The COVID-19 History Project

This really happened.

This Day in COVID: September 23, 2020

Sources close to a 'distressed' Dr. Birx say she feels sidelined on the White House coronavirus task force and wonders how much longer she can stay on

Dr. Deborah Birx views Scott Atlas as an 'unhealthy influence' on President Donald Trump's thinking, sources told CNN.

Business Insider

Fauci cautions that a Covid-19 vaccine won’t eliminate the need for masks and public health measures

CNN

Right-Wing Media Stars Mislead on Covid-19 Death Toll

New York Times

Secret, powerful panels will pick Covid-19 vaccine winners

Data and safety monitoring boards work under a cloak of secrecy meant to prevent undue influence. In the Trump era, some worry the anonymity could actually invite it.

NBC

New Dashboard Tracks Coronavirus Cases In Schools Across 47 States

The effort, still in its early stages, hopes to track infections and determine the effectiveness of safety measures.

NPR

Coronavirus: the road to vaccine roll-out is always bumpy, as 20th-century pandemics show

The Conversation

Should front-line medical workers get the coronavirus vaccine first? Not necessarily

Frontline health workers might seem like the obvious choice to get the vaccine first. But that might not necessarily be the right thing to do, bio-ethicists say.

CNBC

Ex-Tennessee trooper Harvey Briggs denied ripping mask off of protester; cop, video say otherwise

The Tennessean

Utah County, long resistant to mask mandates, reacts with resignation and frustration to new requirements

<b>Orem •</b> Edna Clarkson, 79, is up on her popular culture and how Utah County has begun requiring people to wear masks in public.

Salt Lake Tribune

Mother who was kicked off a flight because her toddler wouldn’t wear a mask wants airlines to change their policies

CNN

'Unmask Our Athletes:' Protests Gather in Lansing to Rally Against Mask Mandates in School Sports

A rally was held in Michigan on Wednesday called “Unmask Our Athletes.”

Click on Detroit

Police called after anti-mask group refuses to leave local coffee shop

Incident happened at Planet Bean's Grange Plaza location on Monday

Guelph Today

It's just a piece of fabric': Misinformation, media distrust fuelling anti-mask movement, Sask. professor says

A distrust of mainstream media and reliance on social media for news is fueling the anti-mask movement, according to a professor at the University of Regina.

CTV News

You can buy a $4 sheet mask that's meant to be worn under your face mask to help soothe your skin

Masque Bar's sheet masks are designed to help those suffering from face-mask acne, but they shouldn't be worn if they prevent face masks from working.

Insider

Littered face mask found inside stomach of dead penguin in Brazil

A face mask was discovered inside the stomach of a dead penguin that washed up on a beach in Brazil, according to a local environmental conservation group. The Magellanic penguin was found on Juque…

NY Post

Concerned citizen records KPD officer not wearing mask in public

'At the Kennewick Police Department, we believe in “Leading The Way” and this incident does not appear to be in line with our standards,' Lt. Aaron Clem said in a

NBC

NYU Student Calls for Professor's Firing After He Urged Masks Are Propaganda

A New York University student raised alarm on social media after a professor for her online course on propaganda “spent an entire class period telling students that wearing masks don’t prevent the spread of COVID-19.” In several tweets, Julia Jackson on Sunday said NYU communications professor Mark Crispin Miller is using his position of power to accredit far-right and conspiracy…

NBC

Will COVID-19 be a game changer in our relationship with meat?

Reuters

Dr. Fauci's 'Schooling' Of Rand Paul Draws Cheers From Medical Community

“If you believe 22% is herd immunity, I believe you're alone in that,' Fauci told Paul.

Forbes

Fauci finally loses his patience with Rand Paul

Washington Post

Why does Rand Paul think he knows better than Anthony Fauci?

CNN

Public Health Leaders Vow Science, Not Politics, Will Guide COVID-19 Vaccine

A Senate hearing on the coronavirus pandemic follows the day after the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus pandemic topped 200,000 people. The session is underway now.

NPR

Anthony Fauci Basically Calls Rand Paul a Shameless Moron to His Face

The COVID-19 expert was having none of the lawmaker’s bullshit on Wednesday.

Vanity Fair

People with ‘silent’ COVID-19 have as much coronavirus in their system as those with symptoms

BMJ

Time's 100 Most Influential People list features Dr. Anthony Fauci, Black Lives Matter founders

Time's list is broken up into five categories, featuring household names with diverse backgrounds.

CBS

Coronavirus update: Johnson & Johnson vaccine enters phase 3 as Fauci heads to Senate

Yahoo

Nurse Continues to Treat COVID Patients Despite High Risk

Number of nurses is expected to grow by 30% by 2032.

