Talk:COVID-19 pandemic

Highlighted open discussions

• #RfC - Limiting the countries covered in the domestic responses section

Current consensus

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01. Superseded by #6

The first few sentences of the lead's second paragraph should state The virus is typically spread during close contact and via respiratory droplets produced when people cough or sneeze. Respiratory droplets may be produced during breathing but the virus is not considered airborne. It may also spread when one touches a contaminated surface and then their face. It is most contagious when people are symptomatic, although spread may be possible before symptoms appear. (RfC March 2020)

02. The infobox should feature a per capita count map most prominently, and a total count by country map secondarily. (RfC March 2020)

03. Do not include a sentence in the lead section noting comparisons to World War II. (March 2020)

04. Include subsections of the "Domestic response" section covering the domestic responses of Italy, China, Iran, the United States, and South Korea. Do not include individual subsections for France, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia and Japan. (RfC March 2020) Include a short subsection on Sweden focusing on the policy controversy. (May 2020)

05. Superseded by #13

The clause on xenophobia in the lead section should read ...and there have been incidents of xenophobia and discrimination against Chinese people and against those perceived as being Chinese or as being from areas with high infection rates. (RfC April 2020)

06. Superseded by transclusion from COVID-19

Supersedes #1. The first few sentences of the lead section's second paragraph should state The virus is mainly spread during close contact and by small droplets produced when those infected cough, sneeze or talk. These droplets may also be produced during breathing; however, they rapidly fall to the ground or surfaces and are not generally spread through the air over large distances. People may also become infected by touching a contaminated surface and then their face. The virus can survive on surfaces for up to 72 hours. Coronavirus is most contagious during the first three days after onset of symptoms, although spread may be possible before symptoms appear and in later stages of the disease. (April 2020)

Notes

07. The article title is COVID-19 pandemic. The title of related pages should follow this scheme as well. (RM April 2020, RM August 2020)

08. The lead section should use Wuhan, China to describe the virus's origin, without mentioning Hubei or otherwise further describing Wuhan. (April 2020)

09. The second sentence of the lead section should be phrased using the words "first identified" (not "originated") and "December 2019" (not "early December 2019"). (May 2020)

010. Superseded by #12

File:President Donald Trump suggests measures to treat COVID-19 during Coronavirus Task Force press briefing.webm should be used as the visual element of the misinformation section, with the caption U.S. president Donald Trump suggested at a press briefing on 23 April that disinfectant injections or exposure to ultraviolet light might help treat COVID-19. There is no evidence that either could be a viable method. (1:05 min) (May 2020, June 2020)

011. Superseded by #16

Do not mention the theory that the virus was accidentally leaked from a laboratory in the article. (RfC May 2020)

012. Supersedes #10. File:President Donald Trump suggests measures to treat COVID-19 during Coronavirus Task Force press briefing.webm should not be used as the visual element of the misinformation section. (RfC November 2020)

013. Supersedes #5. Incidents of xenophobia and discrimination are considered WP:UNDUE for a full sentence in the lead. (RfC January 2021)

014. Only include one photograph in the infobox. There is no consensus that File:COVID-19 Nurse (cropped).jpg should be used in the infobox. (May 2021)

015. The first sentence is The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is a global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). (August 2021) The word ongoing has since been removed (May 2023). The word is is to be retained RfC October 2023).

016. Supersedes #11. There is consensus that there is no consensus to include or exclude the lab leak theory. (May 2024)

Current consensus discussion

Should be fixed as per the new consensus with the sentences and it’s not clear which sentence has consensus. Doc james and I agree on the first two that’s all I know —Almaty (talk) 10:13, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Item 1 says "the first sentence . . . " and then goes on to quote four sentences. I'd have to go through the background, but it seems that the intent is to refer to the first sentence, specifically. Holy (talk) 17:16, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

@Almaty and HolyT: I'm not sure how many admins are monitoring conversations this page. Either we need more of them to start doing so to keep this list complete/accurate or the list needs to be lowered back to EC protection (where the Trump list is currently at) so that us mopless ones can maintain it ourselves. Pinging TomStar81. Sdkb (talk) 05:19, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb, HolyT, and Almaty: I've actually just answered a question about the protection level. I'm starting it at admin only levels, but if consensus emerges to drop that to a lower level then it trumps my level so thats what we'll go with. (Admittedly, I'm a little paranoid, so I like full protection when possible.) In the mean time tell me what you want tweaked and I'll deal with it. TomStar81 (Talk) 06:10, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

• TomStar81 I think it would be good to drop it so new consensus can be added quickly. A lot of people who are EC patrol this padge so iff another EC user vandalises it can be undone quickly. For now if you can do what HolyT said that would be much appreciated. — RealFakeKimT 13:00, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

can we please add that the date of the disease starting being traced back to November is unverified and one journalist only of nameless government documents —Almaty (talk) 13:13, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

• That's not a consensus and see the discussion below, please. — RealFakeKimT 14:25, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Potential changes to the maps

 Comment: Please do not archive this thread until all discussions have been finished. Part of this thread has been restored from an archive. 2607:FB90:7A56:4654:45D5:870E:F9D:E8BF (talk) 02:04, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

IP, I'm not sure if you've been following the actual discussions here, but many of the ones I archived are extremely stale, and completely unrelated to still-active discussions. There was no controversy about archiving them until you brought it up below, and on a talk page where discussions are archived if they go 18 hours without comment, there's absolutely no justification for bringing ones back that have gone nearly a week without comment. Your having done so is just going to create more clutter for everyone to dig through and more work for whoever archives them next. Sdkb (talk) 03:28, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

They're still sitting in the archive, so I'm deleting them from here. Sdkb (talk) 06:05, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Time to stop having China as the feature in the maps?

Apologies if this has been discussed (there are 20+ archives of discussion now), but Italy is now more than double the Chinese deaths and approaching the total Chinese caseload. It seems weird in the article to have Hubei Province and China prominently called out in all the graphs when they are not dominating caseload or death anymore. Thoughts? --Geoff Olynyk (talk) 03:25, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

The disease started in China, and they still have the most cases so far. However, Italy is likely to overtake them. But since it started in China, there is no need to change it. And in the future, what if some country overtakes Italy (most likely the USA)? Then we'd have to change it again. 2607:FB90:7B49:613A:B83C:EC7B:288B:F4A9 (talk) 03:38, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

RfC on which maps to use

There are three very relevant maps currently being discussed: Absolute number of confirmed cases, Confirmed cases per capita and Deaths per capita. They are displayed above. Which maps should we use in the lede?

1. Confirmed cases per capita, Absolute number of confirmed cases (current)
2. Deaths per capita, Absolute number of confirmed cases
3. Confirmed cases per capita, Deaths per capita
4. All three (in a collapsed state?)

St.nerol (talk) 10:58, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

• Comment on Overlapping RfCs This RfC overlaps slightly with the one already in progress below about whether to list a per capita map first or a totals map first. I'm not exactly sure how to handle overlapping RfCs. I propose we agree that that one take precedence regarding which map to list first/uncollapsed and this one take precedence regarding which map(s) to list. If there is a conflict between the RfCs, the RfC with significantly more participation will take precedence, or if they are roughly equal, that one as the first RfC will take precedence. (Note: I'm making this comment before any !votes have been cast in this RfC.) Sdkb (talk) 17:10, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4, with one primary uncollapsed map (as decided by the other RfC) and the rest collapsed. All three maps have potential value; let's give readers the option to access them. Collapsed maps take up very little room, decluttering and allowing us to move the photos higher up, while also taking only a single easy click for interested readers to access. They're a win-win. Sdkb (talk) 17:45, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

  Hmm, St.nerol, it seems like you and I may be the only ones here currently. If no one else comments otherwise, would you be alright with me boldly implementing option 4 with the three maps (leaving out the daily new cases map, which isn't updated/developed enough to be ready for mainspace yet). We'd of course revert if others start chiming in and the consensus moves in a different direction. Sdkb (talk) 21:17, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: I encourage you to boldly implement the change. I also think it can help us in discussing things more clearly (maps shown/hidden, which maps, and priority of maps). Right now a consensus is hard to grasp. St.nerol (talk) 14:42, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

• Option 3, if not that then Option 4: My preference is show only two maps: total confirmed cases per capita and total deaths per capita. If non-per-capita should be shown in addition, it should not be a color map but rather a pie map where the counts are represented as pies (circles) of different sizes; the objection against color map is 1) obvious: do not represent as density something that is not density, and 2) on another wiki there is a comment tracing the objection to How to Lie with Maps, Third Edition by Mark Monmonier. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:53, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3 for the reasons stated by Dan Polansky. Mgasparin (talk) 02:43, 24 March 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3. File:COVID-19 Outbreak World Map.svg should not be used. Please read these notes by a professional cartographer (former editor of The Cartographic Journal), which explain in detail what is wrong with exactly this kind of map: "Mapping coronavirus, responsibly". In particular:

  There are very very few golden rules in cartography but this is one of them: you cannot map totals using a choropleth thematic mapping technique. The reason is simple. Each of the areas on the map is a different size, and has a different number of people in it. They are inherently unequal in character so we first have to deal with that before we can make sense of any other data. These innate characteristics of all thematic maps means you simply cannot compare like for like across a choropleth map.

  Regards, HaeB (talk) 04:01, 24 March 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4 All maps are beneficial to the article and the information. They all present different values and deliver on different demographic factors. --Ratherous (talk) 08:08, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

@Ratherous: Per the expert quoted above, the use of non-normalized values (totals) in choropleth maps is misleading; Choropleth map#Normalization describes it as a "common error" citing another RS. Can you explain why you disagree with that? Which mistakes are these experts making in their reasoning, in your opinion? Regards, HaeB (talk) 14:05, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Per capita maps provide a better understanding of what the extent of the pandemic within given countries, however a totals map provides better understanding of what is happening all around the world by giving more specific figures regarding infected individuals who have a potential to infect more people. It is still important information to understand how many infected people a given country now has. --Ratherous (talk) 17:23, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

You didn't answer my questions. Yes, one may be of the opinion that the total numbers per country are important information to convey. But per the above, there is expert consensus that this particular kind of map should not be used for that purpose, because it misleads the reader. You have not given us a single argument why we should believe you over expert cartographers. Regards, HaeB (talk) 02:57, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

I’m giving my personal thoughts on this matter. I feel like that is information that is important enough for this article. It may be misleading if it is shown by itself, but it really isn’t when it’s accompanied by other maps. Readers can distinguish which map means what by reading the description, and I definitely think it’s best to give them a variety of information displayed by maps. --Ratherous (talk) 04:12, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

• Option 3 It is the most objective representative and objective quantity. Voorlandt (talk) 20:36, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Per capita data vs. totals by country

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.

---

By and large, I much prefer the per capita map. Especially as the virus continues to spread, the totals map is increasingly becoming just a variation on a world population map. It makes no sense to display prominently a map where, if Exampleistan suddenly splits into two countries tomorrow, the outbreak would suddenly show up as half as bad there. The one redeeming factor of that map is that it appropriately shows how severe the outbreak has been in China, whereas the per capita map does not. Fortunately, there's a solution to that: splitting up the data for China by province. That way, Hubei will presumably show up as appropriately severe. The main downside of this approach is that some readers might ask why China gets more granular data than other countries, but I think most won't have a problem (and if the data does exist for generating a world map of prevalence by zip code or some other smaller unit and we could turn it into a map, that would of course be brilliant). Sdkb (talk) 06:33, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

See also: commons:File_talk:March14_cases_per-capita-COVID-19.png#Colouring_seems_misleading_for_China. Sdkb (talk) 06:44, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

The data for such an addition is pretty readily available; both the population and case numbers are included in yesterday's WHO daily situation report. Sdkb (talk) 05:08, 17 March 2020 (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.

