Viswanath Lab: COVID-19 Dashboard

This documentary uncovers the history of the 1918 flu epidemic—the worst epidemic in American history, which killed over 600,000 people. Since 2018 represents the centenary of this deadly epidemic, many are drawing parallels to the current, deadly flu season. The film is accompanied by a teacher’s guide, a timeline tracking the disease’s spread, and a photo gallery of the medical investigation of influenza.

This resource collection from Scholastic Classroom Magazines brings together age-appropriate information for teaching about the coronavirus. Among the resources for middle school and high school students is an interview with a physicist who explains how sneezes (and mucus droplets) spread the disease, as well as an accessible article on pandemic preparedness.

This article in the Biomedical Science Journal for Teens compares two non-pharmaceutical approaches for addressing COVID-19: mitigation approaches, which emphasize protecting the most vulnerable in the population, and suppression approaches, which minimize the spread of the disease until treatment is available. This article, written in plain language accessible to middle school and high school audiences, bases this comparison on a computer model for flu pandemic simulations, modified for COVID-19. The authors find that suppression strategies—which…