Editorial Policy

Guiding principle

Every factual claim on every site in the Virus Questions network must be attributable to a verifiable primary source. We do not aggregate from other websites. We do not infer what authorities have not stated. Where science is uncertain, we say so.

Authoritative sources

The primary sources used across this network are:

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — primary U.S. public health authority for clinical guidance, outbreak surveillance, and travel advisories
• World Health Organization (WHO) — international authority for outbreak declarations (PHEIC), global guidance, and situation reports
• U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) — approvals and authorizations for vaccines and treatments
• National Institutes of Health / NIAID — research findings and clinical guidance
• European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) — European epidemiological surveillance
• Peer-reviewed literature — principally The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, Nature Microbiology, MMWR, and PubMed-indexed studies, linked with full citations
• National health ministries (for outbreak-specific data from the affected country)

When sources conflict or guidance has not been updated to reflect a new situation, this is noted explicitly on the relevant page. Readers are directed to the most current primary source.

Content creation process

1. Primary source review: Relevant CDC, WHO, FDA, and peer-reviewed sources are read in full before any page is written.
2. Claim-by-claim sourcing: Each factual claim is mapped to a specific source passage. Claims that cannot be sourced to a primary authority are not published.
3. Uncertainty flagging: Where data is incomplete, contested, or specific to a novel situation (e.g., a new variant with limited data), uncertainty is stated explicitly in the text.
4. Non-medical-advice framing: All content is framed as general educational information. Language that could be construed as personalized medical advice is removed.
5. Disclaimer placement: A medical disclaimer appears on every health page. The "consult a healthcare provider" instruction is included where clinically relevant.

Authorship and review

All content is written and reviewed by Andy Wilcox, founder of the Virus Questions network. Andy is not a physician. Content is based on primary-source research and does not represent the personal medical opinion of the author.

[PLACEHOLDER: Named medical reviewer — if a qualified medical professional (MD, DO, PhD infectious disease) joins the network as a reviewer, their name, credentials, and institution should be added here and to the reviewedBy field in each page's MedicalWebPage schema.]

Monthly review process

Every clinical page across the network undergoes a scheduled monthly review. The process:

1. Relevant CDC and WHO source pages are fetched and compared against current page content.
2. Claims directly contradicted by current authority guidance are corrected.
3. The "Last reviewed" date and lastReviewed schema metadata are updated.

Only direct contradictions trigger a correction. This conservative approach prevents speculative updates during rapidly evolving situations. In addition, pages are manually reviewed and updated whenever significant guidance changes are published — for example, a WHO PHEIC status change, a new FDA emergency authorization, or a major CDC travel advisory update.

What we do not publish

• Speculation, unverified claims, or social media-sourced information
• Suggestions that traditional remedies or unproven treatments are effective
• Claims presented as medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment
• Overstated risk for audiences with no realistic exposure pathway
• Understated risk for those with genuine exposure (healthcare workers, travelers in affected areas)
• Content that contradicts or is inconsistent with what the page visually presents (deceptive layout)

Corrections policy

Factual errors are corrected promptly. See the full Corrections Policy. To report an error, use the contact page.