Now there are 180 cases in brasil, but in the main table it dropped from 151 to 121 LGCR (talk) 18:10, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

What would folks think of listing the per capita map before the totals map? (per the logic in my archived comment directly above about why per capita is generally more useful for readers wanting to know where the outbreak is most intense) I'm going to try boldly implementing, but we can discuss here if it turns out to be controversial. Sdkb (talk) 23:58, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Ratherous, you reverted. What's your argument? Sdkb (talk) 02:36, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Regardless of the use of per capita maps, the main informative resource in use by most media outlets and general epidemic data is the total cases map, showing the exact extent and reach the virus had on a certain number of people. --Ratherous (talk) 02:56, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

@Ratherous: The main thing our readers are looking for in the maps is an indication of where the virus is most severe, and the per capita map does that best. Media outlets using totals are doing so mainly through a combination of poor statistical knowledge and laziness in not wanting to count populations. Another way to look at it: the totals map is also "per" in a way. It's just that rather than using an even unit that allows equal comparisons, the totals map uses "per country", making it look like the virus is worse in more heavily populated countries, e.g. India is darker than Vatican City. That's not what we want. Sdkb (talk) 03:24, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

I don't think it's very fair to assume laziness of journalists, rather it is a clear indication that readers are indeed looking more for totals of infected individuals at any given place. There is a very blatant reality that larger countries have greater potential at posing risk to the rest of the world due to their larger populations. The one person infected in the Vatican has a much lower probability of spreading the virus than the now 147 infected individuals in India. Regardless of the use of per capita maps, the main maps of the total should always be placed first. --Ratherous (talk) 05:27, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

I've started an RfC below so we can get some more perspectives on this. Sdkb (talk) 18:40, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

RfC on which type of map to list first

Should this article list a per capita count map first, or a total count by country map first? Sdkb (talk) 18:40, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

• Per capita map. The main thing our readers are looking for in the maps is an indication of where the virus is most severe, and the per capita map does that best. The total map, by contrast, is increasingly becoming just a variation on a world population map as the virus continues to spread. It makes it look like the virus is worse in more heavily populated countries, e.g. India is darker than Vatican City. That's not what we want. It makes no sense to display most prominently a map where, if Exampleistan suddenly splits into two countries tomorrow, the outbreak would suddenly show up as half as bad there. Another way to look at it: the totals map is also "per" in a way. It's just that rather than using an even divisor that allows equal comparisons, the totals map uses the uneven "per country" divisor. Sdkb (talk) 18:40, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Per capita map per Sdkb. — RealFakeKimT 19:08, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

• Per capita Per Sdkb, and as a stark example, shading implying San Marino, with around 120 cases in a population of fewer than 40,000, is on par with Hong Kong (181 cases in population of 7.4+ million), is bollocks. CaradhrasAiguo (leave language) 19:17, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
• Total Count Still the main resource of information on statistics. Per capita map can be included, but in no way should it go before the main map. Readers should primarily see the amount of actual infected people around the world. Plus still a more accurate exact figure. As I said earlier, it's not only the extent of infection in any given country, but also the threat of any given population to infect other people, which would rely on total count. --Ratherous (talk) 19:38, 18 March 2020 (UTC)
• Per capita per Sdkb. Total count map does not need to be listed at all. Per capita is directly calculated from totals. A map for totals with colored background is arguably grossly misleading (not factually wrong but misleading), since the colored background visually suggests we are dealing with density, which is only true for the per capita map. While in the per capita map, China has a slightly less dark color, it is still relatively dark and when the reader considers their background knowledge that China has a huge population, they should immediately see that the China total count is actually very large. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:29, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

  Very well put. For China, my preferred solution is to split the data by province — see the proposal for that below. Sdkb (talk) 21:03, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

• Total Count Map – This is still the aggregate total and the main source of information on the raw statistics. The per capita count map is something that is not entirely obvious at a glance. While a per capita count provides useful information on the spread density within a population, it fails to provide a picture of the actual, overall spread and can actually be misleading to unfamiliar viewers. LightandDark2000 🌀 (talk) 18:39, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

  But this manner of visual represenation of the raw statistics is misleading; if it were pies (circles) rather than background colors, that would not be misleading. I don't see where the claim that per capita is misleading is coming from: it represents density with a visual representation corresponding to density. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:57, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

• daily new cases or new cases per capita if we must, cos it shows where the outbreaks are that day, as Cumulative doesn’t give good info like today China and Italy look the same. —Almaty (talk) 17:02, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
• Percentage map Please, it could be good to show a map with the figures in percentages (%) of death people for each national population. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.39.214.62 (talk) 09:31, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• Note Opinions on which maps to use that go beyond per capita vs total count by country should go instead in the other maps RfC. Sdkb (talk) 21:43, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• Per capita. It is a more relevant and important statistic, compared with total count. Mgasparin (talk) 02:41, 24 March 2020 (UTC)
• Per capita. Number of cases is obviously directly related to population. Ythlev (talk) 14:09, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Splitting data by state/province

(mostly copying my comment from above to kick this off) By and large, I much prefer the per capita map. It's main problem seems to be that it doesn't appropriately show how severe the outbreak has been in the part of China where it originated. Fortunately, there's a solution to that: splitting up the data for China by province. That way, Hubei will presumably show up as appropriately severe. The main downside of this approach is that some readers might ask why China gets more granular data than other countries, but I think most won't have a problem (and if the data does exist for generating a world map of prevalence by zip code or some other smaller unit and we could turn it into a map, or just adding data for e.g. Italy, that would of course be brilliant). The data for such an addition is pretty readily available; both the population and case numbers are included in yesterday's WHO daily situation report. Sdkb (talk) 18:48, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Sure; I don't mind showing provinces of China, or some other large country where the case concentration turns out to be very different for different parts. But I guess China is the most relevant to show provice-level here. —St.nerol (talk) 23:06, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Good idea, but could be harder to implement. If you give me a blank world map that has the provinces split and if you give me Wikipedia pages from which I can grab covid and population data for the provinces, I can implement that. I guess I could find the data pages by myself, and the bottleneck would be getting the map. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:59, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

I've asked for help with the data at the China pandemic article; they could really use a table just for themselves, but it'd also be helpful for you. Hopefully they'll get on it. Regarding finding a blank map, I'm guessing it exists somewhere, but as I've never created a map before, I'm not the best person to find it. Can someone else help us out with that? Sdkb (talk) 17:34, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

The data is not a problem; my script on Commons now calculates deaths per million people for Chinese provinces and for Italian regions. I need the map. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:44, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

@Dan Polansky: Will this work? File:Blank Map World Secondary Political Divisions.svg Sdkb (talk) 00:20, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

It could be made to work, I think, but it is not so straightfoward, e.g. the Chinese provinces have ids but no titles, e.g. search for "Hubei" finds nothing in that svg. And the svg is large, so what the script should probably do is pick Chinese province elements from File:Blank Map World Secondary Political Divisions.svg and add it to File:BlankMap-World.svg. However, I am too tired, and I am unlikely to spend more effort in making the script produce a map with Chinese provinces in the coming days; I am sorry. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:06, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Interactive timeline maps

Template:Interactive COVID-19 maps lists some interactive maps I created using mw:Extension:Graph. Readers can move the slider at the top to view global COVID cases for a given day, and hovering over a country displays the exact datapoint for that country on that day. I'm interested in feedback on the maps since the user interface could probably be improved, and given the extensive coverage of this pandemic, I'm also interested in how editors familiar with this topic would use them. My first thought was to have them at Timeline of the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic but maybe others have better ideas. Thanks to Siliconred for suggesting this at WP:VPT. — Wug·a·po·des​ 05:48, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Interactive map example

@Wugapodes: Ooh, I like these; nice work! Two big issues that I'd want to see addressed before these are implemented anywhere. First, South Korea and North Korea are switched (North Korea is the one that at least claims to have no cases). I didn't look too closely, so there may also be other data issues. Second, when you're at the start of the slider, it's weird to have some countries be gray and others white; it's only at the end that you realize the gray ones are the ones that still don't have any cases. Just make them all white. In terms of use, it seems we may be poised to collapse the non-primary maps, and I'd be fine with a timeline being included among those, or even, if it develops enough, becoming the primary map itself. Sdkb (talk) 06:47, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Other more minor issues: some weird stuff can happen with the cursor when you move off the image and then back on, etc. Also, given how terrible people are at geography, it'd be nice to display the country name when you hover over a country, not just the case count. And ideally (perhaps pie-in-the-skyly), clicking on the country would lead to the article on the pandemic in that country. Sdkb (talk) 06:53, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

I fixed the South Korea issue; the data are formatted by script, and it chose the wrong korea ISO code. The colors have been changed, and the country name is now displayed on hover as well. The weird behavior when you mouse off the canvas is something I'm trying to fix. As for clicking on a country and being taken to the corresponding article, I think it can be done. I'll look into both of those last two tasks tomorrow. — Wug·a·po·des​ 07:52, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Definitely agree with Sdkb that as this develops it could be implemented as the primary map. It's displaying information in a similar way but is far more useful, particularly because you can see the country-to-country count and see the progression over time. SiliconRed (talk) 15:32, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

These are fantastic. Nice work Wugapodes! I'm looking forward to seeing this project as it progresses. Also, would it be possible to add a zoom toggle? Some countries are harder than others to get at with the mouse. SiliconRed (talk) 15:23, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

• I've added a scaling parameter, and you can play with it in the above example. I have also fixed the weird behavior when you drag off the map canvas. After looking into it, I don't think we can set it up so that readers are taken to the associated pandamic page when they click on a country; this seems to be a limitation of Wikipedia's implementation of the graphing software. — Wug·a·po·des​ 00:06, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

  Hmm, I'm not sure how to access that; I don't see any zoom button. Sdkb (talk) 01:12, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

  It's not a zoom button---I'm not sure that's possible, but editors can scale the size of the graphic using |scale= similar to how |upright= is used for images. — Wug·a·po·des​ 01:51, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

• Other small issues: I think it'd be better to start at the present than last December; let readers go back rather than making them go forward, so that they're seeing the most essential information (i.e. the most up-to-date) first. And even countries without cases should still be named, rather than appearing as "no data". Sdkb (talk) 01:12, 21 March 2020 (UTC)
  • The default start date is sorta fixed, but could be more elegant. As for countries with no data, I will look into how to fix that. Currently it gets country names from the dataset, so if there's no data, there's no country name. — Wug·a·po·des​ 01:51, 21 March 2020 (UTC)
• Update There are two new maps which show the stats per capita for each country based on the UN Population Division statistics for 2019. Even better, this new dataset allowed me to implement Sdkb's request for displaying country names even when the Johns Hopkins dataset has no COVID data for that country. — Wug·a·po·des​ 22:31, 21 March 2020 (UTC)
• @Wugapodes: is there any way to get it so that readers don't have to click the "play" button before they can interact with it? Sdkb (talk) 23:08, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
  • I don't think so. I think that's a feature of the Wiki software so that if readers don't interact with the graph, it doesn't eat up their computer resources. Even if we could, I think it's better to have it just as a visual indication that the content is different from the static images they're used to seeing on Wikipedia. — Wug·a·po·des​ 23:22, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• It's not obvious that you have to move the slider to get the animation. I'm presented with a play button, so I expected the map to automatically cycle through the days like a slideshow. Maybe leave a note on the map on how to use it. 2607:FB90:7A56:4654:45D5:870E:F9D:E8BF (talk) 01:49, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
  • Yeah, the play button is rather misleading, but there's not much we can do to solve it unfortunately. The caption includes instructions to drag the circle which hopefully helps; but I'm worried that too much information in the caption would overwhelm people. Since we link to a larger version, I've started a documentation page for that which has more detailed instructions for readers. Feel free to improve it since what's obvious to me may not be obvious to those seeing it for the first time. — Wug·a·po·des​ 02:07, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Implementing

Now that we've implemented collapsed non-primary maps, I'd say we don't have to wait too much longer before adding the case timeline among them. Let's wait a little longer for some more kinks to be ironed out, then go for it. (It's still a ways away from being ready to be the primary map, in my view, but as I said above, I could see that happening eventually.) Sdkb (talk) 05:53, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

@Wugapodes: I'm going to go ahead and implement the cases per capita timeline. Again, great work! Sdkb (talk) 00:28, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Okay, done! One thing I notice, though, is that I had to make it pretty small to avoid causing the infobox from jumping out too much. Is there any way to implement it so that clicking on it would bring up a larger version? Sdkb (talk) 00:44, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: Probably not in the map itself (I don't think the software doesn't allow us to open links), but I've edited the caption to include a link to Template:Interactive COVID-19_maps/Per capita confirmed cases/Large which is an enlarged version of the map. — Wug·a·po·des​ 23:03, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Good solution; thanks! Sdkb (talk) 23:05, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Mobile

@Wugapodes: Looks like folks are having trouble with this on mobile, which is made worse by the fact that it's not collapsed there and thus more prominent. The large version does work for me on mobile, but the embedded one doesn't. How should we try to fix? Sdkb (talk) 11:09, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: Could you be more specific about what doesn't work? Readers on mobile should be able to tap anywhere on the line (not just the handle) in order to move the slider around. I still haven't come up with a solution for the sizing issue; on my phone the map goes off the edge of my screen. The graph extension is built on top of an old piece of software and not well maintained. If the back end software were updated, the solution would be pretty straightforward, but it would take a very long time to get the WMF to do that because of the security issues involved. But enough with describing the problems, what can we do?

