Talk:COVID-19 pandemic/Archive 41

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The lead is terrible now

Unfortunately very poor and incorrect prose. Was better about a month ago. --49.195.192.148 (talk) 15:03, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

I've looked at the changes during the last month, and I don't see many significant changes. (I put two short paragraphs back into one long paragraph to make the text changes easier to spot in the wikitext dfiffs). Is there something in particular that you think should be looked at? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:30, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

COVID-19 spreads via a number of means, primarily involving saliva and other bodily fluids and excretions. no. --23:12, 21 November 2020 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.195.192.148 (talk)

That sentence is automatically copied from Coronavirus disease 2019. I suppose that the accuracy partly depends upon what you think falls into the "other bodily fluids and excretions" category. Respiratory mucus is not saliva and is very likely contagious. Urine and sweat are also bodily fluids and excretions, and they are not contagious. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:47, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

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)

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

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)

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.[1][2] Now we are down to one error. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:34, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Fixed it.[3] --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)

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.[4] 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)

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)

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)

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." — Preceding unsigned comment added by BeholdMan (talk • contribs) 06:32, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

• Wikipedia shouldnt do science by press release --49.180.100.63 (talk) 10:10, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

I understand. The problem seems to me that we don't have consistency between the lead intro section and the main vaccine section of the page. If Wikipedia shouldn't do science by press release, which is a reasonable policy, then the main vaccine section should be edited or removed, because it is based on press releases, not peer reviewed work at this time. If press release IS acceptable, then the intro should match what the main section currently says. The problem is that a reader could come upon the page at this time, browse the lead section and conclude that no trials have concluded; and then scroll to the vaccine section and see that trials have concluded with results being certain numbers. That seems to me to lower our credibility. I hope that makes sense. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BeholdMan (talk • contribs) 18:11, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Any good summary will highlight key concepts, particularly those in a scientific article with best evidence. BTW, there is zero risk that a reader will "scroll to the vaccine section and see that trials have concluded with results being certain numbers" - since the vaccine section does not state that the trials are complete. — soupvector (talk) 20:32, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I understand what a summary is. The point I am trying to make is that this Wikipedia page is internally inconsistent -- between intro and vaccine section. I have not seen any rebuttal in this talk page to that point. It remains inconsistent. That's not optimal. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BeholdMan (talk • contribs) 02:15, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Removal of Face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic link from this Page

@Gtoffoletto: It is not a good idea to remove the link to Face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic from this page. Geographyinitiative (talk) 11:43, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: watch out you are introducing 20k+ chars into the article to add a single link. You might be restoring an old version by mistake? I've added the missing links to the further reading hatnote of the prevention section (see last edit). -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 11:58, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Transmission of COVID-19

Can we get a few eyes over at Transmission of COVID-19 as we have some new editors making edits of this nature.--Moxy 🍁 07:45, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

will keep eye on article, thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:21, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

FAA confirms first 'mass air shipment' of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine from Belgium as US preps for distribution

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/11/29/pfizer-covid-vaccine-faa-belgium-air-shipment/6445339002/

--Guy Macon (talk) 22:10, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

thank you for link--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:22, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Map Descriptions

The maps would benefit from descriptions of what they depict. 68.227.31.76 (talk) 20:27, 1 December 2020 (UTC) (Constructive Feedback)

Yes, see sections above like #Restoring collapsing of infobox maps where the descriptions vanished. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:43, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Proposal: make the infobox a brief listing of the most important facts

I propose that we move most of what it in the infobox into the body of the article.

As it says in MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE:

"When considering any aspect of infobox design, keep in mind the purpose of an infobox: to summarize (and not supplant) key facts that appear in the article (an article should remain complete with its summary infobox ignored). The less information it contains, the more effectively it serves that purpose, allowing readers to identify key facts at a glance. Of necessity, some infoboxes contain more than just a few fields; however, wherever possible, present information in short form, and exclude any unnecessary content. Avoid links to sections within the article; the table of contents provides that function."

--Guy Macon (talk) 11:51, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

There are too many maps in the infobox. Only one has a proper explanation of what it is. All but one map should be moved to article body. There are too many images in the infobox. One larger image may do, but really we do not need any in that box, and they could all be moved to the article body. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:35, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

In addition to this Template:Interactive COVID-19 maps is not displaying anything useful for me in the article. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:35, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

• A bunch of context: For anyone who needs it, this (all but the first map collapsed) is what it looked like until a few days ago, when the collapsing was removed as we try to resolve lint errors (see above). There's also precedent from current consensus items 2 and 7 (the latter being more of a non-consensus item; Antondimak, let's see if your edit sticks).

Regarding the maps, having thought about it a bunch, I think we could remove two. First, the cases by country count map. There were solid arguments raised against it way back at this discussion, and while I think it's useful to have as a table (as we do in our table), I don't think it's good data presentation to put it in a map. Second, the daily new cases 7-day rolling average map, which I think is an instance of recentism in violation of WP:NOTNEWS.

If we're going to be using the deaths count map first, I'll reiterate my dislike of having the numbers and legend embedded into the map, which presents an accessibility problem and appears miniscule unless the image is clicked on. The prior discussion on that (which did not reach consensus) is logged at project-wide COVID-19 map consensus item 2. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 01:31, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

I agree with all your points. Unfortunately the discussion about moving the death map first got archived before there was much participation. --Antondimak (talk) 07:58, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

By the way, is it possible to make the maps collapsible without reintroducing the lint errors? --Antondimak (talk) 08:08, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Nobody has figured out how to do that. Normally, I should be able to fix this sort of thing -- it's just a programming problem and I fix those for a living. I am not particularly familiar with Wikimedia template programming, but I am an expert in HTML. Alas, the template is template protected so I can't even start to troubleshot it. :(

My solution is to admit that we have made the infobox far too large, cut it down to the essentials, move the info into the article, and thus have no need to collapse anything in the infobox. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:02, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

I temporarily restored the collapsing for the time being, because whoever deleted the collapsing headers forgot to add the map descriptions (which were only present in those headers) back into the captions. Paintspot Infez (talk) 23:04, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

My take on the box:

1. Why is a daily new case map infobox-worthy? The term "7 day rolling average" does not make sense; reads like a gramatically-correct Internet slang.
2. Why one map with a state-divided color grade, and one with a country-divided color grade? I propose removing one of them. That would make it only two maps in the box, two of which are more vital. GeraldWL 09:38, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

On, the removal of the first legend: It's is quite small on the map as displayed here, so I put it into text as per Sdkb's suggestion. I think it's still of use on the actual image though, as it is automatically updated every time the image is, across all Wikimedia projects. --Antondimak (talk) 13:55, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

I think the amount of information in the infobox is currently good, though "arrival date" and "date" are confusing. More importantly, there are way too many maps and images. I'd like to see one map and no image. The rest can be easily moved down into the body of the article. I agree with Guy's concerns regarding generating valid HTML. pauli133 (talk) 21:03, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

In my opinion the maps are at the same time too wide for an infobox (crowds the lead text on low resolution monitors) and too narrow to be read on high resolution monitors. Better to create a Maps section and put it right after the lead. That way we can make the maps scale to full width on all monitors. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:21, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

I'd be interested to see what a maps section right after the lead would look like. If you mock that up and it looks good I'd be open to it. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 13:49, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Sdkb, that would be vague. No pandemic article I've seen includes so many maps-- even the 2009 swine flu pandemic article only includes one. In my view, two maps are fine for this infobox and the article as a whole. GeraldWL 15:11, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Pre-RfC: Summarize key facts that appear in the article

THIS IS NOT AN RfC! YOU WILL GET YOUR CHANCE TO SUPPORT OR OPPOSE WHEN AND IF AN ACTUAL RfC IS POSTED!!

This is about improving the wording of a future RfC. Off-topic support/oppose comments may be be moved to the "off-topic comments" section by any editor.

MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE says:

"When considering any aspect of infobox design, keep in mind the purpose of an infobox: to summarize (and not supplant) key facts that appear in the article (an article should remain complete with its summary infobox ignored). The less information it contains, the more effectively it serves that purpose, allowing readers to identify key facts at a glance."

In my opinion the infoxox in this article has become too large, so I propose the following, with all removed material inserted into the body of the article if it isn't there already.

COVID‑19 pandemic
Daily new cases as of 30 November 2020 (7 day rolling average)
Disease	Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‑19)
Virus strain	Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‑CoV‑2)
First outbreak	Wuhan, China
Index case	Wuhan, Hubei, China 30°37′11″N 114°15′28″E
Arrival date	Between 6 October 2019 and 11 December 2019
Confirmed cases	676,609,955
Recovered
Deaths	6,881,955

References

Please discuss any possible wording changes in the section below. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:02, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Discussion about the wording of a possible future RfC

Please limit the discussion in this section to improving the wording of the proposal.

Should certain items be re-added? Should more items be removed? --Guy Macon (talk) 18:02, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes, most of them should be retained. There is some room for trimming, but removing items like |date= and |source= would not be advisable. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 13:23, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Is there a single image that we should put at the top of the infobox? --Guy Macon (talk) 18:02, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

No; we should keep most of them. I made my argument for the two maps to keep out of the current four above. (Recognizing that you have some issues with the collapsing, it's clearly desired and established consensus, so it's likely to return.) The collage is nice and de facto practice, so I don't see why we'd want to remove it. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 13:26, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

agree w/ Sdkb--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:47, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Sdkb, I am well aware that you want to keep a lot of material in the infobox while I want to trim it way down. That's the reason why we are going to have an RfC, so the community decides which version to go with. Replying to a request to improve my proposal to trim it way down by saying that I should instead propose keeping most of the material in the infobox is not helpful. That isn't going to happen. So do you have any suggestions to improve my proposal instead of gutting it? --Guy Macon (talk) 02:29, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

The current infobox is clearly insane. I would adopt a compromise as suggested below. I would keep just one map (at this point I would use the deaths map) and keep the image mosaic. -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 02:39, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

One would be best for accessibility purposes. ..as in its a scrolling nightmare to reach the second paragraph in mobile view (who account for 60% of readers). --Moxy 🍁 03:23, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Off-topic comments

Comments supporting or opposing the proposal are off-topic, and should be moved here. Again, this is not an RfC and will not decide anything.

Not sure that an RfC is needed. It may be faster to make a few small changes that nobody would object to like moving infobox maps #3 and #4 into Epidemiology and maybe removing the Recovered count (it's nowhere near accurate). If there is an RfC, I'd favor keeping the top map as the main image. Perhaps the grid of 4 images directly below that. - Wikmoz (talk) 05:36, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Agreed. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 13:27, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Totally agree with Wikmoz. This is getting blown out of proportion and I agree with his solution. -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 13:29, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

You are correct. No RfC is needed if everyone who disagrees with you simply allows you to do it your way. The problem here is that multiple editors do not agree with Sdkb's solution. --Guy Macon (talk) 04:53, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Start date

I don't why the Wiki Protective Association refuses to admit COVID did not start on 1 Dec. That's the first diagnosed patient and common sense tells you there were some before that. Plus significant evidence tells us it started in Oct at the latest such as: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-evolution/new-coronavirus-spread-swiftly-around-world-from-late-2019-study-finds-idUSKBN22I1E3 Anyone that believes China only has about 4500 covid deaths is fool. You can't believe anything the Chinese gov says. So let's improve the article and put in Oct 2019 as the start. Oh wait, the WPA will come remove my post. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 147.51.170.228 (talk) 14:48, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

In this article we are sticking to official figures, and WP:MEDRS standard sources. You are probably correct as to when it started, but there is a rule about verifiability over truth. (ie no WP:Original research. ) Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:41, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

And you wonder why wiki has the lousy reputation it does. And you mean official as in the WHO, which was bought by the Chinese? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 214.3.138.230 (talk) 12:45, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Your coining of Wiki Protective Association is funny-yet-confusing; I like it, it actually represents a significant amount of the protective community. From the source you mentioned, it was based upon estimates; the fact remains that the first time it was known was on Dec. I support having the information included, but, as of now, only to the extent of that it is an estimation. I would also support adding a c. template on the "date" part of the infobox. Plus, I mean, every user-generated sites has a lousy reputation, so.... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ GeraldWL 06:06, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Updating vaccine line in lead

With the deployment of the first fully authorized/tested vaccines to the general public in the UK, I think it's probably time to update what we say in the lead. We currently have There are several COVID-19 vaccines in development. Current treatments focus on addressing symptoms while work is underway to develop therapeutic drugs that inhibit the virus. Any suggestions on what we should modify it to? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 09:10, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Sdkb, Indonesia, where I live in, also received the first crate of Sinovac vaxxes last night. I suggest changing to Some COVID-19 vaccines have been distributed to parts of the world, with the first injected patient on 8 December 2020. Then, I suggest modifications on the excerpt template of the Vaccines subsection to include p. 4, so that we can have that place to store the reference. GeraldWL 10:51, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Gerald Waldo Luis, I think we need to distinguish a handful of different things. There's first injections during trials, then there's first injections after national approval. The December 8th date was the first injection in the UK of an approved vaccine (IIRC), but Russia began mass vaccination of the Sputnik V vaccine on the 5th. There's dispute over how ready the Sputnik vaccine is (safety and efficacy), but I think we'd struggle to dismiss it completely as a milestone in an NPOV way. The question is, do we want to be fuzzy with the timeline ("vaccine distribution began in some parts of the world in early December") or provide multiple start dates? Bakkster Man (talk) 15:48, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Bakkster Man, if there really is an earlier date on off-trial vaccinations, then I would support. Sputnik is labeled as a corona vaccine overall. Trials... uh, I mean, everyone knows volunteers get injected during trials; I'm not sure if the infected is also part of the trial program. I would provide multiple start dates for now, as the lead would probably be more on-demand as the vaccine season is incoming. That would require a lot of size-controlling. GeraldWL 16:26, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Bakkster Man I'd suggest considering WP:TYT and looking at other vaccine articles for guidance. Will the precise date make a difference? Doubtful. I'd advise that exact dates for implementation can be included in the specific vaccine article, but for this one and other general ones (like on the disease) more general dating (e.g. December 2020) would be appropriate. MartinezMD (talk) 05:16, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

I agree completely, that the general date makes more sense. I'll add that the Vaccine section has a very western-centric style, ignoring the Russian vaccine. Regardless of the concerns around its overall effectiveness, it was nevertheless approved for use in Russia back in August. I'll add this, with the caveat of being approved prior to phase III trials. Bakkster Man (talk) 16:29, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps something like "Vaccination started in Russia with their domestic vaccine in August 2020 and the worldwide with other vaccines in December 2020" with links to the appropriate articles. MartinezMD (talk) 02:27, 10 December 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 [5], 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)

• Still oppose, alas. The wholesale removal of the vaccine section was one of several concerns I raised above. I did a quick spot check on that, and it has not been addressed. I agree with Wikmoz above that shortening sections might be a more fruitful approach to take than eliminating them. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:18, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: remember that wikipedia is WP:NOTPERFECT. This sandbox proposal does not deal with vaccines. It just addresses the issue that this page is about the pandemic and not the disease (do you agree with this principle?). This proposal is just showing 2 first steps to fix this issue: reducing the LEAD (which is a duplicate of the disease page right now and out of topic) and condensing the disease section which is too long and out of topic. I agree with you vaccines should be treated, but elsewhere (I would cover them in the "International responses" section) and in depth from a pandemic/epidemiological perspective. If you agree that this is a first step in the right direction we can then continue and fix the rest. One step at the time! -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 17:49, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

