Insight by Zeynep

Please note the discounted and free subscription options below!

For once, we have a choice to end a pandemic by vaccination, rather than millions — maybe billions — getting infected. Unfortunately, rather than face this reality and act accordingly, we are telling ourselves a comforting but false story. theinsight.org/p/we-need-to-g…

New post with more on what I think went wrong with media coverage and public discussion last year about COVID origins, and what it says about the way the too tight media/Twitter feedback loop works to our detriment. theinsight.org/p/how-the-twit…

Not checking not facts. My latest: theinsight.org/p/checking-fac…

Guest @Insight essay on why novelty means severity, and why so many questions about variants, children, Long Covid, endemicity and more revolve around that very notion by @dylanhmorris. Nothing in this pandemic makes sense except in the light of novelty. theinsight.org/p/novelty-mean…

Why I'm not concerned about the Yankees' Cluster (and how breakthrough cases are both inevitable but not the same as cases among the unvaccinated). theinsight.org/p/why-the-vacc…

Vast majority of gas stations in North Carolina are reportedly without gasoline. What does this have to do with understanding the pandemic? Or with Battlestar Galactica? My new post for @insight. theinsight.org/p/battlestar-g…

New Insight post: to be better informed, we need to see the facts as pieces of a puzzle that don't make full sense until we find their correct place. theinsight.org/p/facts-are-pi…

A phenomenal guest essay by @WhitneyEpi on how she navigated the uncertain early pandemic environment to decide whether to send her kids to childcare. A central tension in epidemiology, how to pick questions, observed vs. expected, sticky priors and more! theinsight.org/p/how-one-epid…

How did a small study (ironically, mostly good news) go on to cause a global, misleading panic over variants defeating our vaccines? I wrote of one example—of too many―highlighting a key issue: please read the methods section before writing an article. theinsight.org/p/always-read-…

New post on how polarization ate our brains. Part one of a series on what's fueling "our" misinformation trifecta: polarization, bad science and puritanism/moralizing. zeynep.substack.com/p/how-polariza…

I couldn't believe it at first, but yep, it's true. The White House Press corps did not ask a *single* question about the pandemic for Biden's first press conference. Here's ten questions they could have, should have asked. zeynep.substack.com/p/ten-question…

I can’t recommend this enough. @zeynep takes apart the idea of “absence of evidence is evidence of absence”, and explains: well, sometimes it really is! This seems to me to be the more pragmatic question. zeynep.substack.com/p/pandemic-the…

I wrote about my "favorite" pandemic theater example of the past year—an attempt to get students to exercise together, indoors🤨—and how it was thwarted by fifth-grader eye-roll energy. zeynep.substack.com/p/pandemic-the…

I wrote about something that's been bugging me: the argument for vaccinating the world because of variants that would emerge *over there* posing a grave threat to us *over here*. I think that argument fails morally, practically and scientifically. zeynep.substack.com/p/ill-take-the…

Long Covid is a real issue that's increasingly sensationalized and turned almost into a type of moral panic. I wrote a post on why that's a terrible development: especially for Long Covid sufferers who deserve respect, proper studies and reporting. zeynep.substack.com/p/long-covid-h…

And this is part two on vaccines and variants. The three vaccines approved in the US have differences, but does that lend itself to a meaningful reason to try to choose between them? zeynep.substack.com/p/is-choice-al…

I wrote about how need for statistical power affects vaccine trial endpoints, what that means for "vaccine efficacy"—and why our layperson mental model of the immune system should *not* be a sea wall keeping the waves out, and getting overrun by tall ones. zeynep.substack.com/p/vaccine-effi…

I've written a (long!) piece for the Atlantic about the five key lessons from the Pandemic that I believe are valuable to study, especially since they apply broadly. I have an open thread on my newsletter (no sub necessary) to allow better back-and-forth. zeynep.substack.com/p/pandemic-les…

(And yes, this is just an intro into the topic, and mostly bringing out something I had written ten years ago).

I wrote why the most interesting thing about @joinClubhouse audio app is that it may finally force us to reckon with oral psychodynamics and how it fits with our ruling but not dominant print culture: a tension that's been there since rise of social media. zeynep.substack.com/p/the-clubhous…