As the COVID-19 pandemic slowly but surely reaches a close (kind of), I think having an article on surviving a pandemic may be helpful for future pandemics. I currently did research and got information from ready.gov
. I would like help expanding this.
https://www.wikihow.com/Survive-a-Pandemic
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Hi, I’m interested in editing it, but it’s “inuse”. Are you fine with me changing it?
I have multiple concerns about this article, if I’m being honest. The overarching concern is that there’s simply no way to guarantee you’ll survive a pandemic because diseases evolve unpredictably and have no universal methods of transmission. And in general, an article on surviving a pandemic would do better to address aspects of daily life, like “do X if you run out of something” or “do Y if you’re having trouble with work/school” – the typical “wash your hands and stock up on supplies” content is not helpful for things like “my office building shut down for an indefinite period and I just realized I left my backup drive there.”
Right now, I’m highly
concerned about plagiarism; the majority of the content is a near word-for-word match of what’s written on ready.gov
, which can get us in legal trouble and even get us removed from search engines. Some examples of copied content:
- “Gather supplies slowly in case a curfew or shelter-in-place is ordered. You will want to include supplies such as cleaning supplies, non-perishable foods, prescriptions, and bottled water.”
- vs. source: “Gather supplies in case you need to stay home for several days or weeks. Supplies may include cleaning supplies, non-perishable foods, prescriptions and bottled water. Buy supplies slowly to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to buy what they need.”
- “Create an emergency plan. This is so that if the pandemic strikes home, you know what to do and what you will need. Consider how a pandemic may affect you in other emergencies, like an earthquake or a flood.”
- vs. source: “Create an emergency plan so that you and your family know what to do and what you will need in case an outbreak happens. Consider how a pandemic may affect your plans for other emergencies.”
- “Contact your doctor if you think you are exposed to a disease. They can give a test to see if you have any pathogens. If exposed, remain in quarantine, get appropriate treatment, and monitor your symptoms. If you are experiencing a medical emergency, call an ambulance right away.”
- vs. source: “If you believe you’ve been exposed to the disease, contact your doctor, follow the quarantine instructions from medical providers and monitor your symptoms. If you’re experiencing a medical emergency, call 9-1-1 and shelter in place with a mask, if possible, until help arrives.”
All content shared on wikiHow needs to be completelyunique, so the article either needs to be completely rewritten or deleted so editors can start from scratch.
Since a degree of the information will be the same even if the plagiarism is fixed, I’ll address more specific points:
- Why take the info from ready.gov
and then not cite it? As-is, there’s only two citations, and that’s not nearly enough on a topic this serious.
- Step 1 is misleading. Diseases can be transmitted indirectly as well, like through contact with bodily fluids or waste (HIV/AIDS, cholera, yellow fever, COVID [via feces]) or animal transmission (swine flu, bubonic plague, malaria). In its current state, it only seems to be addressing COVID and some recent flu pandemics.
- The cited Scientific American article is misrepresented. That article is talking about fever specifically. What applies to fever doesn’t always apply to other symptoms of a disease, like coughing, diarrhea, skin reactions (rashes, pustules), etc.
- “Supplies” is vague, and pandemics can strike in weeks – potentially faster. Plus, sometimes you don’t know what’s going to be out of stock (source: people panic-buying toilet paper and yeast in March 2020). And in some cases, you simply can’t
get what you need ahead of time. I’m on controlled prescriptions and some of them can’t legally be refilled early no matter what.
- “An emergency plan” is even more vague. Preparing for a pandemic is
an emergency plan. What specifically are we talking about: a house fire, a natural disaster, an ER visit, a financial crash, homelessness, somebody getting the disease in question – and what
do we need to consider when planning?
- Health insurance policies are not necessarily prepared for pandemics. Some insurers didn’t cover telehealth until COVID, and insurance in the US is a crapshoot in general. (For example, they might cover you going to an in-network hospital, but then refuse to cover your visit because the specialist was out-of-network.)
- Why do we need to back up our documents specifically for a pandemic? It seems a bit random since a pandemic isn’t likely to drive you out of your home or destroy your documents like wildfires or flooding would.
- “Be wary of scams and fraud” is vague.
- Everything on the step about preventing the spread of disease is specific to COVID. (A pre-COVID archive of Ready.gov’s pandemic page
has no references to masks, how far apart you should stand, or disinfecting surfaces, and only one of those could be effective against bloodborne diseases.)
- “Take care of your mental health by staying connected” misrepresents what mental health is. COVID caused a sudden loss of stability in daily life (many disadvantaged people lost access to supports and were unable to afford necessities), the switch from the in-person to remote work or school, loss of routines, feeling trapped inside (often in close proximity to other people), fear of getting sick or dying, or losing loved ones and not being able to say goodbye. Some people were forced to choose between their jobs and caring for their children, and/or essentially homeschool their kids because remote school wasn’t working for them; others became stuck abroad due to travel restrictions. Kids had their entire lives and schooling uprooted and many were initially unable to even go virtual because they and/or their parents couldn’t afford a computer or consistent internet access, and libraries were closed. Healthcare workers witnessed people dying in droves. Absolutely none of that will be fixed by a call with a loved one – and “Zoom fatigue” is a phenomenon too.