• oppose just change it back to how it was before, theres no consensus here. --49.180.160.165 (talk) 13:23, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Gradual Approach

We have made a lot of progress towards clearly distinguishing pandemic from disease but after more than a month of discussion we haven't resolved all issues. Some crucial elements (such as the lead) still remain mostly unresolved. I think most agree on the principle but the solution needs to be addressed in a more granular way. To break the impasse I will proceed in the next few days with individual edits rather than with a single big edit. That way all the page watchers can verify the edit and we will see if there is consensus on a case by case basis. I will start by reducing the duplicated content in the lead. -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 19:19, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Made the first edits to the Lead: [6] -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 12:29, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

@Skdb: has reverted it: [7] Could you please explain precisely what your issues are with this exact edit please? You didn't specifically object to this edit before. We've been discussing those edits for months. Let's fix this problem once and for all. -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 13:24, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

I did specifically object to it; look at the quoted text within my 17:21 comment from November 16 above. And I've explained my broader objection to removing transmission/symptom/treatment information from the lead entirely. I don't in principle object to that information being condensed, but it's already quite condensed as is. If you want to put forward a proposal for a lead that condenses that information rather than just chopping it out, we can consider. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 13:34, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: could you please better explain why you think that content should be in this article lead? This article is about the Pandemic and NOT the disease as we agree. For example: we already have {{Coronavirus disease 2019]] and Symptoms of COVID-19 covering symptoms in depth and a specific section in this article. Why would you repeat it again in the lead? It goes against WP:MOSLEAD -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 13:46, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

I and others have already argued above why some aspects of the two are inseparable and it's therefore necessary to discuss concisely the disease on this page. Sorry, but I'm not going to repeat myself ad nauseum. Regarding MOS:LEAD, it advises that the lead be a condensed version of the body, so it's not a violation to have that information present. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 13:55, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Sdkb all I'm asking is for specific constructive criticism or counter proposals so that we may fix the issues you see with the edits. You are the only directly opposing voice in over a month of discussion. The more you can be specific the faster we will fix this.

How about the last edit? I've added a paragraph with some basic info and links to the main articles. The first sentences are from the specific articles which are linked. We might consider transcluding them but it might complicate things unnecessarily since it's just a couple of sentences. The virus that causes COVID-19 spreads mainly when an infected person is in close contact with another person. Symptoms of COVID-19 are variable, ranging from mild symptoms to severe illness. Although work is underway to develop drugs that inhibit the virus, the primary treatment is currently symptomatic. There are several vaccine candidates in development, although none has completed clinical trials. -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 14:52, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Gtoffoletto, I carefully restored what I think cannot justifiably be removed. We're still getting rid of some pretty essential information, such as basic description of the symptoms, but I can live with the current version. I agree it's okay to ditch the transclusion in the lead at this point, especially since the Coronavirus disease 2019 page has sadly substantially deteriorated and bloated. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:47, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Sdkb I'm sorry to see that you have reintroduced all of the duplicated and out of topic content. You actually made things even worse since you removed the transclusion from COVID-19 so you are causing even worse duplication (same content, just slightly different). Your edit is against the consensus that this page is about the pandemic and NOT the disease. You asked for a summary of essential information on the virus and I provided it as a compromise, with clear links if users want to know more [8]. Please specify what is your rationale for reintroducing all of that content or accept that other editors (such as Gerald Waldo Luis) have reviewed and edited it so we have consensus. I'll ping others from above so that we may end this unconstructive discussion Tenryuu Graham Beards Wikmoz WhatamIdoing Moxy. Let's see what others think of the edits above. We need to fix those duplication issues once and for all. This has been going for over a month and you are the only opposing vote. -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 01:50, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Please shake hands and agree that your dedication and passion to improving the quality of content on Wikipedia is amazing and that this article's readers are better off for your hard work. It took some back and forth editing to get there but the current lead actually looks good. By my count, it's 25% shorter than yesterday's version and still covers all the critical details. The remaining 1.5 paragraphs of blue-linked content about the disease look pretty good.

In general, I think everyone's done a great job over the last month of consolidating and organizing (and de-duping) content relating to the disease. I understand the argument for further cuts but as it is now, the content is doing no harm and there doesn't seem to be a strong consensus to remove it. Given current infection rates, I'm fine keeping things roughly where they are if only for the public health benefit. Next year, as the pandemic starts to become a historical event rather than a current event, there will be more opportunities to shift the focus of the article to a historical accounting. Using the 1918 pandemic as a reference, a certain amount of disease-specific information will obviously remain critical to properly explaining a pandemic. - Wikmoz (talk) 05:23, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Oppose the lead. It reads like a primary school second language english speaker wrote it, and has little to no useful information. --2001:8004:1400:500:5867:7795:A3FC:89BC (talk) 06:47, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

2001:8004, what sort of "useful information" were you expecting to find in this event-related article? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:30, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Given it is an article on the pandemic, it is currently useless. it would be useful to know exactly how it spreads and what symptoms it causes. If people want to know about the pandemic, they want to know what to look out for (the symptoms) and how it passes from person to person. Also its not helpful to have exact numbers or dates, they're irrelevant for an encyclopedia. Basically as a reader, one wants to know a rough impact (millions of people, perhaps hundreds of millions) then what the symptoms are and how it spreads, and how to avoid getting it. Like literally every other article on the issue. --49.180.160.165 (talk) 08:40, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

You're asking about the disease. There's a separate article for that. see Coronavirus disease 2019. MartinezMD (talk) 05:13, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

No, i dont think people should have to click through to to that, and they don't. It was better before, and the article now is medically wrong and pretty useless. --49.180.160.165 (talk) 13:24, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

We can't cover everything in one article. Agree with MartinezMD. We need to clarify that pandemic and disease are separate. This kind of confusion originates form the current unclear and duplicated approach. -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 18:26, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

"No, i dont think people should have to click through to to that, and they don't..." In this case though the IP is asking for more disease content in the pandemic topic. They'd need to scroll down to the symptoms overview section or follow the blue link. I think this is the right balance. - Wikmoz (talk) 02:32, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Interactive map

Screenshot, with the interactive map lagging.

Technical report here. For several days, my device (laptop, Microsoft Edge) has been not showing the interactive map, it kept load like as pictured. I tried the app version, and it also shows the loading screen. Is this a PEIS issue, or is the interactive map not working? Anyone with similar cases? Forgive me if I somehow violated WP:NOTFORUM or something. GeraldWL 07:40, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

It's not just you. Something is most likely broken with the map template. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 08:19, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Yep, I'm experiencing the same but thought it was just me; thanks for raising it here, Gerald. Pinging maintainer Wugapodes—any idea what's broken? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 09:37, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

I think this is related to the switch to client-side rendering but I'm not sure. I probably won't get around to this today as I'm busy in meatspace, but figuring it out will be my first priority when I get free time. — Wug·a·po·des​ 19:09, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

@Gerald Waldo Luis, Tenryuu, and Sdkb: Thanks for bringing this to my attention. It should be fixed now. Let me know if there are other problems! — Wug·a·po·des​ 23:12, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

@Wugapodes: Looks good now! —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) (🎁 Wishlist! 🎁) 23:16, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Wugapodes, Already fixed in my device. Thanks for the response! GeraldWL 03:16, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Pageview check

I don't think this requires any major action on our behalf, but just checking in on our pageviews, it seems the downward trend that began after March has continued and at this point mostly leveled off. It seems pandemic fatigue applies to reading about it, too (or just everyone has already read the page). We might get some upticks again as the vaccines start rolling out more widely, or that might go to the vaccine pages. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:54, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Slightly cleaner view of pageview history. - Wikmoz (talk) 02:21, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

I'm prob one of these pandemic fatigue people. The situation is so confusing, and the amount of news published every second is overwhelmingly much. Early 2021 might see a spike, but that's kinda it. It'll reduce as the pandemic starts to get outdated. GeraldWL 05:06, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Restoring collapsing of infobox maps

Resolved

 – The templates have been fixed and are no longer causing errors. - Sdkb (Talk) 22:23, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Following up from Talk:COVID-19 pandemic/Archive 41#Errors in Infobox, changes at Template talk:Collapsed infobox section begin#LintHint errors so that we'll be able to restore the collapsing of the secondary maps in the infobox is either pending or stalled, depending on how you want to read the discussion. My view is that while it's pending we should go back to having the collapsing, since getting the right behavior for the vast majority of readers is more important than any hypothetical issues that might be introduced by the lint errors. But hopefully it'll get resolved soon. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 09:52, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Translation: "any hypothetical issues that might be introduced by the lint errors" translates to "it works OK for me, so I am willing to create a Wikipedia page that can't be read at all by some users."