Spectrum Local News

Hazard Alert Just Issued About These Face Masks

Yahoo

US coronavirus case-fatality ratio ranks 11th in Johns Hopkins mortality analysis

The U.S., which has a population of around 330 million, has nearly 7 million cases of COVID-19.

Fox News

Wisconsin's Beloit College let students take lead on keeping their campus safe from Covid-19

In other coronarivus news: Trump mocks Biden for wearing a mask, 1.4 million small businesses either closed or suspended operations throughout the spring.

NBC News

Why Tens Of Thousands Of People Are Key To Testing A COVID-19 Vaccine

Volunteers getting the shot help determine if a candidate vaccine works. But what with social distancing and masks, scientists must discern if it's the shot or these other measures preventing illness.

NPR

Google Maps adds an overlay of COVID-19 case trends

Use it to track an area’s risk

The Verge

A Goldilocks Dose of Coronavirus

Infectious diseases expert Monica Gandhi, MD, MPH, explores her hypothesis that one of the benefits of masks may be that they provide exposure to enough coronavirus to build immunity but not enough to cause illness.

UCSF

As Pandemic Deaths Add Up, Racial Disparities Persist — And In Some Cases Worsen

With more complete racial data for COVID-19 available, the trends are impossible to ignore: Minorities are getting sick and dying at disproportionate rates. Here's a state-by-state analysis.

NPR

Pregnancy during a pandemic: The stress of COVID-19 on pregnant women and new mothers is showing

The Conversation

Blood pressure medications decrease death and severe disease in COVID-19 patients

The Conversation

Our Mission

The COVID-19 History Project is a curated archive of the events and policy decisions surrounding the emergence of COVID-19.

The pandemic era of 2020-2022 saw massive increases in restrictions on daily life—enforced by the government and by social stigma—accompanied social protests that roiled cities worldwide

In the United States alone, trillions of dollars were spent by the federal government to offset the forced closure of businesses and the devastation of normal life.

The impacts of these policy decisions are still being felt today.

Some would like us to forget the actions and people that played a significant role during the pandemic.

But we of the COVID-19 History Project don't want to forget. Through our work, we hope there will always be an archive to learn from and interpret this fascinating, disturbing, time in world history.

The Timeline

In order to learn from the mistakes of the past, and give COVID-19 decision makers the credit—both good and bad—they deserve, we have compiled a media timeline from every day of the pandemic.

We have endeavored to make the timeline comprehensive without being duplicative, following the major trends as they unfolded.

We provided analyses for each month highlighting major events, but encourage readers to make their own conclusions about these events as well.

This Day in COVID: September 23, 2021

Details

Glass blowing adapts to Covid-19 protocols

Despite Covid-19 restrictions, the Great Glass Pumpkin Patch returns to MIT for 2021 with 2,000 new glass pumpkins.

MIT News

New preliminary evidence suggests coronavirus jumped from animals to humans multiple times

It’s more evidence a lab leak is very unlikely.

The Conversation

Leaked Grant Proposal Details High-Risk Coronavirus Research

The proposal, rejected by the U.S. military’s research agency DARPA, describes the insertion of human-specific cleavage sites into bat coronaviruses.

The Intercept

Sierra Army Depot provides COVID-19 PPE support to Afghanistan evacuee mission

Army.mil

Etsy is one of the best places to buy cloth face masks — here are 19 highly rated options

The CDC recommends everyone wear face masks indoors to slow the spread of the Delta variant. Here are some of the most popular cloth options on Etsy.

Business Insider

Tiny particles could make a powerful COVID vaccine

Nanoparticles that bristle with dozens of copies of a SARS-CoV-2 protein segment could protect against a wide variety of coronaviruses.

Nature

Exposure to COVID-19 is associated with increased altruism, particularly at the local level - Scientific Reports

Nature

Network neighbors of viral targets and differentially expressed genes in COVID-19 are drug target candidates - Scientific Reports

Nature

Emergence of universality in the transmission dynamics of COVID-19 - Scientific Reports

Nature

Factors associated with the difference between the incidence and case-fatality ratio of coronavirus disease 2019 by country - Scientific Reports

Nature

My Family Was a COVID Cluster

Four vaccinated adults and two unvaccinated children had mild symptoms. Is this what the end of the pandemic looks like?

The New Yorker

A CDC Panel Backs Booster Shots For Older Adults, A Step Toward Making Them Available

The advisory committee's recommendation follows the FDA's authorization of Pfizer vaccine boosters for people 65 and up. Both regulatory moves will inform the U.S. plan to dispense extra doses.