1. Add class="nomobile" to the infobox transclusion so that it doesn't show up for mobile readers. This is not ideal because a large portion of traffic comes from mobile devices and ideally they should be able to access this content as well.
2. Set |scale= for mobile readers, rather than desktop readers, and direct both to the larger version if they want to play around with it.
3. Add a viewport size to allow scrolling. It's not pretty, and I'm not sure how to make it active only on mobile browsers, but it works. See User:Wugapodes/sandbox2 for an example.
4. Change the slider bar

• We could make it shorter, so that instead of the entire top, it only takes up ~400px (the most common mobile screen width). This probably wouldn't look good on larger screens though.
• We could make it vertical and put it on the left so that readers slide it up and down rather than left right.

I think the 4th one is maybe our best option for now, particularly the vertical slider option. I've already developed a way for readers to be able to pan the map, so it would ensure that readers can access all values of the slider and see all parts of the map; though maybe not all at once. What are our thoughts? — Wug·a·po·des​ 22:26, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

@Wugapodes: The map now works for me on mobile, except that the map goes off-screen to the right (including the larger version, which since it's larger is even more severe), so there's no way to click on the most recent date. I'd prefer just having the map be small on mobile, which I think is what you mean with option 2. Definitely don't go with option 3. Sdkb (talk) 22:37, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: You can see examples of option 2 and 4 at Template:Interactive COVID-19 maps/common/testcases. The testcase is option 4, the second test case is option 2. Within each collapsible box, the first map is the current live version, the second is the sandbox version. I actually think a combination of them would work well (see the sandbox map in test case 2). — Wug·a·po·des​ 00:12, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

@Wugapodes: The small-scale horizontal slider looks good to me, apart from the fact that Argentina and Chile get covered by the key a bit (I'd suggest making it smaller, or see below about height). Seeing it, I have to say I don't like the vertical slider at all. A horizontal slider is intuitive for time, since time progressing from past to present mirrors the way we read from left to right. By contrast, a vertical slider implies filling something up or emptying it out, and that's made all the worse by the fact that there are the most cases when the slider is at the bottom "empty" position. It's also not solving the problem for mobile users, which is limited width, not limited height. We could always make the small version a little taller to create enough room for a horizontal slider. Sdkb (talk) 00:30, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

@Wugapodes: Something about the implementation seems to have messed up the displays for country names/case counts when you hover over a country. Only Iran and the Congo are showing up for me on desktop right now, and without case counts. Sdkb (talk) 01:18, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Because of the size, most data won't display on the screen. I'm looking into fixing it, but given hovering doesn't work for mobile users anyway, the best solution may be to disable the hover data when the map is too small. — Wug·a·po·des​ 01:22, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Should be fixed now, it was actually just a bug. — Wug·a·po·des​ 01:36, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Move discussion

 Comment: Please do not archive this thread until all discussions have been finished. Part of this thread has been restored from an archive. 2607:FB90:7A56:4654:45D5:870E:F9D:E8BF (talk) 02:05, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Proposal: Move moratorium

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.

---

These requested moves on here are getting disruptive so I formally propose a moratorium. I am neutral on how long it should be. Interstellarity (talk) 20:51, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Forward dating to prevent auto archiving. Timrollpickering (Talk) 20:51, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Further forward dating to prevent auto archiving. Timrollpickering (Talk) 20:51, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

Support

1. Support - We need to focus on the content, not the title. What the final title will be hinges on what the end-point of this pandemic ends up being: we should be wary about trying to title the current incident while living through it. doktorb _words^deeds 20:55, 15 March 2020 (UTC)
2. Support The last move was pretty disruptive, taking the usual editors to move all other related pages and updating them to conform to the new page name of this main article. Let's wait for the pandemic to stabilise first (be it for good or bad). robertsky (talk) 21:16, 15 March 2020 (UTC)
3. Support a 30 day move moratorium, unless and new consensus to lift this moratorium occurs before then. - MrX 🖋 21:30, 15 March 2020 (UTC)
4. Support. The renamings 3 time a day is ridiculous. Iluvalar (talk) 03:38, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
5. Support. This is clearly a long-running distraction that has been affecting this page and its related subpages. Carrots have stopped working, so it's time for the stick. --benlisquare_T•C•E 04:49, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
6. Support. I think that there are reasonable arguments for COVID-19 rather than coronavirus, but there are also good counterarguments, and any proposal along these lines wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell of being seen as a priority right now. We can get back to this in six to twelve months' time. The change to pandemic was justified, but any other changes (such as from coronavirus to COVID-19, or in terms of the year(s)), are minor matters compared to the content. I propose at least a 3-month moratorium. Boud (talk) 01:05, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
7. Support. This is clearly needed now, as yet another RM comes along on yet another triviality. Obviously moratoria are not suicide pacts - if something radically changes in the real world, then of course we're allowed to think again. But for now the current names enjoy solid consensus and we should have the ability to shut down quickly the never-ending attempts at moves between the different names, when nothing has radically changed.  — Amakuru (talk) 12:05, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
8. support In the last 2 weeks, there have been about 13 requested moves, many of which have been speedily closed per SNOW. In the last RM, some editors supported the idea of a moratorium. Therefore, I request that there be a moratorium for the next 3 months on page moves, as having these daily requests is becoming very disruptive. Three months should be long enough for the pandemic to die down somewhat and by then we should all have the time to look more closely at the requests without being bogged down by the rapidly evolving situation currently going on. Thanks. Mgasparin (talk) 22:08, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
9. would support such action--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 22:36, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
10. Support the standard six month moratorium. No move proposals on this page before September. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:40, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
11. Support — I thought we had a moratorium already. Carl Fredrik ^talk 13:57, 21 March 2020 (UTC)
12. Support Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:58, 21 March 2020 (UTC)
13. Support This talk page is already too enormous, additional move discussions would clutter it up further. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:22, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
14. Support See above comments. — RealFakeKimT 08:35, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Oppose

1. 'Oppose': I notice there was some WP:RM recently, but most of them seems to too focus on "wanting to close" despite some merit on the RM starter side. I want to restrict users from attempting to enforce additional rules that would censor voices in RM and prevent users from using vote "Speedy Close" or having it closed for WP:SNOW. Wants them to keep RM open for 7 days no matter how much were started after another. Regice2020 (talk) 23:48, 15 March 2020 (UTC) Speedy Close As this issue been reviewed. It apparently there is a group individuals wants to prevent name changes unless it fits their "groups" agenda by proposal ridiculous amount rules to restrict voices from the other side. This the regular way to request a move and just make sure no other move are active Request Move Request. The users are following the instructions and these individuals are not allowing it last longer than 1 day for wahtever reason. Regice2020 (talk) 04:46, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
2. Oppose: we moved too slowly on removing "Wuhan" from the article title. A move moratorium is too extreme of a solution to this problem. We should remain adaptable. This may be for another discussion, but I propose we only allow one move request or move review to be open at a time. This makes sense because move requests/reviews technically conflict with each other. For example, we can move from "2019–20 coronavirus pandemic" to "2019–20 COVID-19 pandemic" or to "2019–20 SARS-CoV-2 pandemic" but not to both. In practice, this means any move request started while a request or move review is still ongoing gets closed immediately, and all discussion redirected to the active move discussion. I am still thinking of how to close the loophole of people NACing a move discussion early just so they can post their own. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 07:23, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
3. Oppose: Reflecting accuracy in titles is as important, if not more so, then the content. Sun Creator^(talk) 14:48, 21 March 2020 (UTC)
4. Oppose: we can handle move requests OK. There is no need for a moratorium. Bondegezou (talk) 16:20, 21 March 2020 (UTC)
5. Oppose this is a current event so there's a reasonable chance of things changing and thus a different title could easily be desirable however maybe we should consider not adding the move notice template added by RMCD bot? Crouch, Swale (talk) 22:04, 21 March 2020 (UTC)
6. Oppose vehemently, because it is wrong. Coronavirus is the name of the group to which the virus responsible belongs; COVID-19 is the name of the disease, and the pandemic is of the disease. We absolutely should not enshrine error for an instant longer than necessary. I note that not one of the support !votes is based on a claim that the current title is correct, and the clear consensus in the two following sections following this, and in [on the project's talk page] is that this is wrongly titled. Kevin McE (talk) 15:23, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose because at some point soon we’ll follow the media and use Covid 19 —Almaty (talk) 14:31, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Comment

• We have proven that we are able to deal with multiple move requests, and we cannot predict the future. So let’s just be the encyclopaedia that we are, and just deal with them when they arise. —49.195.179.13 (talk) 05:26, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
• Instead of a formal move request that puts a notice on top of the page, start an informal discussion on this page first to float the ideas. I think almost all of these move requests are wasting effort. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 05:34, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

  I support this option. A moratorium on move request notices, not on move discussions. -St.nerol (talk) 15:01, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

  Support this as well. --Efly (talk) 01:26, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

  I support this. Sdkb (talk) 07:14, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

• I think this is just part of a larger issue of settled matters being dredged up again and again on this talk page. It's indicative of the need for a "current consensuses" banner, as has been proposed below, and is basically awaiting someone to create it. Sdkb (talk) 07:14, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
• Allowing users follow the "leave it open 7 days rule" no matter what is the best optionRegice2020 (talk) 19:05, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

  Even with that rule, we have chaos. That rule alone still allows, for example, three concurrent (and mutually exclusive) move discussions. Furthermore, WP:SNOW closing has proven effective in controlling the discussions. I wanted to propose, in addition to what I have in my oppose !vote, that only admins close move discussions for the next month or so, as RfA usually selects those who have good understanding of policy. Problem is that we'd have to have a few admins watch this page like a hawk, close any new move discussions as they happen, and redirect the existing one...we're already strapped for admins as it is. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 03:24, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Why would you propose that? Have there been any problematic non-admin closes? Carl Fredrik ^talk 09:35, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Second question: no. First question: because I was thinking specifically about my proposal to have only one move request open at a time. That proposal has a loophole: someone could NAC early just to start their own move request. So far, I see two ways to close that loophole: to force move requests to be open for at least seven days or to restrict closing move requests to admins. My above comment explains my preference, if the we had the "only one open move request" rule, for the latter. Of course, restricting closure to admins makes no sense without the "only one move request open at a time" rule I proposed in my oppose !vote above. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 00:05, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

• Can't the request be closed? It seems to have a majority for Support, and it's been 10 days. I think that's enough time for consensus. 2607:FB90:7B49:613A:B83C:EC7B:288B:F4A9 (talk)

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.

