Wikipedia talk:WikiProject COVID-19

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• Talk:COVID-19 pandemic § Highlighted open discussions
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Current consensus

NOTE: The following is a list of material maintained on grounds that it represents current consensus for the articles under the scope of this project. In accordance with Wikipedia:General sanctions/Coronavirus disease 2019, ("prohibitions on the addition or removal of certain content except when consensus for the edit exists") changes of the material listed below in this article must be discussed first, and repeated offenses against established consensus may result in administrative action. It is recommended to link to this list in your edit summary when reverting, as [[Wikipedia talk:WikiProject COVID-19#Current consensus]], item [n]. To ensure you are viewing the current list, you may wish to .

General

1. Superseded by TfD October 2020 and later practice - consult regular {{Current}} guidance.
2. Refrain from using Worldometer (worldometers.info) as a source due to common errors being observed as noted on the Case Count Task Force common errors page. (April 2020, April 2020)
3. For infoboxes on the main articles of countries, use Wuhan, Hubei, China for the origin parameter. (March 2020)
4. "Social distancing" is generally preferred over "physical distancing". (April 2020, May 2020)

Page title

1. COVID-19 (full caps) is preferable in the body of all articles, and in the title of all articles/category pages/etc.(RM April 2020, including the main article itself, RM March 2021).
2. SARS-CoV-2 (exact capitalisation and punctuation) is the common name of the virus and should be used for the main article's title, as well as in the body of all articles, and in the title of all other articles/category pages/etc. (June 2022, overturning April 2020)

Map

1. There is no consensus about which color schemes to use, but they should be consistent within articles as much as possible. There is agreement that there should be six levels of shading, plus gray   for areas with no instances or no data. (May 2020)
2. There is no consensus about whether the legend, the date, and other elements should appear in the map image itself. (May 2020)
3. For map legends, ranges should use fixed round numbers (as opposed to updating dynamically). There is no consensus on what base population to use for per capita maps. (May 2020)

Lab leak consensus

Considering the WHO's recent stance regarding the lab leak, do we need another consensus to decide on whether or not to feature info about the lab leak possibility in articles such as Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 and COVID-19 pandemic? X-Editor (talk) 04:12, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Full discussion here. The gist of it appears to be "newspapers making much ado about nothing in matters where science and politics are mixed, while the actual report is not that dramatically different", IMHO. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 04:40, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Agreed regarding there not be a huge change in the WHO's investigatory position. It's definitely worth updating our wording with this latest report, but I expect it'll be a much more subtle change than the previous WHO report. Bakkster Man (talk) 11:07, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

I support updating our coverage to include more lab leak for NPOV and we can do another RFC if necessary. Consensus changes over time. Wikipedia follows consensus and this position is now far from FRINGE (which was used to exclude it before). Jtbobwaysf (talk) 02:30, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Actually I don't think much has changed at all in scientific or academic circles. No reliable peer-reviewed review article published in topic-relevant journals has considered the lab leak theory to be likely or substantiated in any meaningful way. It appears there is, recently, more prominent posturing from the small minority of strongly-opinionated theorists who have always considered it likely.

If the scientific and academic consensuses have not changed, I do not see why Wikipedia's should. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 12:16, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Yes, and if anything the new SAGO (preliminary) report is even more circumspect than the previous WHO one. It talks about leaks and biosafety more in the abstract and does not directly address the likelihood of it for SARS-CoV-2, so far as I can see. On the other hand, it is still bullish about the natural zoonosis route. Alexbrn (talk) 12:32, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm a bit concerned that 'a lab escape was mentioned again' is being portrayed as 'the lab leak scenario must be more likely'. I read it more as SAGO putting the details behind the previously nebulous statements by both the first origins report and the WHO Director General that 'more studies would be required'. SAGO just defined exactly which studies and information would be required to get that more definitive answer. Obviously the text needs an update with this additional detail, but the same old WP:BATTLEGROUND is opening back up and I'm not looking forward to that. Bakkster Man (talk) 13:27, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

The SAGO report says nothing new on lab leak results, but it does explicitely, unambiguously and almost-unanimously call for investigations on lab leaks in general. If the SAGO protocols were applied in January 2020 in Wuhan, and Chinese officials were hiding something, it would have come to the light by sheer peer-pressure. If this were the stock market and a new protocol was enforced to have more transparency on behalf of firms, it would be implicitly understood that the old protocols were insufficient. From reading the SAGO preliminary report I get the message that lab leaks in previous pandemics were under-investigated by authorities, and they are fixing it. Forich (talk) 02:02, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

• I don't believe there is a change in scientific consensus, as there never was one. There does need to be a change of consensus on Wikipedia. Perhaps an RFC on a noticeboard is the way to go. ScrumptiousFood (talk) 17:08, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Infobox maps at COVID-19 pandemic in Tennessee haven't been updated since February & March 2021

This is basically a duplicate of my June 10th post to Wikipedia:Graphics Lab/Map workshop in Request: Update 2021 COVID maps at COVID-19 pandemic in Tennessee. I did also post a request on the talk page of one of the original map creators but that editor hasn't edited Wikipedia since May.

