The COVID-19 History Project

This really happened.

This Day in COVID: September 29, 2020

In Texas, polling place closures, absentee ballot rules make it harder to vote

In Texas, barriers to the right to vote are strewn at every step of the process — with the coronavirus making everything worse this year.

Public Integrity

Disney Parks Laying Off 28,000 Employees amid Ongoing Disneyland Closure Due to COVID-19

People

U.S. Retail Store Closures Hit Record in First Half

Wall Street Journal

Burger King eyes closure of 25 stores as Covid crisis hits fast food

The fast-food giant is considering options that would allow it to expand its drive-through estate to compete better with McDonald's

Telegraph

COVID vaccine confidence requires radical transparency

Public trust in a potential vaccine is under threat. Drug companies and their academic partners must disclose protocols and results data.

Nature

False-positive COVID-19 results: hidden problems and costs

The Lancet

Marking the passing of a grim pandemic milestone for the nation

Harvard scholars reflect on the death toll from the novel coronavirus.

Harvard

How COVID-19 Has Affected Special Education Students

Tufts

The lockdown tweet that launched a COVID-19 ‘supertracker’

Lukas Lehner wanted to capture how different economies are addressing COVID-19 challenges. His Twitter call-out helped to create a global directory of policy resources based on swarm intelligence, and led to a research project.

Nature

Dr. Anthony Fauci says Americans should trust credibility of COVID-19 vaccine process

Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, blamed “mixed messages that have come out of Washington” for waning public trust.

Texas Tribune

Germany Has Its Own Dr. Fauci—and Actually Follows His Advice

Bloomberg

Florida's Miami-Dade Pushes Back On Loosening Of Coronavirus Restrictions

County Mayor Carlos Gimenez says the opening ordered by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis comes too soon and he expressed concern that the number of coronavirus cases could shoot up.

NPR

Trump Downplays Masks and Mocks Biden for Wearing Them

President Trump said he wore masks “when needed” but mocked Joseph R. Biden Jr. for regularly wearing masks in public.

New York Times

Florida reports spike in new coronavirus cases days after restrictions relaxed

CNN

The next few months could get ugly. Here’s how to stay safe as the pandemic rages on

CNN

Early data shows promising results from Regeneron’s antibody cocktail for coronavirus

CNN

HHS ad blitz sputters as celebrities back away

The $300 million, taxpayer-funded campaign to tout the administration’s response to Covid-19 falls behind schedule amid widespread criticism.

Politico

How Pinterest beat back vaccine misinformation

Pinterest has taken a hardline strategy against health misinformation, and in particular, vaccine falsehoods.

PBS

Coronavirus changed the 2020 money race — and helped Biden erase Trump’s massive cash advantage

By adopting a largely virtual campaign strategy this spring, Biden kept his costs down, while Zoom fundraisers helped him keep raising money during crucial months when Trump did little or no fundraising.

CNBC

COVID-19 impact: Tracking Louisville's permanent business closures since March

WLKY

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 29, 2021

Details

Phase 3 Safety and Efficacy of AZD1222 (ChAdOx1 nCoV-19) Covid-19 Vaccine

The New England Journal of Medicine

Retinal vessels modifications in acute and post-COVID-19 - Scientific Reports

Nature

Geographically targeted COVID-19 vaccination is more equitable and averts more deaths than age-based thresholds alone

Science | AAAS

Maker of Popular Covid Test Told Factory to Destroy Inventory (Published 2021)

The New York Times

11 facts on the economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic

In the second quarter of 2021, GDP returned to pre-pandemic levels. The Hamilton Project highlights this and ten more facts on the economic recovery from the COVID-19.

Brookings

New tool predicts changes that may make COVID variants more infectious | Penn State University

Researchers have created a novel framework that can predict with reasonable accuracy changes in the virus’ spike protein that may confer increased infectivity to the virus, which could enable the computational surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 and provide advance warning of potentially dangerous variants.

Penn State

Pregnant Women Get Conflicting Advice on Covid-19 Vaccines (Published 2021)

The New York Times

COVID Border Accountability Project, a hand-coded global database of border closures introduced during 2020 - Scientific Data

Measurement(s) border policy Technology Type(s) digital curation Factor Type(s) country • temporal interval Sample Characteristic - Environment Coronavirus pandemic Sample Characteristic - Location global Machine-accessible metadata file describing the reported data: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.16438932

Nature

The way back: Assessing economic recovery among Black Americans during COVID-19

Bradley L. Hardy and Trevon D. Logan analyze the impacts of COVID-19 on Black households and the path to economic recovery.

Brookings

New Study Finds More Than A Third Of COVID-19 Patients Have Symptoms Months Later

The symptoms, such as headache, fatigue and cognitive dysfunction, persist or recur months after diagnosis, far more often than they do for the flu, researchers say.