NPR

COVID-19: What you need to know about the coronavirus pandemic on 23 September

The World Economic Forum

‘Vaccine apartheid': Africans tell UN they need vaccines

AP News

Nurses Are In Short Supply. Employers Worry Vaccine Mandate Could Make It Worse

President Biden has ordered more than 17 million health care workers to get a COVID-19 vaccine. Some health care employers fear losing large numbers of workers who don't want the shots.

NPR

Want a medical exemption for the COVID-19 vaccine? Good luck with that.

Valid medical conditions that might excuse someone are "very, very rare -- like one in a million," one disease expert said.

CBS News

In thousands of wasted Covid vaccines, a common culprit: Multi-dose vials

The federal government is working with Covid-19 vaccine manufacturers to reduce the number of doses per vial, amid growing concerns about wasted vaccines.

NBC News

For Parents of Disabled Children, School Mask Wars Are Particularly Wrenching (Published 2021)

The New York Times

After storms, mental health crisis compounded by COVID looms in Louisiana

When Ida hit, it wasn't just infrastructure that took a hit. Experts say storm survivors' physical and mental health will continue to be affected long after the clouds have parted, compounded by the region’s high rates of COVID and hospitalizations that have pushed hospitals past their limits.

PBS

WATCH: South African President Cyril Ramaphosa delivers remarks on COVID-19 vaccine inequality across Africa

The inequity of COVID-19 vaccine distribution is coming into sharper focus as many of the African countries whose populations have little to no access to the life-saving shots stepped to the podium to speak at the U.N.’s annual meeting of world leaders.

PBS

Why California has landed in a new COVID plateau after the delta surge

San Francisco Chronicle

Will Federal Employee Unions Challenge Biden’s Vaccine Mandate in Court?

Several major labor groups said they won’t, but some are leaving open the possibility.

Government Executive

Naval officer wins praise for Portugal’s vaccine rollout

AP News

Vaccine protection against Covid-19 wanes over time, especially for older people, CDC says | CNN

CNN

Citing religious beliefs to avoid the COVID-19 vaccine could cost you your job

Law dictates that employers must make "reasonable accommodations" for workers who refuse to be vaccinated because of religious beliefs. But in some jobs, an accommodation may not be possible.

Los Angeles Times

Changing your mind about something as important as vaccination isn’t a sign of weakness – being open to new information is the smart way to make choices

People tend to stick with their stated beliefs. But here’s how external forces like vaccine mandates can push people to do something they don’t want to do – and provide some face-saving cover.

The Conversation

Heart inflammation after COVID-19 vaccine: Are boys at higher risk?

A non-peer-reviewed study found increased heart inflammation risk in boys who had been vaccinated. However, there are many concerns about the study.

Medical News Today

China’s Bogus Attack on a Top U.S. Coronavirus Lab

China has cherry-picked and misrepresented facts to falsely suggest that a U.S. scientist may have engineered the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

VOA - Voice of America English News

COVID-19's impact on women’s health and rights

The World Economic Forum

Nobel Prize ceremonies to be curtailed again due to pandemic

The Nobel Prize ceremonies will be reined in for a second year due to the coronavirus pandemic. The winners of this year’s prizes are set to be announced between Oct. 4 and Oct. 11.

PBS

PHOTOS: How Struggling Families Manage To Feed Their Kids In A Pandemic

For millions, the pandemic has meant a loss of income even as food prices are rising. The challenge for parents and grandparents is how to feed the youngsters in the family — and themselves as well.

NPR

The CDC Made America's Pandemic Worse

The pandemic was a test of America's public health bureaucracy. It failed. Those failures were legion, and they were spread across multiple officials,

Reason Magazine

Children’s NHS mental health referrals double in pandemic

Young people ‘suffering terribly’ in Covid crisis, with nearly 200,000 referred in just three months

The Guardian

Stonehenge autumn equinox gathering first since start of pandemic

About 250 people gathered at the stones to watch the sunrise on the first day of autumn.

BBC

Howard Zucker, Who Led Cuomo’s Pandemic Response, Resigns (Published 2021)

The New York Times

Kids are bringing pandemic stress to school. Here’s how to spot it | CNN

CNN

Resilience and mental health in individuals with spinal cord injury during the COVID-19 pandemic - Spinal Cord

Nature

How MLMs took advantage of the pandemic

Multilevel marketing companies were the “perfect” pandemic business.

Vox

CDC panel recommends extra dose of Pfizer vaccine for vulnerable groups

The U.S. vaccination drive against COVID-19 stands on the verge of a major new phase: Government advisers on Thursday recommended booster doses of Pfizer’s vaccine for millions of Americans.

PBS