Pandemics are named for the disease, not the virus

Hello. This discussion surrounds the current title and whether it is medically correct or incorrect. Please read the following comments and add your thoughts/votes below. ~ Magna19 (talk) 17:39, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

In the light of the early closure of my proposed move of this article, please could somebody, preferably one of those who objected to it, provide any medically competent grounds for claiming that a virus, as opposed to a disease, can be the subject of a pandemic? Kevin McE (talk) 08:03, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

• Kevin McE the coronavirus caused the pandemic. I don't see what your trying to say. — RealFakeKimT 10:30, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes, the virus caused the pandemic, but that is like saying that a match (as opposed to the fire caused by that match) destroyed a garden shed. By definition, a pandemic is about the spread of a disease, not of the virus that causes it. The pandemic should carry the name of the disease. In 1918 there was a Spanish flu pandemic, not an H1N1 pandemic (named for the disease, not the virus). Kevin McE (talk) 14:04, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

• Fair enough but it is it's most conmmon name so should be the title of the article per WP:COMMONNAME. — RealFakeKimT 15:50, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

COVID-19 is just as prevalent and precise instead of incorrect. --Gtoffoletto (talk) 21:12, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

• Support moving to 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic: "A pandemic is a disease epidemic that has spread across a large region." This is a COVID-19 pandemic not a coronavirus pandemic. I also disagree it's the most "common" name. Everybody calls it COVID-19 or Coronavirus disease 2019. --Gtoffoletto (talk) 16:03, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

• Strongly Disagre It's most commonly refered to as 'the coronavirus' or 'COVID-19'. I have never hear it beeing called 'Coronavirus disease 2019' in the main stream media. I stand behind what I previously said the WP:COMMONNAME is coronavirus. — RealFakeKimT 18:57, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

We have WHO[1], Johns Hopkins[2], and CDC.[3] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:18, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

• I'm saying the media medical institutions will give it it's proper name. I know you can't uses it as a source but in everyday conversations it's 'the coronavirus'. — RealFakeKimT 08:34, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Agree with User:Doc James. Let's use those sources. The shorter name is preferable: COVID-19 but the full name is fine (the year might be confusing though) --Gtoffoletto (talk) 21:09, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Kevin McE: I took the freedom of merging your two consecutive threads. It does not seem very reasonable to have two concurrent and consecutive threads about your objections to move request closure. If you think otherwise, feel free to split them again and sorry for the inconvenience. Best, --MarioGom (talk) 10:38, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

I will (and now have) split them again: they are separate questions. They are not merely about objections to a premature closure, but are seeking someone, anyone, to make an informed argument as to why the current name, with the errors it incorporates, is defensible in an encyclopaedia. Kevin McE (talk) 14:04, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

• Support: We need to be consistent. COVID-19 is a coronavirus. It is not "coronavirus disease 2019-20". It is "Coronavirus disease 2019", but "2019-20 coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic" would just be confusing. I think that all Wikipedia articles should exclusively refer to this disease as "COVID-19" in both titles and article text. ViperSnake151  Talk  15:22, 24 March 2020 (UTC)
• Support - COVID-19 is a disease caused by a specific coronavirus (SARS-cOV-2). Current title is strange I agree. 1. Has only been a pandemic in 2020, 2. the broad virus group is currently named as being the pandemic when as you say, it should be the disease. Title should be "2020 COVID-19 Pandemic". ~ Magna19 (talk) 16:44, 24 March 2020 (UTC)
• Support 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic as the correct and common name —Almaty (talk) 15:56, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose. Coronavirus disease 2019 is the correct "official" name. COVID-19 is an abbreviation for the official name. The current title is clear. Natureium (talk) 16:01, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

I had never proposed a name for the article that included the abbreviation, so I have no idea what you are opposing. I do note, however, that you acknowledge that the name of the disease, and therefore of the pandemic, is not simply 'coronavirus'. It seems extraordinary that when it comes to an alternative title you object to a widely used abbreviation that has probably reached COMMONNAME status, but when defending the current erroneous title, you set the threshold no higher than "clear". Kevin McE (talk) 19:55, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Because the current name is also a common name. No one is going to be confused by this title. Natureium (talk) 19:59, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

That would make them equally suitable, if other things were equal, which they are not.

Which brings us back to the challenge with which I started this section: to "provide any medically competent grounds for claiming that a virus, as opposed to a disease, can be the subject of a pandemic". Anything? Kevin McE (talk) 20:18, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

• Support - Coronaviruses are a large class of viruses, with the most common types leading to symptoms identical to the common cold. The virus that causes COVID-19 should not be confused for these more common viruses, and therefore I support the move. --TedEdwards 19:10, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
• Keep page at current name I think it is fine. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:14, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Of course that is an opinion that you are entitle to, but I am left wondering on what grounds it is thought to be fine. Given your profession, I would like to address to you directly the challenge with which I started this thread: to provide any medically competent grounds for claiming that a virus, as opposed to a disease, can be the subject of a pandemic? Kevin McE (talk) 08:51, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Pandemic in 2019???

In the light of the early closure of my proposed move of this article, please could somebody, preferably one of those who objected to it, provide some proof of the existence of a pandemic in 2019? Kevin McE (talk) 08:03, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

• Kevin McE in your move request you request it's name to be changed to Coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic I asume this means you think the pandemic started in 2019. — RealFakeKimT 10:34, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

No, the name of the disease is 'coronavirus disease 2019'. Your assumption is wrong. It is the title of the argument that posits the existence of a pandemic in 2019, not my proposal. Kevin McE (talk) 14:04, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

• Ok fine about the disease thing. For the pandemic it wasn't labeled a pandemic then correct but the events at the time lead to were we are now. — RealFakeKimT 15:55, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

References

The first of those links fails; the second points to a CDC article that consistently refers to the disease as 'Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)' and uses 'coronavirus' on its own onlt when refering to the virus; the third is from a non-medical stats gathering website that contributes othing, and displays its ignorance by refering to 'coronavirus COVID-19' (one wonders what they thought the first two letters of the acronym covid stand for). I'm not sure what anyone was trying to prove by posting this list. Kevin McE (talk) 11:48, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

• Support - you're medically correct on both counts. Title should be "2020 COVID-19 Pandemic". Magna19 (talk) 16:38, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

RfC - Limiting the countries covered in the domestic responses section

This page is already longer than it ought to be, and it's very much at risk of becoming bloated further. The domestic responses section is particularly at risk since everyone seems to want to add their home country (Egypt was just added, and I'm sure things are bad there as they are everywhere but we just don't have room). I can add a hidden warning to achieve consensus at talk before adding further countries, but that'll only do so much to stem the tide. Therefore, I think we need to come up with some criteria for which countries get a section and how long those sections can be. I think it's obvious that we need some individualized coverage of e.g. China, Iran, and that countries like e.g. Finland, Peru can safely be shunted to the "other" subsection, but there's a middle ground between them with e.g. the UK where I'm less sure. What are all your thoughts? Sdkb (talk) 05:37, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

• 10,000 cases to be doubled every 5 days —Almaty (talk) 07:14, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

  That cuts off South Korea, which has had a major response to the epidemic and perhaps has a lower case count because of it. But as a rough measure, yeah, that seems about right. Sdkb (talk) 07:47, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

I would remove Japan, as many other countries are more affected, and as Japan is otherwise also not specifically notable for its response (unlike South Korea). Voorlandt (talk) 08:19, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Why is it a problem if this section includes summaries on every country that cares to add one? This might be the only page downloaded by some people for offline viewing, and as such the single only/best place to get an idea of the kind of responses from each country, at a glance? Also, what makes the US or UK special in any way? 169.0.60.231 (talk) 09:31, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Too many countries have cases of coronavirus, it is simply impractical to give all of them. I would say keep South Korea because it is cited in multiple notable sources as an example of a successful strategy in dealing with the outbreak. UK is not really necessary, although it attempted something quite different early on that seemed interesting, but it has since abandoned that. Japan is also unnecessary, although I think a brief mention (say a sentence or two) under the "Other countries" section may be warranted if the Olympics get cancelled. Italy as a separate entry is necessary I think, although I think perhaps a new section on other EU countries (or Europe) may be possible since many EU countries have seen significant outbreaks, and Italy can be placed as a subsection in that. Other individual European countries like Spain or Germany would not then not need their own separate sections. Hzh (talk) 12:01, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Only the more severe outbreaks (judged by the death numbers) should be listed. In my opinion, that includes at the moment Italy, China, Iran, Spain. And possibly France. Then optionally the US and the UK. The fact France, and its lockdown, is absent from the page while the UK is described is quite strange. Mayfoev (talk) 13:49, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

In my opinion, the fair way to do it would be to only list those countries whereby the situation in that country was/is noteworthy and comparatively unique. Whether that be particularly bad outbreaks (China, Italy, Iran) or for some other reason, like particularly effective strategies (e.g Singapore), or like in the UK where the government defied the strategy of most other countries in their response and received backlash. Naturally this will include countries like the US (Trump controversy etc.) and exclude other ones (Germany, France etc.). Countries with moderate outbreaks, or those which had/have responses that are similar to many other countries are not noteworthy and should therefore be only explained fully in their own separate article. Please say if you agree/disagree. How will we know when we have consensus on this? Magna19 (talk) 15:38, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

@Magna19: Good question. I've added polls for specific countries below to better gauge that. Sdkb (talk) 01:17, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: Thank you. I have replaced Japan with Singapore using above criteria for now. I will vote below. Would it be better to use 'include' instead of 'keep' and 'exclude' instead of 'remove' given some countries listed here are not currently included in the article? Magna19 (talk) 01:36, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes, it would, thank you. I've refactored. Sdkb (talk) 04:46, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

@Magna19: This edit has created a poorly-formed RfC. Whilst the statement (courtesy of Sdkb) is certainly neutral and brief, it completely lacks context in the RfC listings. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:48, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

@Redrose64: feel free to refactor my statement if you want to give it better context. Thanks for your efforts to tidy things up; hopefully it'll make it easier to discuss the issues at hand. Sdkb (talk) 00:01, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

@Redrose64: Not my statement unfortunately. Magna19 (talk) 00:05, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Country Polls

Please vote below with either Include or Exclude for each country. Please keep explanation minimal, and discuss overall criteria above. Sdkb (talk) 01:17, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Italy - include

Italy Include Sdkb (talk) 01:17, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include Magna19 (talk) 01:40, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include --Gtoffoletto (talk) 13:47, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include Bondegezou (talk) 14:17, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include Worst hit in Europe. Hzh (talk) 14:25, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include --Calthinus (talk) 16:55, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include — RealFakeKimT 17:05, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include QueerFilmNerdtalk 20:19, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include: probably the country with more reliable sources coverage in Europe. --MarioGom (talk) 23:59, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include: Hardest hit country in the EU right now. --Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝) 00:52, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

China - include

China Include Sdkb (talk) 01:17, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include Magna19 (talk) 01:40, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include --Gtoffoletto (talk) 13:47, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include Bondegezou (talk) 14:17, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include A must even if, let's say, other countries have worst outbreak later on. Hzh (talk) 14:25, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include --Calthinus (talk) 16:55, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include — RealFakeKimT 17:05, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include QueerFilmNerdtalk 20:19, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include: obviously. --MarioGom (talk) 23:59, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include: Country of origin. --Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝) 00:52, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Iran - include

Iran Include Sdkb (talk) 01:17, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include Magna19 (talk) 01:40, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include large number of cases --Gtoffoletto (talk) 13:47, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include Bondegezou (talk) 14:17, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include Worse hit in Asia outside of China, cases possibly greatly under-reported. Hzh (talk) 14:25, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include --Calthinus (talk) 16:55, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include — RealFakeKimT 17:05, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include QueerFilmNerdtalk 20:19, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include: probably the worse/early hit after China, particular circumstances like sanctions that made it a target for high reliable sources coverage. --MarioGom (talk) 23:59, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include: Hit hard along with Italy in the past few months. --Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝) 00:52, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Spain

• Exclude - EU section? --Gtoffoletto (talk) 13:47, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• Include Bondegezou (talk) 14:17, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• Include no of cases -Magna19 (talk) 14:28, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• Exclude if a EU section is created Hzh (talk) 14:30, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• Include — RealFakeKimT 17:05, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• Exclude QueerFilmNerd^talk 20:21, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• Include: as of today, 3rd country by deaths and 4th by confirmed deaths, also highly covered by reliable sources. --MarioGom (talk) 23:59, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• Include: News is reporting hundreds of new cases a day and on average deaths in the double digits. --Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝) 00:52, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

France

• Exclude Magna19 (talk) 01:51, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• Exclude - EU section? --Gtoffoletto (talk) 13:47, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• Include Bondegezou (talk) 14:17, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• Exclude if a section on EU is created. Hzh (talk) 14:28, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• Exclude — RealFakeKimT 17:05, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• Exclude QueerFilmNerd^talk 20:19, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• Include. France had over 100 new deaths today. --Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝) 00:52, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

United States - include

United States Include - sheer size of the country. Plus Trump controversies etc. make more noteworthy Magna19 (talk) 01:51, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include - agree with above --Gtoffoletto (talk) 13:47, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include Bondegezou (talk) 14:17, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include especially as the US is rising to the top of the chart.--Calthinus (talk) 16:55, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include — RealFakeKimT 17:05, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include QueerFilmNerdtalk 20:19, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include. Individual states are getting their own articles. --Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝) 00:52, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

UK - include

United Kingdom Include - noteworthy and unique in its very relaxed approach. Only just imposed restrictions. Magna19 (talk) 01:35, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include- controversial approach has been reversed but interesting --Gtoffoletto (talk) 13:47, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include Bondegezou (talk) 14:17, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Exclude if there is a Europe section. Hzh (talk) 14:48, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Hzh - Though still technically in Europe as a continent, it would just get continually changed due to editors' Brexit opinions etc (sigh), better and easier to leave as separate section. Magna19 (talk) 15:09, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include for its distinct approach --Calthinus (talk) 16:55, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include — RealFakeKimT 17:05, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include QueerFilmNerdtalk 20:19, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include: Boris Johnson approach is the subject of an incredible amount of coverage. --MarioGom (talk) 23:59, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include as per MarioGom. --Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝) 00:52, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Germany

