Question

. An op-ed is an essay that expresses your opinion on a topic that you care about, but is written for a general audience rather than an academic one. As such, your language will be more informal and personal; it will be more direct, with shorter, crisper sentences. In addition, in journalism (and in every other kind of writing) you are limited my maximums, not minimums, so you will have to get to your point quickly and be efficient throughout. Finally, you will be submitting this for publication. Your options for writing this essay are as follows:

1) A distillation of your research/argumentative paper. For this one, you will need to take your strongest points and present them for a general audience. You will have to change your tone and language to match that of your potential publication and audience. You will also have to remove the MLA citations (though you will probably want to keep a few of the quotes).

2) An opinion piece about a local issue (Covid and online learning, wearing masks and social distancing, tolls, legalizing marijuana, transgender athletes in high school, etc.) As in the first option, you will have to be efficient and direct, appealing to a wide audience with your personal voice. Don’t be afraid to be funny if you are able to- or at least keep it somewhat light in tone. General audiences don’t want to be lectured

Particulars: Max 700 words

it will be journalistic.

Answer 1

Wearing Masks and Social Distancing

With the advent of an infectious disease outbreak, epidemiologists and public health officials quickly try to forecast deaths and infections using complex computer models. But with a brand new virus like the one that causes COVID-19, these estimates are complicated by a dearth of credible information on symptoms, contagion and those who are most at risk.

COVID-19 is having a dramatic impact on health care systems in even the most developed countries. When there is no effective vaccine, breaking the transmission link is the main method for containing an infectious disease. Lockdowns of cities or countries have spread almost as fast as the exponential growth in the number of infections and deaths, but the disease trend has yet to be definitively reversed in the most severely affected countries. In those few countries where the number of new cases or deaths has peaked, this often occurred too late to avert a major blow to the economy.

Social distancing is critical in slowing this rapidly spreading pandemic. However, a high degree of compliance is needed for it to exert the greatest impact and it may not be easily achievable, especially in Western cultures. Even during a lockdown, there are necessary person-to-person contacts, such as going to supermarkets or seeking medical care, and other activities necessary to sustain the livelihood of citizens and communities. As people are constantly moving, the virus can be picked up from and/or passed onto objects if they are not wearing masks even when social distancing is rigorously practiced. These loopholes may bring the SARS-CoV-2 virus back to homes, institutions, and staff required to provide essential services, thus nullifying much of the effects of the lockdown.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus replicates rapidly and independently in the upper and lower respiratory tract at an early stage of the disease, and it can persist in aerosols and droplet-contaminated fomites for hours and days. Controlling a respiratory infection at source is often more cost-effective than targeting multiple intervention points downstream for environmental control or personal protection. Asymptomatic infected persons with high viral load are being increasingly recognised, and transmission from these silent sources has also been reported. It therefore follows that source control needs to be applied not only for those with obvious symptoms, but also for everyone in situations where people congregate. While there have not been randomised controlled trials to show the efficacy of mask wearing, surgical masks on tuberculosis patients are reported to have reduced aerosol transmission to guinea pigs by 56%. Ignoring for one moment the much higher efficacy of surgical masks in intercepting infectious droplets at source, a 56% decrease in infectivity would transform a basic reproductive number (R0) of 2.2, to give an effective reproductive number of 0.97. Theoretically at least, if everyone wears a mask during all person-to-person contact, the progressive decrease in the number of new infections in successive generations would eventually bring the pandemic down.

While research on the effectiveness of universal mask wearing for reducing respiratory droplet transmission is still thin, there is evidence to support it. Research on SARS, another coronavirus, found that N95 masks were highly effective at blocking transmission of that virus. Even ill-fitting medical face masks have been found to interrupt airborne particles and viruses, keeping them from reaching as far when someone sneezes. Another study determined that, while masks made out of cotton T-shirts were far less effective than manufactured surgical masks in preventing wearers from expelling droplets, they did reduce droplets and were better than no protection at all.