Wow. What a week. On the surface, not much should have changed for me. Generally speaking, I work from home. (Or, more precisely, I’m perfectly capable of doing all of my work from home.) As a writer for the web, it’s not like I have to go into an office.
Still, I haven’t been able to get much done for the past ten days. Current events are just too distracting. I can’t focus on the things I’m supposed to do. Crazy.
In an effort to get some of this out of my system, today at Apex we’re going to share a few of the very best resources we’ve found for our current coronavirus economy. Then — maybe — we can get back to regular personal-finance stories for the rest of the week.
Coronavirus statistics and research. [Our World in Data] — “The mission of Our World in Data is to make data and research on the world’s largest problems understandable and accessible. While most of our work focuses on large problems that humanity has faced for a long time – such as child mortality, natural disasters, poverty and almost 100 other problems – this article focuses on a new, emerging global problem: the ongoing outbreak of the coronavirus disease [COVID-19].” This enormous page of information includes tips, but its best feature is all of the charts graphs and up-to-date statistics.
Coronavirus pandemic page at the World Health Organization. [World Health Organization] — There’s a metric shit-ton of misinformation on COVID-19 floating around. Some of this misinformation is obvious — those conspiracy theories your cousin posts on Facebook — but some of the bad advice actually sounds plausible. Will warm weather kill the disease? Are you safe if you can hold your breath for ten seconds? The WHO is an excellent, reliable source for the facts. (Check out their mythbusters page!)
Similar to the World Health Organization page, there’s a coronavirus hub from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Plus, Consumer Reports has set up their own guide to the coronavirus.
If you’re a nerd with too much time on her hands, you might want to spend a few minutes playing with this epidemic calculator. You can change variables — death rate, recovery times, communicability — to see how different factors affect the spread and severity of a pandemic.
Finally, our pal Erin Lowry from Broke Millennial has spear-headed and effort to collate as much personal-finance info as possible related to this crisis. She’s collected it all into a handy Google spreadsheet. You might want to bookmark it. (Yes, I know Jim shared this same link on Friday. But it’s so useful and important that we’re sharing it again today.)
We’ll close things out today with our usual bonus video. This one isn’t much fun though. It’s an animated look at what the coronavirus does to your body — and what you can do to prevent its spread.
That’s it for a rather melancholy Monday. We’ll be back tomorrow with more of the best money stories from around the web.