'At the heart of science journalism is a focus on evidence,' tanyalewis314 writes. 'But one of the hardest lessons many other journalists and I learned while reporting on COVID is that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.'
When I first heard the reports of a “mysterious pneumonia” spreading in Wuhan, China, in January 2020, I thought I would write a story or two about it and move on to the next big medical news development. As a health journalist, disease outbreaks are not a rare occurrence on my beat, and most do not rise to the level of an international emergency. But the story of COVID-19 would turn out to be unlike anything I had covered before or am likely—I hope—to ever cover again.
Early on Chinese authorities suppressed information about the virus, and the Trump administration downplayed its threat to the U.S. Testing blunders and shortages prevented this country from recognizing the number of COVID cases circulating within its borders in the critical early phase when we could have slowed its spread.
At the time, I debated with my editor over whether to recommend that people wear masks, against the guidance of these esteemed health agencies. I resisted doing so, in part out of deference to these authorities and in part because of a lack of published studies that masks—especially nonmedical ones—were protective for the wearer.
There has perhaps been no more consequential or bitter battleground in the U.S. epidemic than vaccines. The anti-vax movement—a small faction but already a potent force before COVID—took advantage of people’s hesitancy about the speed with which the new vaccines were developed to spread lies and misinformation about their effects.
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