and if 20% of them are told that they have antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, then about a hundred thousand people will get a false positive. Not only did they probably not get infected in the first place, they don't even have the antibodies that the test was looking for. This is not a small number. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:18, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

I'm pretty confident all of this is very clear to the authors of such a journal or their peer-reviewers. The assay methodology (as pointed out above) is the potential weak link here as it is an in-house method and its performance is unclear. A simple reanalysis with a high precision test will yield the answer quick enough. All it takes is one positive result to be true and it would be an exceptional result and change the entire history of this virus. Exceptional claims require exceptional evidence. We will see. -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 18:37, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

No positive test results from close contacts of asymptomatic cases

in report on post-lockdown phase in Wuhan. Humanengr (talk) 17:18, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Would need WP:MEDRS to report on any outcomes from this. Alexbrn (talk) 17:24, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

It wouldn't be surprising if the transmission rate is different between someone who is coughing and perhaps sneezing and someone who isn't, but of course "it wouldn't be surprising" doesn't cut it when you need a WP:MEDRS source. Also, that paper says this:

"Previous studies have shown that asymptomatic individuals infected with SARS-CoV-2 virus were infectious, and might subsequently become symptomatic. Compared with symptomatic patients, asymptomatic infected persons generally have low quantity of viral loads and a short duration of viral shedding, which decrease the transmission risk of SARS-CoV-25"

Nowhere does the paper say that those previous studies were wrong.

A nucleic acid screening of SARS-CoV-2 infection that found no newly confirmed cases with COVID-19 is pretty useless for answering the question of whether asymptomatic individuals are infectious. That data point alone would also support a conclusion that SARS-CoV-2 doesn't exist, or a conclusion that if you are going to get infected from an asymptomatic individual it will happen right away or never, or a conclusion that there are several strains of the virus that act differently, or any number of other conclusions. That's why we don't read papers like that and draw conclusions that the paper did not draw. --Guy Macon (talk) 11:57, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

@Alexbrn and Guy Macon:, thx. To double-check: Iiuc, these points below are historical on the order of other material (e.g., in the Background and History §§) rather than predictive. AFAICS, the report makes no conclusory assertions as to, e.g., whether asymptomatic individuals are infectious. Also, the Discussion § lists limitations re [inability] to assess changes over time in asymptomatic positive and reoperative results; … some false negative results were likely to have occurred … and ends with Further studies are required to fully evaluate the impacts and cost-effectiveness of the citywide screening of SARS-CoV-2 infections on population’s health, health behaviours, economy, and society.

• A SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid screening programme [after lockdown was lifted on April 8, 2020] in Wuhan … [traced] 1174 close contacts of the asymptomatic positive cases … [and found] they all tested negative for … COVID-19.
• The detection rate of asymptomatic positive cases was very low [0.303/10,000], and there was no evidence of transmission from asymptomatic positive persons to traced close contacts.
• Asymptomatic positive cases referred to individuals who had a positive result during screening, and they had neither a history of COVID-19 diagnosis, nor any clinical symptoms at the time of the nucleic acid testing. Close contacts were individuals who closely contacted with an asymptomatic positive person since 2 days before the nucleic acid sampling.

As a historical record, given the above caveats, do the above points not pass muster? Humanengr (talk) 00:22, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

It's still an unreplicated primary source. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:55, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

I am having trouble reconciling the two statements "No positive test results from close contacts of asymptomatic cases" and "the report makes no conclusory assertions as towhether asymptomatic individuals are infectious" the one strongly implies the other.

To evaluate "the above points" I need to see what sources you are using to support them. Statements such as "nucleic acid screening programme found" and "The detection rate of asymptomatic positive cases was" require WP:MEDRS sources. there is no "As a historical record" exception. Biomedical claims are biomedical claims. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:56, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

I agree, this doesn't meet our standards, and I would suggest there's no benefit to using it as a source for discussion on early disputes about whether asymptomatic transmission was possible or not (including the debate over the precise definition of 'asymptomatic' versus 'pre-symptomatic' or 'mild symptoms' and the interpretations by medical professionals or scientists and the general public; see also the debate over 'airborne' versus 'spread through the air'). I checked the history section and we don't currently discuss that topic (nor am I suggesting we should). Particularly since the original study goal was primarily to identify how many asymptomatic cases were missed, and one of the cited sources identified what they believed to be presymptomatic transmission (a difficult distinction to make in the article, even with WP:MEDRS sources). Bakkster Man (talk) 15:40, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

@Guy Macon, My § title on this talk page (No positive test results from close contacts of asymptomatic cases) was abbreviated, not directly from the article. Re the report makes no conclusory assertions as to whether asymptomatic individuals are infectious: that was in response to your That data point alone would also support … text. I fear we are talking past each other on that; apologies for my part in that confusion.