Generating valid HTML is 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.

As was explained to you previously, these are not "hypothetical issues". Sending invalid HTML to browsers causes all sort of problems and often results in a page that is so mangled that it is unreadable -- but only for some users. For other users it works just fine, fooling them into thinking that there is no problem.

Many browsers detect the HTML 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. I know of at least one browser that simply refuses to display the invalid HTML but does display the rest of the page. Look at the sections you want to collapse. Do you really want those sections to disappear for some users?

If you limit yourself to valid HTML the page will pretty much be displayed correctly in every browser.

In my opinion, if parts of your infobox need to be collapsed, your infobox is too large and crammed with too much material. --Guy Macon (talk) 11:42, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

I temporarily restored the collapsing for the time being, because whoever deleted the collapsing headers forgot to add the map descriptions (which were only present in those headers) back into the captions. Paintspot Infez (talk) 23:04, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

HTML errors are not acceptable, even temporarily. If you can't figure out how to add map descriptions without generating HTML errors, do without map descriptors.

The pernicious thing about HTML errors is that the page might look fine to you because your browser happens to handle HTML errors in a way that looks OK to you. It might also look fine to someone else using another browser but they won't see the same thing you see because each browser handles HTML errors in a different way. And a third person might not be able to see the page -- or perhaps just a part of the page -- at all.

If you are going to edit infoboxes in ways that are likely to generate HTML errors, install WP:LintHint and run it when you preview the page before publishing it. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:02, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Guy Macon, if you care this much about getting rid of the errors (your latest reversion borders on edit warring), would you be willing to create a sandbox of {{Collapsed infobox section begin}} and {{Collapsed infobox section end}} that fixes the issue? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 13:20, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

As I have explained to you repeatedly, if I could fix it myself I would have. I did try to fix a sandbox version. I failed. And it is not my responsibility to figure out how you can format an infobox without creating HTML errors. It is your responsibility to either figure out how to do what you want to do without creating HTML errors or to give up and do without.

As for your snarky "if you care this much about..." comment, do I really have to post an RfC at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) asking whether knowingly creating HTML errors in order to get a page formatted the way you like is allowed? We both know that the consensus will be over 90% against you. This will be my last response to you. I am not going to argue about this any further. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:43, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

What the f**** happened people, we are just contributing. GeraldWL 04:59, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Guy Macon, there was zero snark intended in my comment, and I'm not quite sure where all the heat in this discussion is coming from. To lay things out clearly: There are (for now) two contradictory consensuses here. The first is the presumed consensus that we should try to avoid lint errors, and the second is the consensus that {{Collapsed infobox section begin}} may be used in articles when desired (as is the case here, per the discussions linked from current consensus items 2 and 7, which established that we should collapse all but the primary map). We agree that a technical fix would be best, but we disagree on which consensus should be prioritized in the meantime. Unfortunately for you, the collapsing is the status quo, so that is what will be retained if no fix comes, and the burden is on whoever wants to resolve the lint errors to push for the fix. I would highly suggest that you focus your energies on pushing for that (something you're in a much better position to do, given that you have the relevant technical knowledge) rather than edit warring and arguing to try to get your interim approach to stick. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:41, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

• Better to collapse the box. --49.180.160.165 (talk) 08:41, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Odd to reintroduce errors considering the collapsing only works for less then 40 percent of readers (those viewing on desktops). --Moxy 🍁 12:37, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, we've noticed before that the collapsing doesn't work on mobile (one of many areas in which WP lags in mobile development). I'd definitely like to see that fixed, so if there's a discussion on it at some point, feel free to ping me and I'll contribute as best I can. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:28, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

I consolidated the maps here. Could we perhaps just add a COVID-19 maps link below the caption of the first map in the infobox and remove the rest? - Wikmoz (talk) 06:10, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Responses

Gerald the main article does not say anything about the responses of African Nations. In fact the "National Responses" section just summarizes the COVID-19 pandemic cases on the continent making it inadequate in terms of actual responses. However, countries from all other continents except Oceania have summaries of their various national responses. If Africa doesn't have any of that, the least that can be done is sharing a link on an article which provides that information. Other than that then there is no need for an African section in the "National responses" since it does it provide any meaningful summary of any effort taken by African Nations.

This article has too much templates. I think it's better to keep it to just the main article. What effort taken by African nations do you believe should be included in the subsection? GeraldWL 16:51, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

If it increases the templates then fine, I won't argue further. We can forget about it. However, you can choose any of the responses from countries such as Ghana, South Africa,Mauritius and Namibia simce they have decent information. You can also check the National responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa and choose any of your choice. If is going to be troublesome; alright, I won't push this further. Kwesi Yema (talk) 17:00, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Kwesi Yema, you can add information by yourself per WP:BOLD, adding important information is never troublesome. However if another editor reverts it, prepare for a discussion. GeraldWL 17:14, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Alright. Kwesi Yema (talk) 17:19, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

• @Gerald Waldo Luis and Kwesi Yema: This relates to current consensus item 5, which as I noted in the to-do list a while ago, is looking overdue for a refresh. But it needs to happen systematically, not just for individual countries. This article is stuffed to the brim already and we don't have room to add an individual section for every decently-sized country. I'm open to arguments that Africa deserves more coverage (we should always be on the lookout for systemic bias), but I'll need those to be placed within a framework that articulates why they qualify as part of a short list that wouldn't also allow 30 others that would bring this page back over the technical size limit. Overall, we ought to be increasingly moving toward region-based or continent-based summaries rather than country-based summaries, since there just isn't room for greater detail than that. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:42, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Sdkb, I agree as well. The responses of Nations should be summarized in another whole article. Due to the size limit of this huge article, readers will think Wikipedia was being biased to let's say, Africa for example, when that was not the case. For the responses of several African Nations, another huge article was created to at least provide coverage of the region. Kwesi Yema (talk) 23:32, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

The "other whole article" is COVID-19 pandemic by country and territory. The issue is that we can't just say "no discussing individual countries" for this page, since a few paragraphs on e.g. the U.S. or China is clearly warranted. The question then becomes where to draw the line. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 03:35, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Sdkb National responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa provides the responses of African Nations from the North to South. There is another article that talks about responses from governments all over the world starting from Asia to Europe. Kwesi Yema (talk) 13:02, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

What to expect when you visit a Covid-19 testing centre - video

Hi all. I've uploaded a video made by the Welsh Government which shows a woman arriving at a Covid-19 testing centre, doing the test, and leaving the centre. It's under CC-BY and an OGL, and could be included in the article. If no other governments are uploading everything they have on open licences, then maybe we need to acknowledge that the Welsh Government do, and are unique - correct me if I'm wrong! PS Their other videos are here: List of Welsh Government Covid-19 press conference videos. Help yourselves! Llywelyn2000 (talk) 07:18, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

