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There is no known cure for the new coronavirus.Scientists are scrambling to find treatments and vaccines for the virus, which causes the illness Covid-19, and health care professionals are working to stop the spread of misinformation. It’s a tough battle. On social media, memes have become efficient vectors of bad advice, often with urgent instructions or dystopian graphics. One, misstating the benefits of gargling salty water, shows the virus as a cluster of green burrs infecting the throat of a glowing blue man. (Fortin, 3/18)

As the worldwide spread of COVID-19 has spiraled into a pandemic, national health organizations are warning that some members of the LGBTQ community may be “particularly vulnerable” to the effects of the virus.While LGBTQ individuals have not been found to be more susceptible to contracting COVID-19, some health habits within the community, including significantly higher rates of smoking than the general population, have raised concern among health professionals. (Eadens, 3/18)

“Life is one thing after another,” Dr. Harriet Lerner, a psychologist and author, said. “And just because the universe has already sent us one big stress, it doesn’t mean we won’t be hit with others. ”Dr. Lerner has spent much of her career researching the effects of anxiety and fear on individuals, families and larger systems. She has also managed anxiety in her own life (documented in her best seller “The Dance of Fear”). That makes her the perfect person to help us tackle the rise in panic accompanying Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. (Sethi, 3/18)

Viruses didn’t become ubiquitous by being wimps: From the rhinoviruses that cause the common cold to the new coronavirus that has spread across the world, they are able to survive on surfaces far away from the living cells that they need in order to reproduce. How long they can lurk before a living organism comes along to infect depends on the kind of surface and the properties of the virus: The Covid-19 virus, according to a new study, sticks around on plastic surfaces for up to three days, but for a shorter period on metals. (Begley, 3/19)

Left unchecked, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 could infect billions of people. By one estimate, up to 70% of the world’s population may contract the disease. That means there’s an excellent chance that, sooner or later, you will be one of them. The World Health Organization said 14% of people known to have COVID-19 develop symptoms severe enough to require hospitalization and oxygen support. But calculating the odds of survival in the early stages of the pandemic is imprecise. (Pierson, 3/19)

In the outpouring of social media messages about the coronavirus pandemic, the collective mood is grim, experts found. Manlio De Domenico, a scientist at Italy’s Bruno Kessler Foundation’s Center for Information and Communication Technology, has tracked online rumors and bots that spread false news. He and his colleagues recently analyzed more than 121,407,000 tweets, half of which were tagged to a location, and more than 22 million Web pages to describe the messages people — and robots — have been sending during the outbreak. (Buarino, 3/17)

The world has changed a lot in the last few weeks. We’re here to help. (3/18)