@Guy Macon, WhatamIdoing, and Bakkster Man: This WP article includes other such 'historical' information from primary sources — e.g., the Background § begins with Although it is still unknown exactly where the outbreak first started, several early infected people had visited Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, located in Wuhan, Hubei, China. That cites this which doesn't identify the specific market by name; I did find that Timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019 cites another primary source for the claim that several early infected people had visited Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. In the language of that primary source: We report the epidemiological, clinical, laboratory, and radiological characteristics, treatment, and clinical outcomes of 41 laboratory-confirmed cases infected with 2019-nCoV. 27 (66%) of 41 patients had a history of direct exposure to the Huanan seafood market.

Did I miss it or was there a 2ary source that re-analyzed the original data to confirm the claim that several early infected people had visited Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market? I'm fairly certain that if we examine the rest of this and other COVID–19 articles, we'll find several other similar instances of such descriptive 'historical' primary source reports. Humanengr (talk) 03:09, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

These articles have relied heavily on primary sources in the past. This was not necessarily inappropriate under the circumstances, but IMO it is time for us to be changing that. All articles should be WP:Based upon independent sources and secondary sources (which are not the same thing). Let's move this article in that direction. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:16, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Would that particular report require a WP:MEDRS secondary source? Per that policy: "Biomedical information requires sources complying with this guideline, whereas general information in the same article may not." On the one hand, it shouldn't be hard to find a secondary source (WHO) to cite for market, but it doesn't appear to necessarily require one. Bakkster Man (talk) 15:12, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

To clarify my proposal in view of feedback and the above:

After ending lockdown on April 8, 2020, the city of Wuhan, China conducted a nucleic acid screening programme for its 10 million citizens from May 14 to June 1. The study, while acknowledging prior work that showed asymptomatic individuals to be infectious and might subsequently become symptomatic, reported that all close contacts of asymptomatic individuals in Wuhan tested negative for COVID–19 (where 'close contacts were those "closely contacted with an asymptomatic positive person since 2 days before the nucleic acid sampling" and 'asymptomatic individuals' were "those who had a positive result during screening, … had neither a history of COVID-19 diagnosis, nor any clinical symptoms at the time of the nucleic acid testing").

Suggested placement: in the 2020 § after the On 31 January 2020, … para. Humanengr (talk) 03:27, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

I'm still not sure this is suitable for the article. This seems to straddle the line of history and biomedical information. And it's a bit kludgy with trying to include 3 primary sources to discuss seemingly contradictory content (asymptomatic transmission is possible, but wasn't seen in this one study). The question is, what relevant information that's currently missing is added to the article by including this study? Bakkster Man (talk) 15:12, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

References

Errors in Infobox

If you go to Special:BlankPage/lintHint and paste in the Wikitext from the infobox, you get multiple HTML errors. I made a copy in my sandbox and tried to fix the errors but everything I did either didn't fix the error or screwed up the formatting. This needs attention from somebody with more skill in fixing templates than I have. --Guy Macon (talk) 11:38, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Izno, we've got one each of Misnested tags, Missing end tags, and Stripped tags. Can you figure it out? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:51, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Oh good, looks like my recent endeavors did not keep you. --Izno (talk) 18:45, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Paste it in where? Special:BlankPage/lintHint is not editable. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:42, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Weird. It is editable for me. Could it be that you have to have LintHint installed to edit that page? See User:PerfektesChaos/js/lintHint.

OK, I just tried another browser where I am not logged in and the page just says "Special page / Blank page / This page is intentionally left blank."

Is there a way that someone can test LintHint without installing it? if not, I suppose someone could follow the instructions...