I think including this would be quite misleading. Different health authorities use different tests; if we lead all readers to assume that the oral-nasal swab shown here is standard, it has the potential to be very confusing to people given (for instance) the saliva test used in much of the US, into thinking that they haven't been "properly" tested because nobody put a giant q-tip up their nose. There's so much misinformation already in circulation; we need to be careful not to inadvertently mislead readers into thinking that the approach of one particular country or state is the "correct" approach. ‑ Iridescent 07:44, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes, unless of course it was made clear that this isn't a global standard, but just an example of how one country attacks the problem. In Wales, this is the standard, and is no way "misinformation"!!! Llywelyn2000 (talk) 07:52, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

The issue is that Wikipedia is heavily mirrored, and this article in particular is extremely heavily mirrored and excerpted, and we have no way of ensuring that any disclaimer we put on it remains on it. Were this video to be included in any article—and particularly a high-traffic article like this one—we're publishing, in Wikipedia's voice, "Walk through testing centres: this is what you can expect", when it's not what many and perhaps most of our readers can actually expect. Thus, we'd be potentially misleading people who'd had a saliva, sputum or pinprick test into thinking they hadn't been fully tested, because none of the things they were led to expect formed part of the procedure took place. (This kind of systemic bias, in which works of the US federal government and the government(s) of the UK and its devolved administrations are easier to re-use and consequently the way things happen to be done in one or both of those countries is presented on Wikipedia as the preferred way such a thing should be done, is a regular issue. It's not any criticism either of you or of the Welsh government; because there's no easy way to annotate third-party videos to make it clear that they're illustrating a specific method rather than a general treatment, issues like this turn up regularly.) ‑ Iridescent 14:40, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

In general we just don't put health recommendations or protocols. GeraldWL 15:01, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

But this isn't a "recommendation", it's an illustration. If there were only a single type of test I'd have no issue with showing how it's performed, but as it stands this would be like having a "how contraception works" diagram that only mentions condoms. ‑ Iridescent 15:13, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Suggestion: Could the issue be resolved by using a video caption to make it abundantly clear that this is only one form of testing that is being conducted by one out of many governments in the world? I'm not sure if consensus can work like this, but could the file description mandate the presence of such information to deter misinformation on here (not sure if it could extend to any mirrors)? —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) (🎁 Wishlist! 🎁) 21:53, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Llywelyn2000, we have too much media in this article, and that video is an example of WP:HOWTO. GeraldWL 07:57, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

It's a great video but as noted above, it details instructions (QR code, etc) for a specific testing location and self-test procedure for a specific test. This will not be relevant to most readers. - Wikmoz (talk) 23:39, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks everyone! No problem! I can see that it could potentially mislead a reader who hasn't read the description. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 03:45, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Suggestion: Llywelyn2000 great attitude! I agree this might not be the place to use a video like this. This page is about the pandemic and we should be careful not to go out of topic or mislead. But it may be more relevant somewhere like here: COVID-19 testing -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 19:14, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

MEDRS

CDC AND WHO IS MEDRS. NOT CEBM and BMJ OR Imperial College London[9] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2020ITBN (talk • contribs) 12:03, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Delegates with more knowledge on MEDRSes than me, mind validating this claim? GeraldWL 12:08, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Seems like a slightly delusional "forum post" type rant and worthy of deletion, which I hope an admin can do soon (GWL, you could have done so, instead of responding), as now it has responses. GWL, I give you permission to remove my response along with the original message. BE BOLD--Quisqualis (talk) 15:34, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Quisqualis, I... don't understand . The user adhered to WP:BRD and took it to here. I am not to speak on what are MEDRSes, so I responded by asking others if CEM and BMJ is in fact a MEDRS, or context-wise, the article cited it a MEDRS. Unless the validity is answered this won't be closed. GeraldWL 15:38, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Gerald Waldo Luis, the OP didn't point us to any post or edit, and so appeared delusional. It would have worked better if they posted on your talk page. They can be referred to WP:MEDRS to check the validity of their assertion, I believe. Judging by the all-caps, they are too distraught to find MEDRS, so best to provide them with the link.--Quisqualis (talk) 16:17, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Gerald Waldo Luis and Quisqualis, I believe 2020ITBN was referring to this reverted edit. In this case the question is, do these three sources adhere to MEDRS guidelines (not policy) or are they enough of a meta-analysis or description of consensus to be considered appropriate secondary sources? One other consideration is that if any of these sources seem to be minority opinions, we may just need to be WP:DUE and appropriately frame them as such and reduce their page space as they deserve. Bakkster Man (talk) 14:43, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Organizations like the CDC and WHO are typically MEDRS and are specifically mentioned in WP:MEDRS as such. CEBM and Chochrane typically are as well but need specific review of the assertion. BMJ is a medical journal capable of publishing a variety of articles that have different strengths in regard to MEDRS. In this particular case (linked by Bakkster), I don't think the CEBM position is strong enough if conflicting with other secondary sources. They are making observations of changing fatality rates rather than an overall one. MartinezMD (talk) 22:09, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

I generally agree with this analysis, with the addition that the other secondary sources that differ in their final analysis don't necessarily need to be removed from the article. As long as the CDC and WHO are given prominence, and the differing estimates are reasonable secondary sources given proper context and weight, they can stay. I'd suggest this might be the ideal situation, to make it clear that all these estimates are only as good as their source data, and we might not have reliable IFR numbers for years (if ever). So long as they aren't quacks and have due weight in the text, why not? Bakkster Man (talk) 22:44, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

CDC and WHO are NOT given prominence because the others are too detailed. In addition, there are many seintists in the world with some concolusions--2020ITBN (talk) 08:01, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

2020ITBN, wut? GeraldWL 08:13, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

I dont understand. what is it mean( wut) --2020ITBN (talk) 08:17, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

2020ITBN, instead I don't understand what you mean by "CDC and WHO are NOT given prominence because the others are too detailed. In addition, there are many seintists in the world with some concolusions" GeraldWL 08:18, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Bakkster Man wrote "As long as the CDC and WHO are given prominence, and the differing estimates are reasonable secondary sources given proper context and weight, they can stay". it does not happend in this case --2020ITBN (talk) 08:25, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

2020ITBN, mind explaining how CDC and WHO are not reliable sources per WP:RS and WP:MEDRS, in the case of infection fatality ratio? Both websites have been used in nearly all medical articles, and are in most cases accepted. GeraldWL 08:28, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

because of that, I think it is better to list only them --2020ITBN (talk) 08:42, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

2020ITBN, this is confusing. You first stated "CDC and WHO are NOT given prominence", implying that you don't think CDC and WHO are MEDRSes. Now you state it's best to cite only them. So I'm assuming you propose removing CEBM and BMJ. Why so? If neither of my assumptions is correct, can you please state your concern in a simpler way? GeraldWL 08:44, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

I think CEBM BMJ and espacially John Ioannidis(why one men is mentioned so detailed here and not any other seintists ) dont need be in this Artice (COVID-19 pandemic) because MEDRS. I think they are too detailed in relation to the CDC in this article. If they will be mention, they need be shorter.--2020ITBN (talk) 08:58, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

2020ITBN, "(why one men is mentioned so detailed here and not any other seintists )"-- what do you meaaannnn? What do you mean "one men", "Ioannidis", "detailed"? CEBM and BMJ are respected medical journals, so unless their article or post is a hoax, it is considered MEDRS. GeraldWL 09:32, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

i dont understand why article of one scientist is so detailed in this Artice (COVID-19 pandemic). if i will find 50 articles of 50 seintists, will this Artice (COVID-19 pandemic) will incluce them.?--2020ITBN (talk) 09:45, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

2020ITBN, to be a MEDRS or RS, you don't need 50 writers or 1000000000000 writers. One is fine, 2 is fine, 100000000000000000000000 is also fine, as long as it is factual and relevant. GeraldWL 09:58, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

the problem is that it can be Minority opinion or Single opinion --2020ITBN (talk) 10:08, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

2020ITBN, "it can be"-- so read the source. CEBM and BMJ publish studies, not opinions. And in rare cases, minority or single opinion are allowed, if attribution is given. GeraldWL 10:21, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

John Ioannidis, not CEBM and BMJ--2020ITBN (talk) 10:27, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

2020ITBN, read the source first. That way you can know if it's an opinion article or legit facts. Then quote the article and report why the article shouldn't be cited. Your concern seems to be primarily about the number of writers-- frankly that doesn't affect whether the article is facts or not. You can have 999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 writers and still be a hoax. GeraldWL 10:30, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Gerald Waldo Luis I think I can help describe some of 2020ITBN's concerns. I don't think there's any dispute that CDC and WHO are MEDRS, rather that these additional sources should potentially have less weight.

