He has also worked on vaccine development in the past.ĭoherty, Boggs, and the other moderators of r/Coronavirus are all scientists, former tech workers, nurses, or students. "I never imagined being in the role I am now, because I never imagined the outbreak getting this big."ĭoherty, 29, has a master's degree in biology from University of Notre Dame and has studied infectious diseases like HIV and tuberculosis. Representatives from Reddit itself are in constant contact with the moderation team, another moderator, Patrick Doherty, tells Inverse. r/Coronavirus has become a go-to resource for information about the coronavirus pandemic, which, at the time of publishing, has sickened more than 130,000 people across the globe. They aren't the only people taking the subreddit seriously. The Reddit homepage directs users straight to r/Coronavirus for the latest updates on the pandemic. "It was when the admin actually got involved that other virologists really started taking the subreddit seriously." (The University of Pittsburgh is unaffiliated with Reddit or the subreddit r/Coronavirus and Boggs does not represent the university.) "It started off with other virologists just thinking it was a dorky pet project," she tells Inverse.
Boggs has been moderating the subreddit since the beginning of the outbreak, back in December 2019, when there were only 44 cases in Wuhan, China.
On a single day, Friday, March 13, it gained 80,356 members.īoggs, 25, is just one of a team of 10 moderators that control the flow of information of r/Coronavirus. The subreddit is pinned to Reddit's front page, under a banner that reads "KEEP YOURSELF SAFE AND INFORMED." It is now Reddit's fastest growing subreddit, gaining 353,772 members in the past week. And when she gets home, that's when she really gets down to business - Boggs is the moderator of one of the biggest and most active coronavirus forums on the internet.Īs of publishing, r/Coronavirus has some one million members. Then, she travels to her university's lab, where she spends all day studying viruses.
So much so that her daily routine was - and is - built entirely around them.Įvery morning, Boggs wakes up, goes online, and takes stock of the viral diseases lurking across the world. Long before COVID-19, virologist and University of Pittsburgh graduate student Emerson Ailidh Boggs lived and breathed disease outbreaks.
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