• If your project has registered this as a gadget, just activate on your Preferences page.
• Otherwise include the following line into your common.js,global.js etc.:

mw.loader.load( "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:PerfektesChaos/js/lintHint/r.js&action=raw&maxage=86400&ctype=text/javascript" );

...and then uninstall it right afterward, but that seems clumsy. Is there a better way?

Related question; is it worth asking that this be added to the gadgets in preferences? --Guy Macon (talk) 10:33, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

OK, by using Special:ExpandTemplates I've tracked it down to the four |legendn= parameters, as follows:

• |legend1= contains a {{collapsed infobox section begin|Total cases per country}}
• |legend2= contains a {{collapsed infobox section end}} and a {{collapsed infobox section begin|Deaths per capita}}
• |legend3= contains a {{ubl}} with no data items. This in itself is not a problem, but it does mean that the value fed into the |content= parameter of the enclosing {{div col}} is empty, causing that template to emit an opening <div class="div-col columns column-width" style="-moz-column-width: 8em; -webkit-column-width: 8em; column-width: 8em; -moz-column-gap: 0; -webkit-column-gap: 0; column-gap: 0; padding-left:3em;"> with no matching </div>. |legend3= also contains a {{collapsed infobox section end}} and a {{collapsed infobox section begin|Daily new cases}}
• |legend4= contains a {{collapsed infobox section end}}

If those three pairs of {{collapsed infobox section begin}}/{{collapsed infobox section end}} are all removed, and the {{div col}} (and its null content) removed from |legend3=, all of the HTML tags then nest correctly. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:54, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Indeed, you must have the script installed to use special pages that don't exist :). RedWarn does similarly today, among others (that one being in recent memory). --Izno (talk) 18:45, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

I made the changes suggested above.[3][4] Now we are down to one error. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:34, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Fixed it.[5] --Guy Macon (talk) 07:10, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Thank you (all), and congratulations on sorting it out. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:43, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

• @Guy Macon: Having sections of the infobox collapsed is behavior we've had I believe since March, and it's served us well enough during that time. I'm not familiar with lint errors, but whatever harm they're causing, we need to sort out without just removing the collapsing, as I see no consensus to overturn the status quo on that (which has been discussed extensively—see current consensus items 2 and 7). {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 04:17, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Lint errors are actual errors in the HTML served to browsers. Sending invalid HTML causes all sort of problems. Many (but not all) browsers see the error and display something reasonable. Alas, not every browser makes the same decision on what is reasonable to display when a web page has invalid HTML. And sometimes a browser update changes the behavior. Valid HTML is and will continue to be pretty much displayed correctly in every browser.

Another problem is that the Wikimedia software sometimes changes how it deals with Wikimarkup that generates invalid HTML. As an example, for years whenever someone started a strikeout (or italic or bold) but didn't end it, Wikipedia ended it for them. A boatload of people created sigs that didn't have proper closing tags, never seeing any problem because Wikipedia fixed the error for them. Then that behavior changed. Now we keep seeing old archive pages where huge sections are underlined, bolded, colored purple, displayed super small, etc.

Generating valid HTML in non-negotiable. If you insist, I can post an RfC on this, but I assure you that the consensus will be overwhelmingly against anything that creates invalid HTML.

Feel free to re-add collapsing, but you need to figure out how to do it without creating HTML errors. I suggest that you install WP:LintHint., It sits there quietly in the corner until you click on the button to look for HTML errors, and it works great in preview mode.. --Guy Macon (talk) 04:45, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Linter explains alot.--Moxy 🍁 04:59, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Guy Macon, thanks for the explanation on lint errors. An RfC shouldn't be necessary as this should be solvable: the thing I care about is maintaining the behavior of the extra maps being collapsed and the thing you seem to care about is resolving the lint errors, and those are presumably compatible ends. I reverted you to apply some light pressure to go fix the problem at the collapsing template and since I think the more important priority is retaining desired functionality that as far as we know has been working fine for everyone for the past 8 months, but that'll be a moot disagreement if we can fix this. I can try to help out, but it'd take me a lot longer since I know so little about lint errors, so I'd appreciate if you or someone else knowledgeable could get the ball rolling at {{Collapsed infobox section begin}}. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:06, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Please don't do that. See Wikipedia:Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point.