Regarding prominence, I think he's suggesting the amount of text spent covering the two Ioannidis sources is potentially so long that it's WP:UNDUE. Particularly if it's a contrary view to the consensus (which is one of the main goals of the WP:MEDRS guidelines) like the Ioannidis articles could be considered to be. Which doesn't mean they can't be included, but MEDRS suggests we should ensure they're clearly described as contrarian views. There's also a bit of a question about why this single author has a whole paragraph for these two studies, and not any other individual meta-analyses. I can understand the first source and am very much in favor of keeping it, since it was published by the WHO. The second article I'd argue doesn't belong here, certainly not for the quotes included in the article. The goal of the paper is to estimate the final mortality of the pandemic, but rather than citing those numbers (1.76-8.76M deaths globally), we're quoting his critiques of other source numbers. On further review, I'm hesitant to even consider this a secondary source, since it's not performing a review of other's total pandemic fatality estimates. Instead, he's taking others estimates of fatality, adjusting them as he sees fit, and calculating his own value. This makes it a primary source. I'm going to remove that source for the time being due to this.

Regarding the remainder (BMJ, the two CEBM, and Nature), I think they all pass muster of being reliable, reviewed secondary sources. In some cases (the Nature review particularly) some trimming to avoid the impression of WP:UNDUE is warranted. We needn't spend more space discussing the Nature review than the WHO's official estimates. Bakkster Man (talk) 14:44, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

OK --2020ITBN (talk) 10:34, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

About the issue of Taiwan's status

Hello, guys. Under National responses-Asia, the description clearly mentions Taiwan as a state.

As of 30 April 2020, cases have been reported in all Asian countries except for Turkmenistan and North Korea, although these countries likely also have cases. Despite being the first area of the world hit by the outbreak, the early wide-scale response of some Asian states, particularly Mongolia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam, has allowed them to fare comparatively well. As of 9 December 2020, Singapore has the lowest case fatality rate in the world, at 0.51 deaths per 100,000.

I am not saying that I disagree with this statement. But I think that there are at least a billion people that do not agree with the statement. Since one of the purposes of Wikipedia should be making the article as neutral as possible, I think it is better to change the word "States" to "States/Regions," like this:

As of 30 April 2020, cases have been reported in all Asian countries except for Turkmenistan and North Korea, although these countries likely also have cases. Despite being the first area of the world hit by the outbreak, the early wide-scale response of some Asian states/regions, particularly Mongolia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam, has allowed them to fare comparatively well. As of 9 December 2020, Singapore has the lowest case fatality rate in the world, at 0.51 deaths per 100,000.

In a statement, Taiwan will no longer be a state. It will also not be a region as well. Instead, it will be either of them. Thus, the entire global population will agree with it.

The second change that I believe should be done is to change "Taiwan" to "Taiwan(Republic of China)," like this:

As of 30 April 2020, cases have been reported in all Asian countries except for Turkmenistan and North Korea, although these countries likely also have cases. Despite being the first area of the world hit by the outbreak, the early wide-scale response of some Asian states/regions, particularly Mongolia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan(Repulic of China), and Vietnam, has allowed them to fare comparatively well. As of 9 December 2020, Singapore has the lowest case fatality rate in the world, at 0.51 deaths per 100,000.

Taiwan can both be the Taiwan island, which is a geographic region, and the Republic of China, which is a government. Obviously, it means the Republic of China in this case.--The193thdoctor (talk) 08:07, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

The193thdoctor, I can support the first. But not the second, since the word "Taiwan" already has a link to its article on the country. In very very very very very very very very very very very very very (yes that much) rare cases do disambiguation need to be put in prose. GeraldWL 07:33, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

I rethought about it, and I think that you are correct. When I first thought of this issue, the second actually serves as an alternative to the first change because Republic of China sounds more likely to be a state than Taiwan. But With the first change, the second will actually be redundant. Anyway, we need more opinions for a consensus.--The193thdoctor (talk) 08:07, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

@The193thdoctor: There was recently a massive (as in, you can spend an hour reading it) Request for Comment about the status of Taiwan; you can find it at Talk:Taiwan/Archive_30#RfC:_Taiwan,_"country"_or_"state". The result there was that Taiwan should be described as a country. Per WP:CONLEVEL, we are obligated to follow the lead of that very large discussion. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 08:08, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: First, most people from mainland China cannot access Wikipedia. Therefore, most systems based on voting cannot yield the correct result. Secondly and formostly, we cannot omit the opinions of the few people. The minority's opinion also counts. This is why I neither referred to Taiwan as a "state," "country," nor "region." I used "state/region" to avoid any further controversy. --The193thdoctor (talk) 09:04, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

The193thdoctor we're not going to solve the anomalous situation of Taiwan whichever way we refer to it in the article. To my mind, the word state is already sufficiently ambiguous, even if, in English, China uses the word province. In a medical context, I understand that Taiwan submits its statistics to the WHO independently, but the WHO does not list them independently at all. Such is the state of the world. Chris55 (talk) 16:24, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Refs
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
References

Covid-19 vaccine statistics

Can I make page, statistics table or something about statistics of COVID-19 vaccinations like COVID-19 pandemic by country and territory? Regards Dede2008 (talk) 13:43, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Which statistics do you want to add? I'd note that results like efficacy from the Phase III trials would need to be handled with care, given we only have primary sources (the trial itself) of the performance of the vaccines. While WP:MEDRS doesn't explicitly prohibit using these, they should be treated with due weight so the reader understands the trial results may not be reliable. COVID-19 vaccine#Vaccines has a pretty comprehensive set of tables, and seems like the right place to add any additional data (if what you're looking for isn't there already). Bakkster Man (talk) 14:35, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

"COVID-19 Pandemic" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect COVID-19 Pandemic. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 December 31#COVID-19 Pandemic until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. JsfasdF252 (talk) 23:25, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Article assessment

Gerald Waldo Luis recently downgraded the assessment of this page to C-class. Looking at Wikipedia:Content assessment, I think the page meets all of the B-class criteria, so I reverted, and they reinstated their edit with summary Nah. Lots of citation neededs, excessive images, ongoing disputes, possible gramatical errors... in general it would be safe to keep huge current events articles C-class. I don't deny that there's plenty of room for improvement, but the B-class criteria are not that strict, and I don't see any that this article seems to fail. What do others think? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 10:02, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Sdkb, I know B is not that high of a class, but knowing the current editing activity of the article and the many wars it has seen recently, it would be safe to keep it C, so that we don't have to constantly re-rate it. Post-pandemic, less people will edit this article, and we can clean the mess, then upgrade it to B. For me, this article does not meet "suitably referenced, with inline citations" and "reasonably well-written." GeraldWL 10:10, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

I agree w/ the opinion of Sdkb(w/ all due respect to any editor that does not)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:54, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Article as large as this probably shouldn't be rated C, but the article as it is is a bit of a mess. For example, someone removed practically the entire subsection on China, which seriously distorted the entire section on national response given the section on China might be the most important one there. What's left in the China section is nothing particularly significant nor illuminating, could just as well delete it. So, leave it at C for now given that it is still missing important content. Hzh (talk) 15:45, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

