Tag: journal Nature
The Dangers of Saying “Patient Zero”
This summer, yet another disease unfamiliar to most people in the United States is being transmitted around the world—as is the impulse to find someone to blame. Many news stories about the current monkeypox outbreak make reference to a “patient zero,” supposedly the one person who brought the virus into a particular state or community. This kind of finger-pointing, which long predates monkeypox, is a deeply flawed framing. Worse yet, stigmatizing individuals who get sick—and portraying the social, interconnected
Ivermectin Shows That Not All Science Is Worth Following
Ivermectin is an antiparasitic drug, and a very good one. If you are infected with the roundworms that cause river blindness or the parasitic mites that cause scabies, it is wonderfully effective. It is cheap; it is accessible; and its discoverers won the Nobel Prize in 2015. It has also been widely promoted as a coronavirus prophylactic and treatment.
This promotion has been broadly criticized as a fever dream conceived in the memetic bowels of the internet and as a