I agree that we should be able to re-add collapsing without causing HTML errors. I think you might be able to make it look just the way you want it to if you install LintHint and use it in preview. Otherwise you are going to have to ask for help.

You say "as far as we know has been working fine for everyone for the past 8 months" but you have no way of knowing that. It may display the wrong thing with the user nor realizing that it is wrong. The reader may not know where to report a problem. To know that invalid HTML "has been working fine for everyone for the past 8 months" you would need to test it using the 360 Secure Browser. Then you would have to test it using the AVG Secure Browser. Then on Pale Moon. Then the Tor Browser, Maxthon, Konqueror, Safari, Amazon Silk, Opera Mini, Dolphin, Emacs Web Wowser, etc. Or you can just generate valid HTML which they all handle just fine. --Guy Macon (talk) 05:37, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

See discussion at Template talk:Collapsed infobox section begin#LintHint errors. --Guy Macon (talk) 05:50, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Guy Macon, thanks for opening the discussion at the template. Regarding the reversion, it was not POINTy; it was weighing competing priorities (abiding by the consensus about the behavior we want vs. avoiding hypothetical issues from the lint error) and deciding for the former, which is also the status quo. You should not have reinstated your edit, but hopefully someone will come to the rescue at {{Collapsed infobox section begin}} and make that moot. I installed LintHint, but it doesn't make clear what I should do to resolve the issue. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 18:04, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Map in the infobox

I think having a map displaying a mostly non-comparable statistic in the infobox is misleading. We should probably switch to the map displaying the deaths per capita. --Antondimak (talk) 17:16, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Antondimak, I'm not in the weeds quite enough—could you elaborate on why official deaths per capita counts are more comparable than official cases per capita counts? And I've also heard a bunch about excess death measurements—would that be something to consider? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:23, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Particularly early in the pandemic, cases are highly dependant on how much a country is testing. They're technically all underestimates of actual infections, but to significantly varying degrees. Deaths will vary a bit for the same reason, but the consensus seems to be they'll vary less in most cases. But only among nations with a relatively robust testing program.

Excess deaths wouldn't make sense in the primary infobox, and will probably take a year or more to get reliable enough numbers to include. Particularly if the goal is to compare between countries. Bakkster Man (talk) 19:36, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure that deaths per capita is more comparable than diagnoses per capital. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:18, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

It's generally agreed that this is the case, but I'll give an example as for why this seems to be so. Some countries like Iceland have followed a strategy of mass testing. It was then visible that a large percentage of people who tested positive for the virus showed no or few symptoms, and would not have realised they it without the test, as they would never had ended up in hospital under normal circumstances. Other countries, like Greece in the early stages of the pandemic, had a much more reserved approach to testing, mostly pursuing "serious" cases. So you would see much lower case numbers in Greece, even though there were similar death statistics. Then there are also countries like Turkey, which didn't count positive test results if the patient showed no symptoms. Of course there are also differences when it comes to the reporting of deaths, as some countries choose to count all deaths were the patient had tested positive before, while others require the virus specifically to be the main cause. And there are of course countries, like India, where it is believed that a significant amount of deaths have also been "missed", but it isn't nearly as arbitrary. You can miss a case which didn't result in death, but not the other way around. --Antondimak (talk) 21:19, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

I think it's worth pointing out it is quite possible to miss deaths that weren't attributed to COVID-19. For example, the first death outside Asia in this article is listed at February 6th. However, the death was not confirmed as COVID-19 until April. Had they not gone back and tested, it would not have been counted. Your example of India shows that while the variance in the reported numbers from actual might be lower for fatalities, it's not perfect either. Bakkster Man (talk) 21:45, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

It is indeed. I'm just saying it's quite hard to miss a death without also missing a case, while it's quite probable vice versa in certain cases. --Antondimak (talk) 16:33, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Excess deaths is indeed the most comparable statistic, as it is almost completely independent of each country's reporting strategy. However it has a much higher margin of error compared to the reported deaths per capita, mainly because we can't really know how many of those excess deaths were a result of COVID. We also can't have the full picture so early. So I pretty much agree with what Bakkster Man said. --Antondimak (talk) 21:19, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Johns Hopkins University's Student Newspaper

FYI

 – Heading has been refactored by Juxlos. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 02:59, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

Johns Hopkins University Student Newspaper JHU News-Letter:

“Surprisingly, the deaths of older people stayed the same before and after COVID-19. Since COVID-19 mainly affects the elderly, experts expected an increase in the percentage of deaths in older age groups. However, this increase is not seen from the CDC data. In fact, the percentages of deaths among all age groups remain relatively the same.”