"The pandemic has caused global social and economic disruption, including the largest global recession since the Great Depression." This statement is completely false. The pandemic has had zero effect on any economy. The POLITICAL RESPONSE has caused all the disruptions. The disease has no agency. It's the equivalent of claiming Boeing Aircraft destroyed the Twin Towers — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.32.165.186 (talk) 18:26, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

It was previously "the responses", but got changed. Feel free to change it again. GeraldWL 18:28, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Thats not true at all. The disruption occurs because of the pandemic and the responses. See Sweden - as bad or as worse economy as rest of europe, while avoiding the responses. Now they have to lockdown anyway. --144.130.152.1 (talk) 09:47, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

No lockdown is not the same as having no responses. Hzh (talk) 13:28, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

I concur that it is 'pandemic and responses' causing the impacts. Even if the government and private responses are the majority of the impact, millions of people being unable to work for 1-2 weeks while sick is an impact. Bakkster Man (talk) 14:45, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

I doubt the effect due to absence from work would be that significant, particularly when people can work from home. Nearly a million people are off sick for a month or longer in the UK every year, and 130 million days are lost through illness [10], and you don't really see anything significant even if you can calculate the cost to the economy. In this case, the only serious effect would be an overwhelmed health service, which is not mentioned in the paragraph. The deaths are also disproportionately elderly, compared to say, AIDS which is estimated to have caused 30 million deaths to younger, economically productive people, and that should have a worse effect, but economically the effect was minor overall if noticeable at all. Hzh (talk) 13:13, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

should some of this go into article?

15 January, from Secretary of State US gov.comEnsuring a Transparent, Thorough Investigation of COVID-19’s Origin...

WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses. This raises questions about the credibility...

Starting in at least 2016, WIV researchers studied RaTG13, the bat coronavirus identified by the WIV in January 2020 as its closest sample to SARS-CoV-2 (96.2% similar)....--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 23:49, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

It's definitely speculative. I'd say until they make an assertion, perhaps directly accusing them, I would leave it out. MartinezMD (talk) 01:30, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

Removal of close-up, civilian face mask image from this page

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Image in question. Caption: The CDC and WHO advise that masks reduce the spread of coronavirus by asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic individuals (Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen pictured wearing a surgical mask)

It is a salient aspect of the history of the and fact of the fight against the pandemic to include a close-up image of non-medical people who are not sick wearing masks casually. Geographyinitiative (talk) 16:30, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Geographyinitiative, see my latest revert for reasoning. Per WP:3RR and since this article is guarded by the ArbCom homies, I will only make 2 reverts on the image-- I have made 3 reverts in 24hs. GeraldWL 16:35, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Close up of non-medical persons who are not sick wearing mask to prevent the spread of the pandemic is needed. Medical personnel wore masks before the pandemic and hence showing them wearing a mask is nothing new. The image shows part of a successful attempt to prevent the pandemic in a region and is a long-standing image here. It is a helpful guide to illiterate, semi-literate persons or people studying English as a second language (all of whom are among the readers of Wikipedia) who want to see exactly what it would look like for non-sick, non-medical personnel to wear a mask. In the future for historical reasons, people may want to see what mask-wearing practice was like in the early days of the pandemic. Geographyinitiative (talk) 16:38, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

The type of mask that this person is wearing has to be "fluffed out"- you have to pull the top and bottom to cover your nose and chin. However, some people unfamiliar with masks don't realize you can do this- they just think you put the mask on your ears and your done. This image shows the readers that kind of mask and shows that you can expand the total coverage over your face of the mask. Geographyinitiative (talk) 16:49, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Geographyinitiative, can you attempt that approach without cramming the area with images? In my summary, I recommended public images of wearing masks-- this is not available in this article, the Spain one only showed soc-dist. I find the Tsai-ing wen image to be too inside; the pandemic affects the public so I feel like it's best to represent "successful attempt to prevent the pandemic" with such photos. I find https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:20200312_Siheung_pharmacy_1.jpg to be a decent replacement if the image cram is resolved. Other than the latter, this image seems to be able to address your concern: "In the future for historical reasons, people may want to see what mask-wearing practice was like in the early days of the pandemic." GeraldWL 16:51, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Please be careful with what you are doing here. This is long-established imagery in this section. First of all, we need a close-up of a non-sick, non-medical person with a mask on for this page. That's what this is. The demonstration image of a dude with a stick up his nose is way less valuable in terms of history and spreading worthwhile information to the semi literate readers, but that's a long-established image too, so I don't want to just get rid of it. There's another good place for this mask image on this page, but I really want to let the readers see what it means for a non-medical person that was never anywhere close to sick to be actively wearing a mask in the early stages of the pandemic. That is closely associated with Prevention (hence in the prevention section). We need to show people what prevention looks like man. Geographyinitiative (talk) 17:03, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Geographyinitiative, I don't understand what should I be scared of from the tone of your message. A long-established imagery can be changed under discussion-- here we are. Yes, I know, you want to give a pic of what prevention looks like, but we must do that with a careful approach, not just flippy-flopping images everywhere like Stonehenges at a hill peak. Can you review the Commons image I shared up there, and give an opinion on it being a replacement? And if you really want a prevention image there, can you try resolve the image cram? GeraldWL 17:12, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

First of all, the image [11] is not a close-up of a non-sick, non-medical person wearing a mask, which is what the article will lack if the current mask image is removed. Second of all, social distancing is ignored by the people in the proposed image. The Prevention section should show people modeling actually correct preventative behavior. Geographyinitiative (talk) 17:17, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Geographyinitiative, why would we need a close-up photo? The people pictured are non-medical. I see your point on social distance; I found [12], see if you find it better. It seems like the people there follow soc-dist. Image can be cropped for less space. GeraldWL 17:42, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

In the second proposed image, the two girls in the cafe are not social distancing (and a third is not wearing a mask outside the establishment).[13] Most of the people who will read this article are not sick and are not medical personnel, or will be reading this in the future. With the present image, we have an example of someone who is wearing the mask near perfectly (is there a flaw?- if so, no one has seen it nigh these last seven or eight months) so it's a model image of a real prevention effort. A close-up of a non medical non sick person is needed so that when you scroll through the article as a semi-literate person or as a person with not a lot of time to read the whole article, you KNOW which section is about the way to wear a mask correctly. Geographyinitiative (talk) 17:49, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

I'm not a fan of either File:20200312_Siheung_pharmacy_1.jpg or File:Café du Gros Caillou (Lyon) 180 Boulevard de la Croix-Rousse.jpg as a replacement—the masks in them will barely show up at thumb resolution, and they're both a lot more visually cluttered. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 02:25, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Remove: The section has been shortened considerably and the CDC graphic is the better image for this space. I understand the regional political benefit of featuring an image of Tsai Ing-wen in this context but it doesn't add much for the reader at this point. The photo may have been there for a long time but we don't select images based on seniority. I see that Geographyinitiative was the original contributor of the image in COVID-19 pandemic, COVID-19 pandemic in Taiwan, and Masks. It's also the featured image in Face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic, which is linked from the section so it remains very discoverable. - Wikmoz (talk) 21:48, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

The implications of what you are saying here is pretty rough. The idea proposed implies that I am essentially hijacking the number one viewed page on Wikipedia to promote a political agenda during a worldwide pandemic. That would make me one sick puppy. In the truth outside that crazy world (calm down), what I have for you is a picture (from my area of expertise, which is China-Taiwan related edits) of a well-known, powerful Asian woman taking the measures necessary to prevent the disease, and doing so successfully. What do you want- another white person image? Another man? People are visual creatures. The readers want to how to prevent the disease. When semi-literate people scroll through this article looking for what to do to prevent themseleves from getting sick, there they have an image of a person in a mask. They know where to start reading. Get that stick-in-the-nose white man demonstration photo out of here. The other two images proposed above as replacements were horse shit- it was never about the readers getting a better image, it was always about taking down the image just because it's Ms. Tsai. There's nothing wrong with showing Ms. Tsai here, unless there's a better image etc etc. Censorship. Geographyinitiative (talk) 23:25, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

I think we're actually on the same side politically. I also agree that Tsai Ing-wen and Taiwan's pandemic response was exceptional. I'm just not factoring that in as a reason to keep the photo in the disease section. And I really hope it's not a reason that other editors would want to remove the photo.

