Below is a short list of the underreported or misreported topics and events in 2020, including several earlier items. Each of these is contributing to the changing global landscape, yet most Americans are grossly unfamiliar with their contexts. Enlarging awareness and understanding of these topics can more positively guide our future actions if we are better informed about the path we are collectively being nudged toward. What is the downside of questioning everything?

Last month (issue #979), the Reader published 11 questions relative to COVID-19 for the Scott County and Rock Island County Health Departments. Both departments deferred to Scott County Medical Director Dr. Louis Katz for responses and we are pleased to share his unedited responses, along with the original questions, below. (For my responses to these answers with additional supporting documentation, see "Questioning Unreliable PCR Testing Is Hardly Trivial.")

We all agree there is a new coronavirus known as SARS-CoV-2 that causes a disease called COVID-19, from which people have died. That's pretty much where the agreement begins to wobble as new information is discovered, building on the science and informing the relative risk, which in turn informs the extreme response that lingers with increasingly less justification.