NPR

COVID-19: What you need to know about the coronavirus pandemic on 29 September

The World Economic Forum

Tracing the origins of SARS-CoV-2: lessons learned from the past - Cell Research

Nature

Women, work, and families: Recovering from the pandemic-induced recession

Betsey Stevenson reviews what has happened to women’s employment and labor force participation in the recovery from the pandemic.

Brookings

Why Are People Nostalgic for Early-Pandemic Life?

Pandemic fatigue is fueling a bizarre sense of longing.

The Atlantic

Study provides more evidence of how COVID-19 changed Americans’ values, activities

UCLA

Pandemic Continues To Disproportionately Affect Women, Annual Women In The Workplace Report Finds

Over the last year and a half, the Covid-19 pandemic has affected people everywhere to varying degrees, but perhaps no group has had to bear the burden more heavily than working women. The Annual Women in the Workplace report from Lean In and McKinsey shows just how devastating this period has been.

Forbes

How the Pandemic Brought New Meaning to My Commute

The Washington Post

How the pandemic has changed the financial advice business

Financial advisors say the pandemic has changed the way they do business but not the advice they give their clients.

CNBC

How the pandemic has changed China’s economy – perhaps for good

In China, as elsewhere, the pandemic has turned the world of work upside down.

The Conversation

There's a reason why daily COVID cases are lower on weekends and higher during the week

Why the daily reported COVID-19 cases are consistently at their lowest on weekends and the beginning of the week, then higher during the rest of the week in Ohio.

News 5 Cleveland WEWS

Vietnam's biggest city to start lifting COVID-19 curbs to spur business

Reuters

Is it COVID or seasonal allergies?

WAOW

How the Virus Unraveled Hispanic American Families (Published 2021)

The New York Times

Slovenia police use water cannons at anti-COVID pass protest

AP News

Activists take vaccine demands, and a mountain of fake bones, to the home of Biden’s chief of staff. (Published 2021)

The New York Times

University of Alabama extends mask mandate through Oct. 29

The extension means the mask rules will be in effect through the week of homecoming, Oct. 17-23.

The Tuscaloosa News

YouTube suspends Rand Paul for a week over a video disputing the effectiveness of masks. (Published 2021)

The New York Times

YouTube Is Banning All Content That Spreads Vaccine Misinformation

The site announced that videos that contain vaccine misinformation will be removed.

NPR

YouTube bans false vaccine claims

The ban on vaccine misinformation comes as countries around the world continue to offer free immunizations for COVID-19 to a somewhat hesitant public.

PBS

Thousands of N.Y. Health Care Workers Get Vaccinated Ahead of Deadline (Published 2021)

The New York Times

YouTube to remove all anti-vaccine misinformation

Videos saying vaccines cause autism, cancer or infertility are among those banned from the platform.

BBC

An update on the effect of Pandemic EBT on measures of food hardship

Many families relied on safety net programs to weather the economic downturn resulting from the pandemic. The Hamilton Project analyzes the effect of one such program: Pandemic EBT.

Brookings

We’re Already Barreling Toward the Next Pandemic

This one is far from over, but the window to prepare for future threats is closing fast.

The Atlantic

Scientists Target Next Pandemic With ‘Map’ to Victory Over Viruses

UVA School of Medicine researcher Wladek Minor and a team of international collaborators have created a potent tool to speed vaccines and treatments.

UVA Today

Obesity Rates Rise During Pandemic, Fueled By Stress, Job Loss, Sedentary Lifestyle

New data shows the pandemic exacerbated an already fast-growing problem, tipping more Americans' weight over the scales into unhealthy territory.

NPR

With Pandemic, Mental Health Services Even More Critical

Governments and donors should take concrete steps to develop rights-respecting and community-based mental health services, Human Rights Watch said today in a letter to governments in advance of the third Global Mental Health Summit. The summit will take place on October 5 and 6, 2021, in Paris.

Human Rights Watch

Pandemic hit Asian-owned businesses in Southern California hardest, study finds

Asian American small-business owners cited language barriers and a lack of online presence as reasons why they struggled since the start of the coronavirus outbreak.

NBC News

Mayor de Blasio Launches the NYC Public Health Corps

NYC.gov

Research finds increases in 'pandemic brain' after COVID-19 lockdowns

Chances are, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected your health — even if you have never been infected by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). According to new research from Harvard Medical School, the stress of isolation from lockdown and stay-at-home measures is making people sick.

News-Medical

China has built a 5,000-room quarantine center for overseas arrivals. It could be the first of many | CNN

CNN

‘It’s Like Having No Testing’: Coronavirus Test Results Are Still Delayed (Published 2020)

The New York Times

Close cousins of SARS-CoV-2 found in a cave in Laos yield new clues about pandemic’s origins

Science | AAAS

The 9 psychological barriers that lead to COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and refusal

The decision not to get the COVID-19 vaccine comes from a complex set of psychological factors.

The Conversation