• Exclude An interesting case of low number of deaths, but may go into an EU/Europe section. Hzh (talk) 14:48, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• Exclude- EU section? Reporting in Germany does not seem reliable/comparable to other countries. --Gtoffoletto (talk) 14:52, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• Include — RealFakeKimT 17:05, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• Exclude QueerFilmNerd^talk 20:19, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• Exclude. Not much news over it aside from Merkel's speech. --Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝) 00:52, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Netherlands - exclude

Netherlands Exclude Sdkb (talk) 01:17, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Exclude Magna19 (talk) 01:40, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Exclude - EU section? --Gtoffoletto (talk) 13:47, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Exclude Bondegezou (talk) 14:17, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Exclude Unimportant Hzh (talk) 14:28, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Exclude — RealFakeKimT 17:05, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Exclude QueerFilmNerdtalk 20:19, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Exclude. Haven't heard much news about it. --Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝) 00:52, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

South Korea - include

South Korea Include Magna19 (talk) 01:51, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include - Best practice without lockdown. Over 50 million population and cases declining fast from a major outbreak --Gtoffoletto (talk) 13:47, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include Example of a successful strategy in dealing with the outbreak without draconian measures. The now lower number of cases compared to other country is an indication of success. Hzh (talk) 14:28, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include --Calthinus (talk) 16:55, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include — RealFakeKimT 17:05, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include QueerFilmNerdtalk 20:19, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include: South Korea approach to testing is discussed in a high proportion of reliable sources. --MarioGom (talk) 23:59, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Include. --Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝) 00:52, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Japan

• Exclude similar response to quite a few other countries, moderate outbreak. Magna19 (talk) 01:35, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• Exclude --Gtoffoletto (talk) 13:47, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• Exclude — RealFakeKimT 17:05, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• Exclude but consider mentioning it in the other countries section on account of the possible impact on the Olympics. Hzh (talk) 13:11, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Singapore

• Include - noteworthy and unique in its effectiveness at combating the virus. Magna19 (talk) 01:35, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• Exclude - small country and not so effective now --Gtoffoletto (talk) 13:47, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

User:Gtoffoletto, although most countries will inevitably end up with lots of cases, I would say it would be right to add one country thought by most to have best tackled the crisis. At the moment, Singapore fits that criteria the best. Please consider changing response based on this, if not then I would be happy to replace it if a more suitable country can be suggested and agreed upon? Magna19 (talk) 14:06, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Magna19 South Korea is the country you are thinking of. Over 50 million population and cases declining fast from a major outbreak without lockdown. Cases in Singapore are growing fast unfortunately and pop is tiny. --Gtoffoletto (talk) 14:10, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

User:Gtoffoletto, thanks for the info. I will remove sub-section on Singapore for now but will add again depending on any additional votes. Magna19 (talk) 14:22, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

• Exclude Too small to be significant. Hzh (talk) 14:30, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• Include — RealFakeKimT 17:05, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• Include: Singapore is still discussed today in most reliable sources. The size of the country has nothing to do with it being noteworthy or not. One of the earliest responses to the epidemic outside China. --MarioGom (talk) 23:59, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• Include. One of the few areas that launched an early response to the pandemic and managed to minimise casualties for as long as it could. --Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝) 00:52, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Australia - exclude

Australia Exclude - Magna19 (talk) 11:24, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Exclude -Almaty (talk) 12:39, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Exclude --Gtoffoletto (talk) 13:47, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Exclude Bondegezou (talk) 14:17, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Exclude Unimportant. Hzh (talk) 14:30, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Exclude — RealFakeKimT 17:05, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Exclude QueerFilmNerdtalk 20:19, 22 March 2020 (UTC) Exclude. Haven't heard anything newsworthy. --Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝) 00:52, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

European Union

• Include- how about creating something for the general European approach where we can group most other European countries except particularly noteworthy ones such as Italy? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gtoffoletto (talk • contribs) 13:55, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• Include - if a grouping of less-affected EU countries can be agreed. Magna19 (talk) 14:08, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• Include Covers all other major EU countries except Italy, but must not include minor ones. Possibly titled "Europe" rather than "European Union". Hzh (talk) 14:30, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• Exclude -- until some grouping of "less affected EU countries" is formulated by experts and/or the media, this seems like OR on our part and entirely subjective. --Calthinus (talk) 16:57, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• Include As said by Magna19 — RealFakeKimT 17:05, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• Leaning include under the name "Europe". While I'm sympathetic to the concern that the situation in Spain is not the same as that in Poland, and I honestly don't know how much coordination there is between EU countries, there are certainly a lot of similarities between them, and that should make it possible to turn this into a section. 2020 coronavirus pandemic in Europe appears under-developed, so it doesn't give as much guidance as to what the section could look like as I'd hoped when I just checked it out. Perhaps someone should re-write the intro to that and then insert it as an {{Excerpt}} here. Sdkb (talk) 17:17, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

It is better to use Europe because a number of European countries aren't in the EU, like the UK, Norway and Switzerland. Hzh (talk) 20:00, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

• Includebut title "EUROPE" so we can cover the rest of Europe without having to give them their own headers. QueerFilmNerd^talk 20:19, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
• Exclude. There's no coordinated European response, no coherence in how the epidemic is handled (compare Italy and Sweden, for example, with drastically different measures), there's a plethora of health care systems, no coherent philosophy around testing. /Julle (talk) 22:08, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Summary

Include: China, Iran, Italy, South Korea, US, UK

Exclude: Australia, Netherlands

2 quick final votes if possible before we make the edits?

@QueerFilmNerd: , @Hzh: , @RealFakeKim: , @Sdkb: , @Gtoffoletto: , @Bondegezou: , @MarioGom: , @Calthinus:

Europe section to be called Europe or European Union?

• European Union - Vast majority of European countries not in the EU don't seem too noteworthy anyway. Magna19 (talk) 00:40, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
• Europe. The individual governments seem to be the ones mainly coordinating the response rather than the EU, so it makes sense to use the geographic grouping of "Europe" rather than the arbitrary political grouping of the EU that excludes Switzerland for no good reason. Sdkb (talk) 00:50, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
• Europe - per Sdkb (the UK and Switzerland btw) — RealFakeKimT 08:45, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
• European Union - as in the "political and economic union of 27 states" which is coordinating several countries in a similar way to the US and individual states. It would be crazy to include individually each US state (although they each have their own individual response). Monetary policy is an example of how the response is being coordinated at the EU level. Switzerland is not included and not relevant IMHO as well as other small countries not included. The only relevant individual country within the EU is Italy that could have a sub section within the EU section as it was the first with major cases (this might change). Germany France etc. just treated within the general section.--Gtoffoletto (talk) 11:04, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Switzerland has one of the highest per capita rate of infection outside of tiny countries. Hzh (talk) 14:03, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Outside of Hubei, Italy and Spain I think. I don't think number of cases is relevant in this as they are subject to change and soon many countries will have a lot of cases.--Gtoffoletto (talk) 02:40, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

• Europe - We don't really know which other European countries will become notable enough to be mentioned in the future, and this will cover any potential ones worth mentioning. Italy should have its own section under Europe, Spain possibly, but not Germany or France which merit a paragraph each under the Europe section. Hzh (talk) 13:19, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

If Europe, is the UK noteworthy enough for its own sub?

• Yes - Sheer coverage and unique aspect. Magna19 (talk) 00:40, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
• No Italy is in a class of its own. Including any other European country for its own section is a slippery slope. It can get some individualized coverage within the Europe section perhaps. Sdkb (talk) 00:50, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

The situation may develop in such a way that that is no longer the case.--Calthinus (talk) 00:56, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

• may we should only focuse on the present. We shouldn't try and predict the future. — RealFakeKimT 08:45, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

• UK -- yes, European Union not "Europe" if we have to use it. Hundreds of millions of people live in non-EU European countries. We cannot simply lump them in... if we are "lumping at all" (eventually I foresee us being at a point where it is "Other countries" and not "Europe" that is the "leftovers basket" section). --Calthinus (talk) 00:56, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
• No Other Eurpoen countries have in some cases 10 times the cases of the UK. — RealFakeKimT 08:45, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
• Neutral: their "herd immunity" response was unique. They have given it up now though apparently so No is acceptable too. I guess I'm abstaining here! --Gtoffoletto (talk) 11:04, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
• No but may be mentioned in a paragraph under Europe on account of its early approach (which has since been abandoned, therefore not worth looking at in details). It can change if cases escalate there. Hzh (talk) 13:25, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

• Comment Seems a bit early to do a summary when some of them have only a few votes. Would have waited a bit longer. Hzh (talk) 02:09, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Can always re-visit at a later date and adjust where necessary but most are pretty unanimous for now, would normally wait longer but given the fast moving picture and significance of article, should be at its best soon as practical IMO. Magna19 (talk) 03:33, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Agreed with Hzh. The polls so far align pretty well with what's in the article currently, so the page will be fine. We don't yet have a clear consensus on the more borderline cases. It's fine to start fleshing out what a Europe section might look like, though. Sdkb (talk) 03:50, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

The problems now is that with the summary added, people think it has concluded and stopped adding their votes. Perhaps remove the countries listed in "include" and "exclude" in the Summary section, and wait for a day or so first and see if anything changes. True, it can be revisited later, but there is really no need to hurry here. And yes, keep the discussion on Europe/EU going in the meantime. Hzh (talk) 09:31, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Consensus seems strong for several. Some are contentious (Singapore and Spain). However Spain is included in the EU discussion. Can we "Close" the non contentious ones and only keep Singapore open and continue with the EU discussion only? --Gtoffoletto (talk) 11:08, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

I've collapsed the ones with clear consensus (unanimous or near-unanimous with sufficient votes and is unlikely to change). A few others like European Union could be collapsed as well, but we'll see. Hzh (talk) 13:08, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Ordering

Another question we need to answer that seems to be somewhat arbitrary in the article currently: how do we order the countries we do include? I think it definitely makes sense to list China first, given that chronologically it was facing this before anywhere else. After that, we could go either by first reported case to try to keep some semblance of chronology, or by highest case/death count to list the most prominent examples first. What's your preference? Sdkb (talk) 05:42, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

I think by first reported case is probably best. Saves changing the order if one of the countries overtakes another in case numbers. Magna19 (talk) 11:27, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Agree --Gtoffoletto (talk) 10:49, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Which maps to include

Okay, so as we start to figure out consensus on which countries to include, the next step is to determine how long each section should be. One big part of that is whether to include a map of the country with cases per capita in different regions. I see several possible ways to go about this — we could include maps for all or none of the countries we list, we could include only for the most severely hit and/or largest countries, or we could take into account how much regional variation there is in the virus's prevalence throughout a country. What's the right strategy here? Sdkb (talk) 18:46, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

I don't think there could be a fixed length for any section. China and US can be trimmed somewhat, but otherwise the other section are fine for now and should not get too big. I don't feel that any map is necessary since that should be in the individual articles, and you'd need to remove other images or tables otherwise it gets too crowded. Hzh (talk) 00:09, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm going to add a map for Europe since it seems to merit one and replace the U.S. map with the better per capita one, since that section has room for it and the U.S. is big enough for there to be regional variation. I wouldn't be opposed to adding a map for China, since it's also a geographically big country with a roomier section here, but as it's not there currently I won't add it. Sdkb (talk) 07:15, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Adding more caveats that the actual number of cases are likely much higher than is being reported

There is a very important and useful note attached to the "cases" label on the main table - "Reported cumulative confirmed cases. The actual number of infections and cases are likely higher than reported, but impossible to ascertain." This caveat needs to be added to all the other instances where "cases" or "cumulative cases" are mentioned throughout the article. This is important, as a lot of people and governments are misunderstanding that the actual number of cases is probably much much higher than is being reported. This caveat also needs to be added to the Deaths section where talking about mortality/fatality rates because, given that the "actual number of infections and cases are likely higher than reported", this means that fatality rates (or mortality ratios) will likely be much lower than reported - as they are simply deaths divided by cases. If any justification is needed for this, consider the following: Italy is currently reporting 4,825 deaths (see main table). If the case fatality rate in Italy were anything like what is being reported from Germany (0.3%) this would mean that 1.6 million have been infected in Italy already (4,825 divided by 0.003 = 1.6 million). But there is no way that the Italian government can know or report this, as they have only done 233,222 tests. Ideally the term (as in the existing table note) "reported cumulative confirmed cases" should be used throughout, with a note to each instance adding "The actual number of infections and cases are likely higher than reported, but impossible to ascertain". Many thanks. Surfingdan (talk) 14:32, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

References

@Surfingdan: Agreed, absolutely. If you see places where we can change the language to make it better, please WP:BEBOLD and do so. Sdkb (talk) 09:18, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: Thanks for the feedback. Unfortunately, as I am new to Wikipedia, my account is not yet "confirmed" so I don't think I can edit the page directly myself, as it is semi-protected. Can anyone else help out here? Best wishes to all! Surfingdan (talk) 13:46, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes, we need to be much clearer about the limitations in the numbers, especially cases reported.

