KQED Science has posted quotes that stood out as emblematic of 2020, an awful year due to the COV ID-19 pandemic.
‘How does it move? From whom? Under what circumstances? And when, during the course of an illness, is a person infectious? To what degree do they transmit? All of those questions require that we be able to both detect the virus quickly and in many, many people and settings.’– David Relman, Stanford immunologist, at the beginning of the pandemic
‘My wife and I have been married 29 years. We realized this was going to be the ultimate test of our relationship.’– Carl Goldman, infected with the coronavirus, on enduring a cruise ship quarantine
‘It pretty well drives me nuts.’– Larry Hawkinson, 95, on being unable to see his wife of 72 years because of pandemic rules in his retirement community
‘People have called and said, ‘I saw it on CNN. It wasn’t really real. And then when I heard about your dad, it became real.”’– Zack Holderman, whose father died of COVID-19
‘We’re seeing knowledge that is being rushed to the public without being assessed. We’re seeing misapplied wisdom and we’re seeing no perspective.’-Dr. Irving Steinberg, USC, on thedissemination of not-ready-for-primetime science related to the coronavirusÂ
‘I could never depend on an order arriving. I didn’t believe an order was real until it actually showed up at the loading dock.’– Tosan Boyo, San Francisco lead for COVID-19 operations, on the difficulty of procuring protective equipment
‘We recognize that COVID-19 is a scary pandemic and it is killing people. But we also have to recognize that racism is killing people. We have to attack both.’– Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, California Surgeon General, on whether it’s safe for antiracist protesters to demonstrate
‘We are stuck in an impossible situation. The pandemic dictates we go outside, the wildfire dictates we go inside.’– Theresa Pistochini, UC Davis Energy and Efficiency Institute, on the conjunction of wildfire smoke and coronavirus restrictions
‘Home school, I just sit on the couch and say blaah.’Anakin Gupta, eight-year-old student, on the downside of distance learning
‘If we don’t turn the curve around, the answer is probably yes. … if we get overwhelmed with patients in our ICUs, we don’t have enough doctors, don’t have enough nurses, we know that the outcomes are going to get worse, and mortality will spike. And in some communities in California, we’re getting perilously close to that.’-Dr. Bob Wachter, UCSF, on whether California is heading for a New York-style disaster
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