So. Can someone please please PLEASE update the following COVID-19 maps:

• File:COVID-19 Cases in Tennessee by counties.svg
• File:Tennessee COVID-19 Deaths.svg
• File:COVID-19 rolling 14day Prevalence in Tennessee by county.svg
• File:COVID-19 Prevalence in Tennessee by county.svg

The most recent information can be found at the following sources:

• Johns Hopkins University - June 9, 2022 info/webarchived URL
• Johns Hopkins University - rolling COVID stats for Tennessee, updated weekly
• State of Tennessee - General TN Stats

At this time, the State of TN stats seem to be updated weekly, BUT if possible check & confirm with other sources before using.

• State of Tennessee - Testing Rates maps
• State of Tennessee - County Data Snapshots
• State of Tennessee - Epidemiology and Surveillance Data

Thanks in advance, Shearonink (talk) 23:02, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Well. I did what had to be done and what I could do.

• I moved the one map into the article's timeline.
• I had to delete the other maps. They were maps based on rolling data and hosted completely on Commons and used complicated syntax that was beyond me and so I had to delete them. Besides, since the infobox is supposed to summarize an article's important points and I couldn't update the data-maps it had to be done. Shearonink (talk) 02:48, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2#Requested move 21 June 2022

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2#Requested move 21 June 2022 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. InfiniteNexus (talk) 00:03, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

PSA: that RM has just been closed in favor of moving Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 to SARS-Cov-2, overturning the previous consensus of this WikiProject. As such, I have updated Wikipedia talk:WikiProject COVID-19/Current consensus. InfiniteNexus (talk) 00:45, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

Point of clarification: It was actually agreed that it would be named SARS-CoV-2, not "SARS-Cov-2". Please, let's be careful with our capitalization since it was such a big argument early on in the pandemic! — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 20:57, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

Is it time to cool it with the month-by-month Covid articles?

We're still trucking with Timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in June 2022 and Responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in June 2022, 28 months and counting. These lists are getting more and more fragmented and partial as editor and new attention to the pandemic dies down and coverage becomes minor or routine. In the spirit of Gtoffoletto suggesting that consolidation was an important step to take at this point, I wanted to discuss collapsing down these blow-by-blow articles to something that more approaches due weight and summary style, which a month-by-month rundown definitely does not do. Thoughts? Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 19:25, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

@David Fuchs: this is a great idea I totally agree... having monthly timelines 28 months in is definitely untenable. We really need to reduce the editing overhead as the number of editors inevitably dwindles. Won't be simple to find a good solution. Probably makes sense to keep the initial period of the pandemic at a high level of detail (2020?) and then consolidate the following periods? {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 13:52, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

Have there been any good longer-form pieces on the pandemic that can be used as guidance on how much detail is relevant? While I definitely think consolidating the later stuff entirely is the right call, for the earlier bits perhaps it makes sense to go through each and see which entries were actually germane versus just latest data on caseloads-type stuff—first noticed cases in a new country, global tallies, major vaccine breakthroughs, that sort of thing. One you hack it down, it might make it clearer if you need month-by-month articles or a Covid in 2020, 2021-type article(s) could do it all. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 17:14, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

The monthly articles should obviously stop at this point per WP:NOTNEWS Dronebogus (talk) 17:25, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

As a sample, I went through the March 1 entry of the March 2020 list, and cut out everything that wasn't a first confirmed case or death; in addition I imagine major thresholds (1000/10,000/etc cases/deaths-type numbers), major policy changes by country, etc. would make sense to keep as well. So trimming the lists down to this might give a better idea of what major info there is and what should be collapsed further. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 20:01, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

I'd support a cessation of these articles. Getting a blow-by-blow report each day of arbitrarily chosen nations isn't what I'd call notable. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 01:25, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

Edit request at COVID-19 pandemic in the United States

I'd be grateful if someone could take a look at this edit request that's been sitting for a few days. It's similar to this edit I previously made to COVID-19 pandemic in Singapore and based on testing in the sandbox, it should be able to get the post expand include size for the page back down under the limit (for the moment, at least). Thanks in advance. 2406:3003:2077:1E60:C998:20C6:8CCF:5730 (talk) 18:58, 29 June 2022 (UTC)