We should never be calculating mortality rates ourselves precisely because of problems like these. We should as much as possible only be reporting what WP:MEDRS-compliant sources say about mortality rates. Even then, we need to contextualise the numbers. Bondegezou (talk) 14:39, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Please can edits be urgently done, as described and agreed above. My account is not yet confirmed, so I am, unfortunately, not able to do it myself. Specifically, every instance throughout the article of the phrase "confirmed cases" should be "reported confirmed cases". Where "cases" is just written this should be "reported cases". Throughout the whole article, including under all the graphs. This includes, but is not limited to, the grey info box under the map. Key instances, such as in the bottom of this box (where the global total of 358,000 is given), should have an additional note added to - as is already on the "cases" label in the table - "The actual number of infections and cases are likely higher than reported, but impossible to ascertain.". Thanks and best wishes to all. Surfingdan (talk) 16:18, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

This seems reasonable to me, but I want to defer to those with more medical expertise. Doc James or others, what do you think? Sdkb (talk) 18:49, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

User:Sdkb and User:Surfingdan we already have a tag that says "Reported cumulative confirmed cases. The actual number of infections and cases are likely higher than reported, but impossible to ascertain." Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:56, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

@Doc James: that's good. I don't see much indication that the article is inaccurate in a technical sense, but having a piece of information buried in a tiny disclaimer in one table is different than offering adequate communication to readers about our level of confidence in the data we use throughout the article. I think it's a matter of emphasis, and for a qualification this important, I think we ought to at least be brainstorming about how we might be able to state the caveat more prominently. Sdkb (talk) 19:52, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

User:Sdkb we also state in the text "There may be substantial underreporting of cases, particularly those with milder symptoms." I am unclear what more is being asked? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:58, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

@Doc James: I think the text of that disclaimer is fine. The issue is that it's buried in a footnote where essentially no one is going to read it. I'd like to see it incorporated more into the article body text somehow (although not sure quite how; open to ideas). Sdkb (talk) 20:10, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

User:Sdkb that was in the body of the text. I am trying to figure out what more is being requested? People much read the article before commenting. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:13, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

@Doc James: Oops, apologies, I missed that you were bringing up a different place a similar thing appears. What would you think of adding an {{Efn}} footnote to the lead section where the case count is mentioned there? Sdkb (talk) 21:09, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

We have "XXX cases of COVID-19 have been reported". We also say "Confirmed cases" in the infobox and not just "cases". In my opinion reported is sufficient. If these were not confirmed cases than we would say "xxx cases have been estimated" Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:13, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

It's all about consistency and avoiding misinterpretation, which is incredibly important right now. As noted above, in some places the article does already of course state "confirmed cases" but in other places just "cases" is used. Under some graphs it's the former, under some graphs it's the latter. In some boxes it's the former, in others the latter. This is confusing and dangerous. Most people do not read the whole article, but rather look at parts in isolation. Depending upon where they look, they get a different message. And the caveat that "The actual number of infections and cases are likely higher than reported, but impossible to ascertain." is not frequently used. It is used on the table - but you have to notice and click on the note - which I presume 99% of people do not do. If it's important enough to put on the main table, it's important enough at least to go on the main infobox (which is where I guess most people look). If any more justification is needed, please consider this: countries, such as Switzerland, have openly acknowledged that they are not testing the 80% of people with mild symptoms. This means reported cases from Switzerland (and probably elsewhere) are likely 5 times more than is being reported. Best wishes to all and keep up to the good work. Surfingdan (talk) 07:55, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Apologies, I am very tired. Please excuse what I just wrote. Of course it is about saying "reported cases" not "confirmed cases". I leave it to others to decide whether or not "confirmed" is also always needed. Surfingdan (talk) 07:58, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Surfingdan, I would have to say yes, as "confirmed cases" fall under the bigger "reported" or "presumptive cases". Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝) 16:24, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb and fellow editors, as my account is now confirmed, I have tried to repeat the caveat "Cumulative confirmed cases reported to date. The actual number of infections and cases are likely to be higher than reported, but impossible to ascertain." as on the table next to the main "Confirmed Cases" numbers in the infobox, but this note was deleted soon afterwards - maybe because it is not appropriate to have notes in an infobox? Apologies as I am new to Wikipedia editting and not sure of all the conventions yet. I still feel it is very important that some such caveat be added next to or under where this main figure is quoted. Lots of people look at numbers in isolation and out of context, do not read the whole article. Essentially there is massive underestimating of case numbers going on, as governments calculating and reporting case numbers themselves admit. For example on 12 March the UK government announced that actual case numbers may by then have been 10,000 whereas they were then reporting just 596. I feel it is incredibly important right now that people understand this, and most people do not, as they are looking at numbers in isolation for "cases" provided by many news outlets without any context or caveats. All case number estimates right now are massively under-estimated because no country is testing the likely 40% of people who are asymptomatic and only few countries are testing the 40% of those who only have mild symptoms. Some countries are not even testing all the seriously ill, at least during initial outbreaks - e.g. in Spain. And no country has yet tested more than 1% of their population, so it is an absolute certainty that all case numbers are massive under-estimates. Therefore can a text somehow be added directly under where the "confirmed cases" is reported in the infobox to state simply "actual numbers of cases are likely to be much higher". Is this possible? Thanks! Surfingdan (talk) 11:48, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

I have just tried again to add the caveat "Actual numbers of cases are likely to be much higher" to the infobox, next to where Confirmed Cases are reported. This time I did it in text, with two references. But it was immediately removed. I do not understand - if this caveat is good enough for the main table (where it is in a note to the label "cases"), why not on the infobox too? The infobox is more important than the main table, as it gives total numbers of cases and is likely where people first look. Moreover, there are so many references to support this point. Please can someone help with this? Surfingdan (talk) 22:50, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

@Surfingdan: the edit history will show you who reverted the changes. Unfortunately, since this article is receiving so many edits and not all editors are using good edit summaries as you are (thank you for that), it can take some work to dig through. You can ping them to ask for explanation via {{u|TheirUsername}}. Sdkb (talk) 01:24, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

References

Text on total "confirmed cases"

Not sure why this is in the infobox?

"(Actual numbers of infections are likely to be much higher)"

Yes it says "confirmed cases". It does not say total confirmed and unconfirmed cases... Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:27, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

References

MDPI is a possible predatory source.

We should not be using popular press for this. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:28, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

I have put it as a note. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:53, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Many thanks Doc James for your help with this topic. I added the note just like you have 24 hours ago, but it was then almost instantly removed. I hope it stays there now.Surfingdan (talk) 06:56, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Hopefully the hat note is a reasonable balance. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:57, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Mortality rate

How should we summarize the mortality rate as this is also going back and forth a lot.

WHO on Mar 6th states "While the true mortality of COVID-19 will take some time to fully understand, the data we have so far indicate that the crude mortality ratio (the number of reported deaths divided by the reported cases) is between 3-4%, the infection mortality rate (the number of reported deaths divided by the number of infections) will be lower. For seasonal influenza, mortality is usually well below 0.1%. However, mortality is to a large extent determined by access to and quality of health care."

In my opinion this is better than a letter published in Nature on March 19th https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0822-7

Or a viewpoint in JAMA from Feb 24th https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2762130

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:04, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

• I agree that WHO is more reputible than the others so it should be changed to fit the WHO naritive. — RealFakeKimT 19:29, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

no viewpoints no views WHO doesn’t meet medrs either when they are doing individual studies. No mortality rate. —Almaty (talk) 15:32, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Table

Country	Cases (23 March)	Deaths	Case fatality rate (CFR)
Mainland China	81,093	3,270	4.03%
Italy	63,927	6,077	9.51%
United States	44,011	560	1.27%
Spain	35,068	2,299	6.56%
Germany	29,056	123	0.42%
Iran	23,049	1,812	7.86%
France	19,856	860	4.33%
South Korea	8,961	111	1.24%
Switzerland	8,795	120	1.36%
United Kingdom	6,661	335	5.03%
Netherlands	4,769	214	4.49%
Austria	4,474	21	0.47%
Belgium	3,743	88	2.35%
Norway	2,570	10	0.39%
Portugal	2,060	23	1.12%
total 195 countries	378,601	16,505	4.36%

Isn't it a bit redundant and somewhat confusing to have this table? The only thing that it has that the template next to it doesn't is each country's case fatality rate. Sometimes the figures in each table don't match. Could the case fatality rate be incorporated into the template? If so, it might be a bit less crowded on this page.

And when did Portugal adopt the Swedish flag? Kelisi (talk) 01:58, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

On the template, consensus has generally been against adding any more columns, so I doubt there would be support for adding the death rate there. I do agree, however, that the table here is redundant. Especially the apparent lack of updating it gets compared to the template. United States Man (talk) 02:05, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Kelisi portugal corrected. Yug (talk) 00:24, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Regarding this table, I believe per MOS:FLAG, there shouldn't be any flags as they do not increase understanding of the subject, and also it could be beneficial to only include the worst affected countries on the table (bit like the one to the right of this discussion), and have a separate article for all countries. --TedEdwards 19:19, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Agree. The flags are unimportant and should be removed. Perhaps the left column could thereby be shortened, which will reduce crowding of the text to the left, esp. on small monitors. Kablammo (talk) 20:26, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Disagree, I believe the flags are useful and give a quicker way to survey the table. Additionally flags are use in nearly all tables of country data on Wikipedia. However, they tend to use the {{flag}}-form instead, which takes much less space. It does not take extra space compared to text, for example: {{flag}} -> Germany.
Carl Fredrik ^talk 06:53, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Case Fatality Rate

The new Case Fatality Rate table seems mostly nonsense unless we're trying to estimate how bad testing is country-to-country. Tom Ruen (talk) 01:39, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

2019–20 coronavirus pandemic#Deaths

Yah it has been added a number of times. Okay have removed it. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:06, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Not see a reason not to include this, this appears in other outbreaks' pages. But for now it should be named "crude CFR" or "naive CFR" according to the medical literature and it should be explained that this is a temporary number that could change significantly as more data comes in [4][5]. Damperin99 (talk) 04:29, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

I don't think saying, "Here's a number, but it's useless and you should ignore it" is a good strategy. These numbers are misleading. We should remove all CFR tables. They are WP:OR. There are plenty of WP:MEDRS we can cite. Bondegezou (talk) 12:15, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Here is a source from the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine. Damperin99 (talk) 16:10, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

There is already Template:2019-20 coronavirus pandemic data/Case fatality rate template table updated from time to time (as it is not linked anywhere). Could you please include it? --😷 garyCZEk 📢 ✍ ｛🧒👧👦🚲💻🚗🍣｝ 14:38, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Agree with Tom Ruen The table is WP:OR since no reliable sources are publishing these figures. Actually it's not a CFR, it's a crude mortality rate. CFR calculation is much more complex - take a look at some of the cited sources or at [[6]] Robertpedley (talk) 23:30, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

They were not evacuated, they were removed.