- “Get vaccinated” is not helpful much of the time. It took almost a year for the COVID vaccine to become available, by which point it had already mutated several times, and the rollout took several months at best. Some diseases evolve too quickly for vaccines to be viable (like colds or Hep. C). And even if a vaccine exists, sometimes it’s not an option; poorer countries are largely unable to get access to COVID vaccines compared to richer ones, and age or health issues can make it unsafe for some people to get vaccinated.
- You can’t update emergency plans for future pandemics. There’s no way to know how a future pandemic will spread, or whether it will affect anything other than humans. (A bloodborne disease is not going to be prevented by wearing a mask, for instance.)
There’s also no information on accessing healthcare during a pandemic. Doctors are often overwhelmed during pandemics; many people will have appointments canceled or be turned away, to the detriment of their health and quality of life. (A family member was turned away by forty-three
doctors this year because none were taking new patients.) And access to healthcare is complicated if you’re in a rural area, without reliable transport, immunocompromised, are overwhelmed by new work or childcare duties, or lost your health insurance because you lost your job (in the US).
I’m sure there’s more I’m not thinking of, but I’ve spent way too long writing this message out so my brain is fried. At the very minimum, the plagiarism needs to be resolved quickly, because that’s a legal issue, not just a content one.
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I was replying by email and apparently my comment did not make it through, but I wanted to share that US government sources are in the public domain unless stated otherwise (see the law section I linked). I get the concern with close paraphrasing though; our goal is to provide original content, not to import someone else’s (already free) instructions onto wikiHow.
I believe this is an achievable task, else I would not have created it. As for accuracy, I’ll ask Seymour Edits to maybe do a staff edit to improve it. @JayneG
?
In this case, it doesn’t matter if it’s Public Domain or not; plagiarism is just passing someone else’s work off as your own, regardless of its copyright status ( source
). And while I can’t speak for other search engines, Google will push down or remove content that’s too close of a match to content elsewhere, which (as I understand) also hurts the site’s standing on Google as a whole. Direct copying or close paraphrasing should be avoided even with Public Domain content.
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You can check out the CDC’s guide to prepare for a zombie apocalypse
(yes, that really exists, and it was written to get people interested in disaster preparedness, not for actual zombies) for ideas. The blog has information on surviving an apocalypse which is caused by a virus, and according to the CDC, if you are prepared for a zombie apocalypse caused by a pandemic, then you are prepared for anything. The information in it is mostly to prepare you for an extended lock down or shelter in place order, so it doesn’t have that much information, but it can help. It also has links to pages that are probably more helpful as well. I’m just suggesting this mostly because I think this page is funny, and it would be fun to write in the article, “According to the CDC’s guide to prepare for a zombie apocalypse…”
Also, the graphic novel is a great read.
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I’ll prob just wait for a staff edit. Close paraphrasing can be a big problem, regardless of copyright status, since our goal is to provide unique contentthat other people have not covered under different articles on the web. While I have paraphrased articles (and provided appropriate attribution as a <ref>…</ref>) with no problem, it is possible that something like this requires more sources than ready.gov
, as @JayneG
puts it I think “your money or your life”.
From my understanding, copyright generally applies to the actual content (text, images, etc.) of written works; that includes this post that I am making on this forum. If the text is an exact copy-paste (or a paraphrase that is too similarly worded with the copyrighted content), then it is a copyright violation. Plagiarism is a similar, but different issue, when already freely licensed content is copied without providing appropriate attribution, or as OED
puts it, “The practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own.”
If the paraphrase is too close for comfort, I am happy to rewrite, reformat, restructure, etc. so it reads less like the research source and more like wikiHow. You are also welcome to make whatever changes you want to make (despite the {{inuse}} tag) to add unique advice to this page. Or we can do the classic “delete and start over” if you believe it may be necessary.
At risk of sounding like I’m shooting everything down, I honestly don’t know if this topic would get a staff edit – and if it did, I don’t know if it would be what you hoped for. SE tends to focus less on YMYL articles these days, with the exception of immediately-relevant topics like COVID or wildfires. If this did get a staff edit, it would almost certainly end up focused on COVID rather than generic advice, because COVID is what’s relevant; it’s not just doomsday preppers that would be looking this up these days.
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Hi Everyone,
I noticed that How to Survive a Pandemic
has an {{ inuse
}} tag on it, and it does not appear to have been edited for a while. I am wondering if you all are still editing it.
I’ve left it alone for now, but please remove the template if everyone is done editing the article, or refresh the date by following the instructions on the tag itself if anyone plans to continue editing the article in the near future.
Thanks!
I already demoted the page as it is not quite ready to go live. I think what we need are more sources and more information/detail. And as Alex and I have said, freely licensed articles are unlikely to go live until they provide unique instructions that can’t be found anywhere else.
hey ,I think this may benefit with images
