Who to follow on Twitter for legit, trustworthy coronavirus info

Good news: There are trustworthy coronavirus-tweeting scientists and journalists to follow online — amid a sea of notorious misinformation in the Twitterverse. 

Researchers have already grasped a lot about this pernicious microbe, yet infectious disease experts acknowledge they still have much to learn about the new coronavirus and the resulting respiratory disease, COVID-19. That’s because this virus leapt from animals and began infecting people just some five months ago. It’s brand new, as far as pathogens go. This means big, weighty questions about immunity, the number of infections, and potential treatments still loom large.

“We are standing on the shore and we’re looking out at the water ahead of us,” Dr. Vince Silenzio, an M.D. and professor at the Rutgers School of Public Health, told Mashable earlier this week when describing the knowns and unknowns of the virus. “We can see the horizon, but we don’t know what’s over the horizon.”

As our understanding of this new coronavirus continues to emerge over the coming year and beyond, here’s a list of reliable, smart, and credible experts to follow on Twitter. 

This list will be updated — as there’s no dearth of valuable scientific minds out there.

Caitlin Rivers, PhD

Caitlin Rivers, an expert in disease outbreaks, is a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Natalie Dean, PhD

Natalie Dean, who researches emerging infectious diseases and vaccine study design, is an assistant professor of biostatistics at the University of Florida.

Helen Branswell, journalist at Stat

Helen Branswell is a senior writer in infectious diseases at Stat. She first reported on a “mysterious and growing cluster of unexplained pneumonia cases in the Chinese city of Wuhan” on Jan. 4, 2020. 

Florian Krammer, PhD

Florian Krammer is a professor in the Department of Microbiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai whose Twitter bio, appropriately, reads “Viruses, viruses, viruses and vaccines.”

Akiko Iwasaki, PhD

Akiko Iwasaki is a professor of immunobiology and molecular, cellular and developmental biology at the Yale School of Medicine. She urged robust social distancing measures early on, before most states and cities instituted shutdowns.

Trevor Bedford, PhD

Trevor Bedford researches viruses and immunity at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. He tracks the evolution of the new coronavirus around the U.S.

Caroline Chen, journalist at ProPublica

Caroline Chen is a health care reporter at ProPublica who is excellent at slogging through a deluge of new research and identifying what we know — and don’t — about the new coronavirus.

David States, MD, PhD

Dr. David States is the chief medical officer at Angstrom Biotech, an innovative biotech company. He gives realistic insight into how challenging it will be to make and test effective vaccines for coronavirus.

Ashish Jha, MD, MPH

Dr. Ashish Jha is currently the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. He emphasizes the need for a robust national testing plan. There isn’t one.

Soumya Karlamangla, journalist at the LA Times

Soumya Karlamangla reports on health care in California for the Los Angeles Times, bringing critical reporting about the coronavirus from the most populous state and biggest economy in the U.S.

Scott Gottlieb, MD

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former commissioner of the FDA, is an active tweeter and commenter on the latest coronavirus research and how to responsibly reopen shutdown parts of the nation.