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20201122214034/https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2020/11/a-closer-look-at-u-s-deaths-due-to-covid-19

Reliable source fan (talk) 23:55, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

This is by the The Johns Hopkins News-Letter, the student newspaper of JHU and not the university itself. It should also be noted that this article has been retracted - in fact, the article on that paper specifically mentions how this specific archived article has been used as a misleading source and hence has been retracted.. Juxlos (talk) 00:00, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

Many wikipedia articles cite the Internet Archive because the original source has been retracted. Reliable source fan (talk) 01:01, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

I don't believe the JHU Newsletter is WP:MEDRS-compliant, is it? —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 01:29, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

I doubt it even passes regular RS checks, being a student newspaper. Retracted articles on a student newspaper should not even need to be mentioned. Juxlos (talk) 02:44, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

Intro update re: vaccines needed

I am not an experienced editor but I think an update is needed and request help

Introduction section now reads "There are several vaccine candidates in development, although none has completed clinical trials."

This is not up to date. The correct up-to-date information is available at the end of the "Vaccines" section:

On 9 November, Pfizer Inc announced that its vaccine was more than 90% effective in preventing COVID-19,[218] and on 16 November, Moderna revealed its vaccine was 94.5% effective.[219] On 23 November, the University of Oxford in collaboration with AstraZeneca, announced positive results from an interim analysis of their ChAdOx1 nCoV-2019 vaccine, with efficacy between 62% and 90%.[220][221] — Preceding unsigned comment added by BeholdMan (talk • contribs) 05:15, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

FWIW, none of the cited clinical trials are complete. They've completed enrollment, they report that they've completed interim analysis, but the trials are ongoing with plans for many months of follow-up to determine/refine efficacy and durability of immune responses, as well as safety analyses. So, the current language is not wrong. How many details from press releases to include in the lede - I'll defer to more experienced WP editors. — soupvector (talk) 12:41, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

We need to be more careful with claims of vaccine results. Press releases are not WP:MEDRS compliant sources and we should stick to those for any claim of efficacy. -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 12:51, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

I concur. Until there's peer review on the study results and/or approval from major health organizations, the current language is accurate. It's possible we'll be updating this in the next few weeks, but not yet. Bakkster Man (talk) 16:53, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

I'd say the current language is correct but it doesn't really give the full picture. If we want to re-word to give indication that the vaccine trials have shown promising interim results, I'd think that'd be okay. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 07:00, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

How about from "There are several vaccine candidates in development, although none has completed clinical trials." to: "There are many vaccine candidates in development, although none has completed clinical trials. Three vaccines, developed by pharmaceutical companies Pfizer, Inc., Moderna and AstraZeneca have been announced by the companies as safe and effective. As of 28 November, those claims are still being verified by regulatory agencies."

India 2019 Origin

Another origin via The Lancet pre-prints The Early Cryptic Transmission and Evolution of SARS-CoV-2 in Human Hosts 2020-11-17.

The least mutated strain can be found in eight countries across four continents ... The statistical analysis of the SARS-CoV-2’s strain diversity in different countries/regions shows that the Indian subcontinent has the highest strain diversity. Furthermore, based on the SARS-CoV-2’s mutation rate, we estimate that the earliest SARS-CoV-2 transmission in human hosts could be traced back to July or August of 2019.

Chumpih (talk) 07:32, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

There is definite evidence building that the virus originated earlier then thought. But nothing definitive yet I would say. -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 20:15, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

• I think it's very likely that Lancet pre-print will be found to be misleading due to erroneous phylogenetic rooting - it's a pretty classic error. Let's see what high-quality secondary sources say, but I think this is another paper challenging the current narrative - which can be scientifically useful but is not encyclopedic. — soupvector (talk) 01:52, 29 November 2020 (UTC)