As winter descends on a country ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic, life unfolds on a split screen. On one side, the picture is bleak: Every 30 seconds, another American dies of COVID-19. The number of people infected or killed in the United States keeps outstripping the common analogies we use—a hurricane, a daily 9/11 attack, a tsunami—to express the magnitude of our national catastrophes.

Listeners wrote into the Social Distance podcast with questions about all kinds of pandemic misinformation: tests, masks, supplements, vaccines, and more. Hosts James Hamblin and Katherine Wells discuss conspiracy theories, false remedies, and how to approach the people that believe in them.Listen to their conversation here:Subscribe to Social Distance on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or another podcast platform to receive new episodes as soon as they’re published.

You likely know that the number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 is surging across the country. But headlines from distant states do not capture the horror of a hospital without enough intensive-care beds. I was an anesthesiology resident in a large academic medical center at the peak of the pandemic in New York City this spring.During a time when journalists had little access to what was happening inside New York hospitals, I wrote regular email updates to friends and family.

When I was a kid, the sin of returning books late to the public library populated a category of dread for me next to weekly confessions to the Catholic priest (what can an 8-year-old really have to confess?) and getting caught by the dentist with a Tootsie Roll wrapper sticking out of my pocket. So decades later, when I heard about libraries going “fine-free,” it sounded like an overdue change and a nice idea.