The building was evacuated—or in the case of the article, the places. CFRB's Mike Stafford said that over 10 years ago. If those people were evacuated, it'd be pretty messy. DMBFFF (talk) 02:12, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

DMBFFF, can you provide more context? Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝) 03:02, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

No sources from the former CFRB talk show host, but wikt:evacuated seems to support it. More of a personal annoyance to me than anything I could readily support with sources. DMBFFF (talk) 03:30, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

DMBFFF, that would be helpful, but where in the article are you seeing this issue? Under the subsection "Evacuation of foreign citizens"? Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝) 16:30, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

You got it. That's probably the major one."Removal of foreign citizens" seems more grammatically correct. There's also the section link, Evacuations related to the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic. The title seems grammatical enough, but the content? hmmm. DMBFFF (talk) 16:52, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Removal of foreign citizens does not covey the same meaning. It suggests foreign citizens are being kicked out of somewhere rather than being repatriated by their country of citizenship. Repatriation may be acceptable, but IMO evacuation is fine. As always a dictionary is not a good source here, especially not wiktionary. What matters is sources and plenty of sources use evacuation. See also [7], List of mass evacuations, Emergency evacuation, Evacuations of civilians in Britain during World War II, Medical evacuation, Casualty evacuation etc. Note that per [8] "This was indeed a usage controversy until about WWII, by which time the ‘remove (people)’ sense had taken firm hold. According the MWDEU: ‘The respectability of this sense is no longer subject to question.’" I know some consider this the worst crisis since WW2, so perhaps it's a good time to remember that WW2 ended nearly 75 years ago. (Actually planned events for the 75th anniversary of VE Day have been impacted etc.) Nil Einne (talk) 06:32, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Nil, fully agree. For what it's worth, the first two meanings in wikt:evacuation refer to people being moved out of danger, meaning 4 is messy. Regarding your last sentence, impacted is for teeth (meaning 2) which always seems very disagreeable, "have been affected" works better for me. Anyway, the wording in the article at present looks good. . . . dave souza, talk 18:03, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

again, more of a personal annoyance for me.
In my simplistic way of thinking, if they were kicked out, or more aptly, forced out, say "kicked" or "forced" out.
If they were repatriated, say "they were repatriated."
If they were removed, say "they were removed."

—unless I suppose one wants to use a word that has two extra letters and over twice as many syllables, and instead of sounding plain, one can sound more sophisticated using it.
(or as as a line I read in Omni (magazine) years ago I think put it "don't use a big word when a diminutive one will do.")

"Evacuation" is a noun, "evacuated" is a verb; and in Wiktionary, the former isn't much more a synonym for "removal" than the latter is for "removed."

I suppose if we change to "remove/removed/removing" in this article there's what, 100s of other articles we'd also have to change.

Still, I thought I'd at least raise it as an issue. maybe make a bigger issue of it later (months? years?).

Thanks Nil and dave for your time. DMBFFF (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 04:09, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

(As for worst crises since WWII, the Cold War and the so-called "Cultural Revolution" might be better candidates. I figure so far this year at least 700 000 Americans have died because of other reasons (330 million x 1% ÷ (≈1/4) ≈ 700 000). I hope all those intending to go to the 75th are alive and well enough for the 76th or whenever we get a good vaccine or similarly good treatment. DMBFFF (talk) 04:28, 26 March 2020 (UTC))

Approximately.

Does anyone object to the use of approximately, in the lede, when referring to the quantity of deaths? Seeing as two sources are being used, and the fact that not all deaths can be attributed 100% to the effects of the virus, I think its use would be preferable. MattSucci (talk) 10:57, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

• Support per nom — RealFakeKimT 12:10, 24 March 2020 (UTC)
• The current text uses "more than": we know these numbers are flawed, but we know the inaccuracy is in one direction. The numbers are certainly underestimates. So does "more than" convey that better than "approximately"? Bondegezou (talk) 12:17, 24 March 2020 (UTC)
• I think that's what is beneficial about "approximately" as it leans neither to the plus nor minus side and also takes into account the space between the hundreds. It isn't of game-changing significance, just a matter of preference. Anymore thoughts from other editors? MattSucci (talk) 16:06, 24 March 2020 (UTC)
• Support perfectly reasonable. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:54, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
• Support. We can only go with what's reported when reality is most likely skewed from that. --Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝) 04:49, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
• weak support. The "at least" bit might be a little sensationalist and/or POV, and, yeah, we really aren't absolutely sure about numbers. DMBFFF (talk) 04:57, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Quarantines/curfews/lockdowns to mention in the lead section

We currently have this sentence in the lead section:

Efforts to prevent the virus spreading include travel restrictions, quarantines, curfews, event postponements and cancellations, and facility closures. These include a quarantine of Hubei, nationwide quarantines in Italy and elsewhere in Europe, nationwide lockdown in India, curfew measures elsewhere in China and South Korea, various border closures or incoming passenger restrictions, screening at airports and train stations, and travel advisories regarding regions with community transmission.

References

Are we including the appropriate examples, or should we make changes? I expect that we'll eventually reach a point where there are so many nationwide lockdowns that it no longer makes sense to list them individually in the lead section. Sdkb (talk) 01:07, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

sorry I just did it continently before I saw this comment —Almaty (talk) 15:10, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

and the lead technically shouldn’t cite at all it’s meant to be in the body, —Almaty (talk) 15:29, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

@Almaty: No worries, it's impossible to fully keep track of all the discussion here. Should we also remove the individualized references to the curfews in China and South Korea? I'm not sure how many other countries have equivalent measures in place at this point. Sdkb (talk) 09:29, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

yeah I’m just more commenting that it if it is a well accepted undisputed point the manual of style says we don’t need refs in the lead if it is in the body. I think we should keep the curfews in, cos they’re independently notable and I think that will expand. —09:35, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Date of first report

Why is the date of first report written as 17 November? Wasn't it in December? Aminabzz (talk) 11:56, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

• There are multipule sources saying the first confirmed case was in 17 Novmeber (Including the timeline wikipedia padge) — RealFakeKimT 12:05, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

• First case was most likely Novber 17. However, China reported to the WHO in December 31, 2019. See this discussion for more. 2607:FB90:7B49:613A:B83C:EC7B:288B:F4A9 (talk) 12:06, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

This is one journalist in SCMP who claimed to see government documents. It is unverified, the other sources are reporting on that journalist. —Almaty (talk) 15:24, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

References

“Flatten the curve” is political rhetoric and not encyclopaedic

We can see in our own graphs, that as a pandemic that may be controlled, those that do control well don’t flatten their curve, they bend their curve. Flatten the curve is political rhetoric and needs to be recognised as such . —Almaty (talk) 13:23, 25 March 2020 (UTC) User:Doc James would you be interested in collaborating with me on this? —Almaty (talk) 13:29, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

first ref —Almaty (talk) 13:31, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

There are two separate concepts. One is to spread out cases overtime to decrease how much the health care system is overwhelmed (know as flattening the curve). This concept has been around long before this pandemic in the field of public health and epidemiology.

The second concept is decreasing the overall number of cases. Both are important and ideally efforts would be undertaken to achieve both.

I would stay away from the popular press. They love present controversy were there is not any. The heading should have been "Yes flatten the curve but all decrease the total number of cases". Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:34, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

personally as an outbreak communicator we always constantly monitor the popular press... and I cite them if they’re clearer than the medrs source, I’m just asking if the text around it should be changed —Almaty (talk) 13:40, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

we need clearer evidence on the page of how the pandemic can and had been controlled, they bend thier curves, for the first time in history.. exciting stuff User:Doc James —Almaty (talk) 13:42, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

but it’s not decreasing the number of cases, it is eliminating it, domestically as per China. It’s not just decreasing cases, it’s unprecedented —Almaty (talk) 13:50, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

• Flattening to curve isn't a political tool it's to help heath surveses to save lives. — RealFakeKimT 14:13, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

it is better to bend it. Like China —Almaty (talk) 15:23, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Sure it is better to both spread cases out over time and decrease the total number of cases than to do just one. No one is arguing against that. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:26, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

• To be honest I'm not 100% sure what bending the curve is. From what Iv'e infured from reading some articals it's besicaly putting the whole countrie on lockdown. If you could define it that would be help me form an opinion. — RealFakeKimT 17:12, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Bending or flattening the curve is taking action to slow down the rate of infection - to spread it out over time. The "curve" is a graph of the number of infections against time, with a straight horizontal line showing the capacity of the health care system. The goal described by "flattening the curve" is to keep hospitals and health care systems from being overwhelmed by a too-rapid spike in serious illness requiring hospitalization. This has become a widely used term to describe the situation, used by medical professionals as well as journalists, and IMO it should definitely be in the article. -- MelanieN (talk) 19:04, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

(EC) It seems clear that Almaty is using bending the curve as being different from flattening the curve so they aren't the same thing from their POV. However, even if one source used this, it would IMO be a mistake for us to do so based on that one source precisely for that confusion shown by MelanieN's response. Other sources do in fact use bending and flattening basically interchangeably [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14]. What Almaty refers to as "bend the curve" has been called "stamp it out", "eliminate", "suppression" or arguably "controlled" (that infamous WHO comment) and IMO all of those are less confusing than "bend the curve". If bend the curve becomes the predominant name than sure, but not based on that one SMH article. Nil Einne (talk) 20:50, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

See [15] which uses eradicate which shows even in Australia, it doesn't seem like "bend the curve" is a universally agreed term. Nil Einne (talk) 21:35, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Almaty What's your defonition of 'bending the curve' seeing as you said 'don’t flatten their curve, they bend their curve' and other users above see it as the same thing. — RealFakeKimT 08:03, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Unless there is a scientific source for "bending the curve" then it should not be used. Here they use "suppression" to refer to reducing R0 to below 1 - [16]. That has already been given in the article. Hzh (talk) 20:28, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

I don't understand what the controversy is about... Both flattening and bending the curve are imprecise colloquial references to the same thing — and it is totally encyclopedic to cover that. "Flattening" is by far the most widespread — and most sources make no distinction between "flattening" and "bending". I've never seen a reference of "flattening" to suggest "stomping out", i.e. it is used to mean "make flatter", not "flattening totally"... Carl Fredrik ^talk 06:42, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Bending could also mean bend up, flattening doesn't. DMBFFF (talk) 06:51, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

probably a proxy question as to how the community was feeling about edits about more aggressive control measures in general. There’s a distinction in my mind but probably not an encyclopaedic distinction. —Almaty (talk) 10:42, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

• So what was the point of this? It's just confused things and you are not clearly answering the questions about that your distinction is. — RealFakeKimT 12:21, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
• to me, there are two aims as doc james said, and one aim is to “flatten the curve” which, to me, aims Predominantly for the hospital services to not be overwhelmed. That should be lauded, yes but to me also accepts that this pandemic is inevitably going to hit everywhere, and will become similar to the common cold or influenza virus in terms of being endemic (epidemiology). A kind of herd immunity thing. With the evidence coming out of China, although I do not trust their governments reporting at this stage, this pandemic can be “bent” as in they can stop community cases entirely. The line is not pushed down then, it is changed, like you can see on our graphs. Also in sth Korea, with aggressive control measures. There appears to be two political arguments, one for bending, one for flattening. I don’t know if there is enough sourcing to make the distinction at this stage. —Almaty (talk) 12:51, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Diagnostic testing sensitivity/specificity

There is very little public data on how sensitive and specific the current real-time PCR test versus CT imaging testing is for COVID-19, probably because there is no actual gold standard. The article current referenced in the "diagnostic section" (, is an abstract of the article by Ai et al. . Ai et al. 2019 use review of clinical history, imaging, and viral testing results to make a determination in hindsight regarding each case's probability of having COVID-19. They believe that actual sensitivity of PT-PCR is low because only 30-60% of people admitted to their hospital with symptoms tested positive for COVID (), but this idea has not been peer-reviewed.

Therefore, I think it's misleading to cite sensitivity and specificity estimates for viral testing and CT. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sophieroad (talk • contribs) 15:21, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

References

Growth rates vs case-counts?