"A well-known, powerful Asian woman taking the measures necessary to prevent the disease... Get that stick-in-the-nose white man demonstration photo out of here... it was always about taking down the image just because it's Ms. Tsai... The implications of what you are saying here is pretty rough."

For me, it's just not a compelling photo and she certainly doesn't appear to be a civilian. Happy to go with the consensus though. For the record, I'd equally support removal or replacement of the swab demonstration photo (maybe I'm just fatigued from seeing it so much) and SARS-CoV illustration. They're not great images either.

"Despite being the first area of the world hit by the outbreak, the early wide-scale response of some Asian states, particularly Mongolia,[272] South Korea,[273] Taiwan,[274] and Vietnam,[275] has allowed them to fare comparatively well." This seems like the right section to highlight/expand on Taiwan's success, given it's leading the world at 0.03 deaths per 100,000. - Wikmoz (talk) 04:14, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

• Keep. This isn't the first time there's been an attempt to remove that image, and I've never understood the animus against it (I have a vague suspicion some of it may have to do with Taiwan politics, although I AGF for any given editor). Personally, I think it's one of the stronger visuals we have, since graphically it's very clean. I'm less a fan of the infographic because the text is tiny unless you click it and it seems to lean toward WP:HOWTO. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 02:21, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

  Sdkb, I have no knowledge over the controversy of Taiwan politics, so it would be a stab in the chest if I was accused of politically-motivated edits or requests. The intent of placing that image, along with the infographic, feels like a WP:HOWTO, as you stated. My whole support revolves around the image congestion in that area of Diagnosis-Prevention. In the revision I saw as of now, the vaccines map is pushed to treatment due to the large infographic. Now I support removing the infographic and keeping the Tsai image, Geographyinitiative. I just feel like there can be a better image representing the public, mask mandates, and social distancing, which the latter unfortunately failed to. GeraldWL 04:44, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

• keep there's no good reason to remove...IMO--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 02:24, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
• Keep The article generally and (more specifically) the "Prevention" section of the article needs a close-up photo of someone who was never sick and who isn't medical personnel wearing a face mask. Semi-literate people looking to Wikipedia during the pandemic need to see an image that is clearly about how normal people could/should wear a face mask, and this image shows them which part of the article to look at. It's also a pretty good image. In the end, the image informs the readership of the article about good practice with respect to how a mask is actually worn on one's face and (in the future) shows how prevention was done in the early days of the pandemic historically- the image is from April or March 2020. I go into more detail above about these conclusions. I chose the picture because I found it while doing similar edits in my area of expertise several months ago- I used to do more edits on the spread of the pandemic in Taiwan, Tajikistan and Asia generally. I have been accused of bludgeoning elsewhere, so I will bow out here and let the process go forward. Geographyinitiative (talk) 08:30, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

  Geographyinitiative, please see my reply to Sdkb to understand what I actually meant from opposing your stance. But if TL;DR-- WP:HOWTO is robust in this case, and there's just too much image. GeraldWL 08:43, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Okay- I will read your post in 36 to 48 hours hours and respond only because you have specifically pinged me. I do not want to get into a flame war here and I will not do any other responses beside that response. Geographyinitiative (talk) 08:48, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

I see other people making statements here. If they can not answer any specific question, then let me know and I will come back to make a further statement. As I said, I want to minimize the chance that I will accidentally bludgeon the conversation. Geographyinitiative (talk) 01:29, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

• Keep The image shows a high-profile national leader who was an early adopter of the recommendations. I also wonder if anti-Taiwan politics has been a factor, but regardless, it is very appropriate to use. MartinezMD (talk) 02:33, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

  MartinezMD, see above thread for more info. Spoiler: it has nothing to do with politics. GeraldWL 05:07, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

EVERYTHING on Wikipedia has to do with politics.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.32.165.186 (talk)

• Keep. Taiwan was one of the first places to suppress COVID-19 spread throughout. Its leader is definitely notable for this content. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) (🎁 Wishlist! 🎁) 05:08, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
• comment looks like the consensus is to keep--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 14:51, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

  Ozzie10aaaa, the consensus is not based on votes, but rather who has the most compelling argument. Of course, this is not saying that my argument is somehow most compelling. But my concern on the excessive image seems to not have been acknowledged, and that is literally why this section exist. GeraldWL 14:59, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

It doesn't appear there will be any consensus to remove in this discussion. However, the keep arguments skew to the image being a good example of national leadership rather than a compelling photo of a civilian wearing a mask. I'd lean towards moving the photo to the 'National responses' section, perhaps replacing the Trump photo (moving that one to North America). Or at the top of the Asia section. However, if there's no clear consensus for this, it looks like we just keep things stacked. - Wikmoz (talk) 06:04, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Please do not deprive the Disease section of the article from its only real-life image of a non-sick non-medical person preventing the disease just for political reasons. [14] Geographyinitiative (talk) 07:08, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Geographyinitiative, not so much related to whatever this sub-thread is about, but we can end this discussion once and for all if you can give ideas on how to resolve the excessive amount of images in the place where the Tsai image is placed at. Do you agree on removing the CDC poster per WP:HOWTO? GeraldWL 15:58, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

I'd oppose removal of the CDC image. It's the best graphic we have so far that covers all aspects of prevention. WP:NOTHOWTO from my read intends to discourage creation of instruction articles and sections. In this case, an illustration of two people six standing feet apart is ok. Creating a new 'Implementing social distancing' section with instruction on purchasing and laying floor laminates is inappropriate. - Wikmoz (talk) 21:08, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

The subheading "Prevention" is pushed several indents away due to the image above, thus the position of the Further template becomes weird. Due to the CDC infographic image, the texts are pushed to center-left, making it the focal point of the readers; thus the CDC image will not be viewed in detail by many readers. It is also a lazy replacement of encyclopedic writing, and violates the rule of Wikipedia on never giving medical advices. Around this area, there's just too much images.

Wikmoz, I disagree that the image is of high need in an encyclopedia article which is supposed to write aspects of prevention in their own words. It seems like there's no need for an instruction infographic to be here, unless the image is subject to high historical relevance, such as being one of the most popular/widespread posters on the pandemic. The infographic is not merely "an illustration of two people six standing feet apart," but a concise manual, which is not what Wikipedia expectedly covers.

However we'll see if Geographyinitiative thinks we should keep it. If it is established that the CDC image is important, then the main question is how can we treat that image overkill. GeraldWL 07:00, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Im not seeing image overkill--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:54, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Ozzie10aaaa, when you scroll it on desktop you can really see it. Every single inch of the article's top area is littered with images. I understand the need for illustrations, but too much is also not good. Just like citations: too much is also not good. GeraldWL 14:02, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

• Keep Picture of someone wearing a mask is pretty much the iconic image of the pandemic, so keep it. Hzh (talk) 11:34, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
• Comment I acknowledge that the section has an image clutter problem. I would agree to remove the CDC infographic before removing the mask wearing lady. The infographic goes in the direction of giving medical advice and/or being a HOWTO manual, moreover, the image as shown in the article is too small to read the text clearly. Another point of improvement would be reducing the text below Tsai Ing-wen's image to be just a discriptive of mask wearing and not of who she is, what the CDC or WHO recommends. Leave that longer description for the main text on prevention and the informationg specific about Tsai Ing-wen on the national response page. 200.136.53.205 (talk) 13:30, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

  Thanks for the opinion! I do agree at this point to remove the CDC thing. Just need other editor input on this so that we can reach some consensus. GeraldWL 13:37, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.