<em>The Atlantic Daily</em>: You Probably Didn’t Have the Coronavirus in January

Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox.

It’s Friday. Let’s quickly recap four things we learned about COVID-19 this week. Then, for those of you who are lucky enough to stay put, we offer some suggestions for a weekend in quarantine. (To the essential workers who aren’t able to stay home: Thank you.)  

1. You’ll probably never know if you had the coronavirus in January.

But you likely didn’t. Estimates vary widely, but all the available evidence suggests that very few Americans were infected at the top of the year. We may never know who they were.

2. Concerns about a new, more contagious strain of the virus are likely overwrought.

“There’s no clear evidence that the pandemic virus has evolved into significantly different forms—and there probably won’t be for months,” Ed Yong, whose essential coverage of this outbreak you may have read, reports.

3. A much-hyped coronavirus treatment is connected to a black-market cat drug.

This is a wild story. Remdesivir, currently our best hope for a COVID-19 treatment, is very similar to a drug called GS-441524, which is used to treat a different coronavirus in cats. The latter is widely available in underground markets in China.