Can we add graphs that show both growth rates and case counts for key countries? The semi-log plots are hard for some people to comprehend, and the exponential curves for different countries all look very similar. The growth rate would be useful to show how effectively countries are able to reduce spread of the virus.

scottt (talk) 15:55, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Case counts are science fiction because the vast majority of infections with minor symptoms are not tested and counted in statistics. Why pollute the article with more fictional gunk that is incorrect by a factor of five to ten or even more? This article is already grossly misleading because of this. 85.76.76.47 (talk) 17:42, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

I think you are suggesting that confirmed case counts will underrepresent actual cases. Yes, this is a known fact and it is addressed elsewhere. You could discuss this in a section regarding testing methodology and stealth transfer. That said, the growth rate is not affected by limits to testing policy, as the growth rate of uncounted cases will generally mirror the growth rate of confirmed cases. The growth rate is useful to know if suppression efforts are being successful or not. scottt (talk) 19:49, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Excerpts

Hi! In the Spanish Wikipedia, we're using the Template:Excerpt to keep the various sections of the article synced with the subarticles (Ctrl+F "extracto"), and it's helping us greatly in easing the maintenance and guiding contributors to collaborate rather than working in parallel. Maybe it should be implemented here too? Sophivorus (talk) 17:07, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

yes excerpts have been used here as well(though sparingly)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 21:57, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Yep, I support the idea. The issue with using any excerpts from this particular article, as I noted here, is that there's someone or some process moving all the references to the end, so the places where the new text appears are generating reference errors. (And yes, as you mentioned last time, excerpting from the bigger article to smaller ones is doing it a little backwards, but I'm inclined to do so because this article is getting a lot more attention and as a result is just better.) Sdkb (talk) 01:43, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

@Sophivorus:, if you're inclined to take it on, I think a great place for adding an excerpt to this article would be the misinformation section. It's currently too long, so if the intro at Misinformation related to the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic could be improved, it could be excerpted into here to use as the misinfo section. Sdkb (talk) 01:46, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Sophivorus — I agree, it's an excellent idea, if someone is willing to put in the work. We're almost at the point where we have too many edits, and updating anything is a hassle because of the myriad of edit conflicts. Carl Fredrik ^talk 13:20, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Deaths section

By 24 March more than 16,700 deaths had been attributed to COVID-19.[259] Most of those who have died were elderly—about 80% of deaths were in those over 60, and 75% had pre-existing health conditions including cardiovascular diseases and diabetes.[260]

The above text is near the top of the Deaths section. These two sentences are not connected and the second is misleading. I looked at the second sentence and it refers to an article published Feb 5 using stats from China. To me it reads like this: Most of those who have died (in the World by March 24) were elderly—about 80% of deaths were in those over 60, and 75% had pre-existing health conditions including cardiovascular diseases and diabetes.

when it should be Most of those who have died (in China by Feb 5) were elderly—about 80% of deaths were in those over 60, and 75% had pre-existing health conditions including cardiovascular diseases and diabetes.

Also it is better if the two statements are in chronological order. Serendipity33 (talk) 23:46, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

The source should be updated. Month-and-a-half old data shouldn't be used. 2607:FB90:7A56:4654:45D5:870E:F9D:E8BF (talk) 01:43, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Agreed. Especially if readers cannot tell the data is one and a half months old. Who is able to update it?Serendipity33 (talk) 02:35, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

By the way, you should indent your comment because it's a reply to my comment. Prefix one ":" at the start of your comment per level of indent. For example, to reply to this comment, since this comment is a third level comment, you'd start your message with ":::: <message>". I've applied the proper indentation to your comment. 2607:FB90:7A56:4654:45D5:870E:F9D:E8BF (talk) 02:54, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

This has been bugging me for a while. Added {{cn}}. Xavexgoem (talk) 04:10, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Do not manually archive the page

Please do not cut and paste content onto archives. Wait for the bot to archive threads, or if it's too full, use a script. This archive attempt resulted in part of a template, two section headers, and two subthreads to remain on the main page. Those had to be manually cleaned up. 2607:FB90:7A56:4654:45D5:870E:F9D:E8BF (talk) 01:41, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Apologies for creating the trouble. I was using a script, the One-Click Archiver, but it may not have functioned properly. Because those sections were subheads and there was still active discussion elsewhere in the maps section, they weren't going to get archived by a bot anytime soon, but they needed to go. Thanks for cleaning up after my botched cleaning up of the page, and if you have advice on what to do differently next time, please lmk. Sdkb (talk) 01:50, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: If there are still active discussions, the thread cannot be archived. It needs to be restored if discussion is still active. Furthermore, in the future, to get all subthreads, use the "[edit]" links next to a section header and use Control+A (Command+A on Macs) to highlight the entirety of the thread, and then use Control+X (Command+X on Macs) to cut the text selected, which will archive a thread and every subthread. Then, on the archive page, use Control+V (Command+V on Macs) to paste the content that was previously cut. I'll restore both threads. 2607:FB90:7A56:4654:45D5:870E:F9D:E8BF (talk) 01:55, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Furthermore, I do not have the permissions to delete the content off of the subpage, so could someone delete the last two threads? 2607:FB90:7A56:4654:45D5:870E:F9D:E8BF (talk) 02:01, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

I replied above, but bringing back the archived threads was an extremely bad idea, and I wish you had consulted us before doing so. Someone else, please archive them again to get the clutter on this talk page under control. Sdkb (talk) 03:32, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

• I would recomend the OneClickArchiver as an esay to use script for archiving. — RealFakeKimT 08:22, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Wide art malformats text

There is wide art (images or graphics) in the article that pinches text until the text is too narrow. Such art should be narrowed, or placed under its own section separate from article text.

Examples from article: Note that the text size is large but in the normal range for readability. (Laptop into TV via HDMI)

• 
• 
• 

-Zahadan (talk) 03:12, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

• N Dont done This is a client side problem dew to the size of your text. Therefor nothing in the artical will be changed to sute your user preferences. — RealFakeKimT 08:28, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Central notice links here

Today's central notice from Katherine Maher talking about you and talking for you ("We will keep working around the clock..."). Thought you should know. --SI 04:14, 26 March 2020 (UTC) PS. It's only displayed to readers when not logged in. --SI 10:36, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm curious what that notice will do for this page's pageviews (given that there's some indication we're not as prominent on Google as we ought to be). I appreciate the thanks she's giving us, although I would've preferred for her to stop by this talk page to offer us pie as RedSoxFan274 did a few days ago. Sdkb (talk) 05:29, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

• I'm sure she has more important things to do. Although it would be nice for someone to comeone a personaly thank us for what we do but that shouldn't matter we need to fight for the truth regardless. — RealFakeKimT 08:45, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
• There has been a well-hidden "discussion" about it at meta:Wikimedia Forum#Message to readers from Wikimedia Foundation. The message itself reads to me much more like a bragging self-praise from Katherine, and not like a 'thank you' to the tireless contributors earning the thousands of dollars on her paycheck. --SI 10:36, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

i am not a fan of the message, for numerous reasons. Are we allowed to have a discussion on it? Or is it just an office action? —Almaty (talk) 12:36, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

"2019–20 outbreak of North East Respiratory Syndrome(NERS) (NERS-nCoV)" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect 2019–20 outbreak of North East Respiratory Syndrome(NERS) (NERS-nCoV). Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. Carl Fredrik ^talk 05:53, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

FWIW, early 26 March 2020

As Coronavirus Looms, Mask Shortage Gives Rise to Promising Approach
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/health/coronavirus-masks-reuse.html
By Gina Kolata
Published March 20, 2020
Updated March 22, 2020
Masks are certified for one-time use only. But on Thursday, the center began an experimental procedure to decontaminate its masks with ultraviolet light and reuse them. Administrators plan to use each mask for a week or longer.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-tariffs/u-s-excludes-chinese-face-masks-medical-gear-from-tariffs-as-coronavirus-spreads-idUSKBN20T2ON
POLITICSMARCH 6, 2020 / 2:32 PM / 19 DAYS AGO
U.S. excludes Chinese face masks, medical gear from tariffs as coronavirus spreads

DMBFFF (talk) 06:43, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Adding a new subsection called "Cases" in the "Epidemiology" section, above "Deaths"

Dear all - would it be Ok if I added a new "Cases" subsection in the "Epidemiology" section, above the existing "Deaths" section? Cases are being widely reported, including by wikipedia, along with deaths. However I do not think most people understand what is meant by cases, including how it differs from (a) confirmed cases, and (b) the total number of people who may be infected. There are many many references now on this topic. Would it be OK if I went ahead and started adding this sub-section? This is an incredibly important and complex topic right now, and lack of understanding of what is meant by cases and confirmed cases is probably leading many people to misunderstand the current extent of the pandemic. Wikipedia could be very useful hear to report the current state of clear reliable scientific understanding on this point. Surfingdan (talk) 06:48, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

My proposal would be something along the lines of the following:

Cases

The total number of people infected with COVID-19 includes all those who are asymptomatic, have mild symptoms, are serious ill and who die from the virus (with reliable references). Confirmed cases are all those individuals who have been tested for COVID-19 and whose test has been confirmed positive by official protocols (with reliable references). Especially during the initial stages of a pandemic, the number of confirmed cases are likely to be significantly less - sometimes by several orders of magnitude - than the total number of people infected because the majority of people have not yet been tested (with reliable references) and most tests than have been done have been focused on the seriously ill and dying, due to the clinical need to prioritize those individuals. In particular, those who are infected but who show no symptoms (asymptomatic) are highly unlikely to have been tested (with reliable references). As an example, the total number of people found in hindsight to have been infected with the 2009 Swine Flu was several orders of magnitude higher than was being initially confirmed and reported (with reliable references).

What are all your thoughts on this? Surfingdan (talk) 07:34, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Any thoughts @Doc James and @Sdkb? Surfingdan (talk) 08:03, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

@Surfingdan: Thanks for writing this out! I certainly think there is a place in the article for discussion of things like estimates of the total number of people infected, and in the course of providing those, the distinction between that and confirmed cases can be explained. As for your paragraph above, I think we'd have to do some rewriting to make it more concise before including it here (e.g. referencing the swine flu like that isn't appropriate for an article about coronavirus), but you might have luck adding it or something similar to it to an article like epidemiology, and then linking from here to the section there. (That sort of article will be much less frenzied than here, so you'll have greater latitude to make bold changes. This is a really hard page to engage with right now, and I admire your tenacity keeping at it.) Sdkb (talk) 08:36, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb many thanks for the feedback. Of course, my proposal should be revised and edited by others too, and I accept your point about Swine Flu not being appropriate to mention. I will try to update the epidemiology page on this topic, as you suggest, and after doing that will start on a new section on this main page (unless anyone else has already started it by then) and hopefully by then more consensus will have been reached. Surfingdan (talk) 09:07, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

We could have a section called estimates, for notable estimates of the total cases. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:59, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Should we include that a mode of transmission is licking toilet seats.

Source. —Almaty (talk) 10:24, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

It seems more anecdotal than scientific... St.nerol (talk) 10:58, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

• No. It's common sence that toilet seats have germs on them so shouldn't be licked and hope most people don't lick toilet seats. — RealFakeKimT 11:02, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
• I believe it might be covered by possible faecal and respiratory droplets. Not a serious question just trying to lighten the mood around transmission mode after that rfc the other day —Almaty (talk) 11:08, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
• You certainly lightened the mood in my household, thanks. However, I believe that if anyone is stupid enough to do such a thing, then Darwinism should be left to take its due course, and these people shouldn't be advised to not do it. MattSucci (talk) 11:36, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
  • Was it really necessary to link to idiot? If you don't know what an idiot is, I don't think you should be on Wikipedia. 2607:FB90:7B09:75D0:808A:52B3:84AA:7D37 (talk) 11:39, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
• In that case, just state that do not lick anything. It's like the Tide Pod challenge but in the middle of a pandemic. The ice cream licker got jail time, hope this one gets something similar because they could be the one that killed someone's grandpa. 2607:FB90:7B09:75D0:808A:52B3:84AA:7D37 (talk) 11:39, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
• 1. It was the rim, not the seat; 2. it might have been disinfected; 3. no apparent contact with nose or eyes; 4. he appears young: I think he'll live. DMBFFF (talk) 14:14, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
  (might be my first TicToc video)

Nov 17 and Dec 1 disputes

I told many times that either the sources need verification before adding but none of editor couldn't obey the verification rule and stereotypes. And persistent changing to the date will result in mistrust to any readers. Please be careful for your actions. The Supermind (talk) 11:04, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

There are sources for Nov 17.

References

2607:FB90:7B09:75D0:808A:52B3:84AA:7D37 (talk) 11:35, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

OK. I accept the source and once confirmed in my mind that the disease was started on November 17. Please don't change it. The Supermind (talk) 12:38, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

this is not a WP:MEDRS compatible source, it is one journalist that claims to have seen the government documents. The Chinese government I don’t believe has released them. Other journalists have reported on this one journalist seeing it. That isnt verifiable to our standards. So I support this being November or December 2019. —Almaty (talk) 13:10, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

The artical states According to the government data seen by the Post. So it is not one reporter. It is also stated on Timeline of the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic in November 2019 – January 2020 that the first case was 17 November. — RealFakeKimT 13:45, 26 March 2020 (UTC)