Well, you can tell I just topped up the suet ball feeder, because it sounds like there’s an avian riot in progress in my back garden. 🐦
I just betrayed my principles and did a rant as a Twitter thread not a blog post.
I shall say 3 “Hail Sir Tim”s, and recommit to the open web.
I bet I’ll be seeing people in Facebook groups frantically talking about it surviving on surfaces for a month, thanks to the headlining and story construction of these reports.
Wash your hands. Don’t touch your face unnecessarily. But worry more about aerosol transmission. 😷
“The Australian researchers conducted their analysis in the dark because it is known that ultraviolet light harms the virus.”
In. The. Dark.
Because UV degrades the virus’s viability. You know, the thing that’s found in, say, sunlight.
FWIW, the BBC gets this right: bbc.co.uk/news/health-54… They explain this in the third sentence, and then contextualise the actual risk. It’s an important finding - the virus is clearly more robust than influenzas, for example. But it doesn’t mean what people will think it does.
Australian researchers have discovered that the virus remains viable on surfaces like bank notes and phones (my immunologist wife likes to remind me that viruses aren’t “alive” per se) in the right conditions. OK. Scary stuff. But…
The phrase “in the right conditions” is doing an awful lot of work in paragraph two. It really is. What are those “conditions”? Let’s leap to the penultimate paragraph, where we learn something quite significant:
OK, this stuff makes me cross. COVID-19 is serious enough without reporting research in a way that scares people unnecessarily. For example, this piece from The Times: thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/v…
Alarming, right? (thread)
#lifegoals t.co/IECzwaUB8… 
Honestly, I’m just disappointed that this isn’t viral marketing for the next series of Doctor Who: t.co/Oeh1JTVU2… 
@corinne_podger My beloved #lumafusion from @LumaTouch. While I have both Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro on the iMac upstairs, the iPad Pro and the comfy chair has been my preferred editing setup for a while now.
@EstherKeziaT @chrismsutcliffe Just being a bit cautious until I find the original source. If it’s genuine, I shall then - and only then - unleash the anger kraken.
@chrismsutcliffe Is that genuine?
@corinne_podger @julieposetti @petren @KuengLucy @sophiasgaler Which is where initiatives like the @ejcnet’s engaged journalism accelerator comes in - it makes those connections.
@SophieWarnes Yeah. I might say that to a student face to face, and with my tongue in my cheek, but I’ve always worked really hard to make my feedback as useful as I can, even knowing a percentage of the students will pay no mind to it.
@SophieWarnes Hah. I know that wasn’t me.
Adding over-produced online lecture captures to over-produced home movies in my repertoire. t.co/qudATEVZn… 
@corinne_podger @julieposetti @KuengLucy @sophiasgaler IE: the research now exists, but everyone’s too busy peering at each other’s work, and not paying attention to “external” work - like research, even when produced by academics with a journalism background.
@corinne_podger @julieposetti @KuengLucy That’s interesting. Back in the 00s, I tended to assume that the lack of research was the issue — and it certainly was an issue back then. I wonder is this is a facet of the issue we touched on with @sophiasgaler: that journalism is bad at looking outside itself?
@julieposetti @corinne_podger Sadly, we’ve all been at it long enough to have seen multiple cycles. How do we break it, though? I mean, I’m a nobody - a minor consultant and trainer. How can we harness work like yours to stop it happening eternally?
@julieposetti @corinne_podger Sadly, it’s been a consistent trend for the 15 years+ I’ve been tracking and writing about this stuff, to the point when sometimes I have to step away because it’s so depressing to see the exact same hype vortex happen.
@julieposetti @corinne_podger Absolutely. It seems to need saying again and again and again.
@corinne_podger One day, this profession will stop running madly from saviour to saviour, and take a more nuanced view of the roles of various forms and tools.
But this is not that day.
@Black_Kettle Having spent a lot of time in Falkirk as a child, I do feel a <citation needed> might be justified there…