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Epidemiologists In The News
[Editor’s Note: As
stated last month, no other event in our lifetimes has called upon the
knowledge, experience, and expertise of epidemiologists as frequently
as the COVID-19 pandemic. Everywhere we turn, epidemiologists are
forecasting estimated cases and deaths, being interviewed on
television, writing editorials and op-ed articles, and answering
questions for a wide variety of audiences. Below is a sample of news
items involving epidemiologists from around the world. ]
Opposed To Lockdowns
Sunetra Gupta,
professor of theoretical epidemiology at Oxford University, said in an
interview on UnHerd that she is opposed to lockdowns. She added that
“I think there’s a chance we might have done better by doing nothing
at all, or at least by doing something different , which would have
been to pay attention to protecting the vulnerable.” Gupta points out
“Different countries have had different lockdown policies, and yet
what we’ve observed is almost a uniform pattern of behavior which is
highly consistent with the SIR model. To me that suggests that much of
the driving force here was due to the build up of immunity.” In other
words, that is to say, not due to the social distancing or decreased
exposures.
COVID Crush Game
Malia Jones,
a social epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Applied
Population Lab has created with her web developer colleague Caitlin
Bourbeau a new game to simulate the transmission of COVID-19.
Called COVID Crush, the game allows players to try out different
physical distancing interventions to see what impact they have in a
population of 1,000 people represented by dots in the game. Readers
can watch a video on how to play the game here:
https://bit.ly/3egGZnG
“Mass Death By Public
Policy”
Greg Gonsalves,
Yale
epidemiologist was the subject of a report in the Huffington Post over
his statements on Twitter stating that the anticipated deaths from
COVID-19 constitute “mass death by public policy”. Gonsalves asserted
this because he believes that what is happening in the US is
purposeful, considered negligence, omission, and failure to act by our
leaders. Commenting on the higher risk of death among people of color,
Gonsalves said “this is getting awfully close to genocide by default.”
Can leaders be held accountable under international law, he asked.
Two Million Deaths
Anticipated
Jayaprakash Muliyil,
considered India’s leading epidemiologist and Chairman of the
Scientific Advisory Committee of the National Institute of
Epidemiology, told Outlook India in an interview that there will be
two million deaths in India if a substantial lifting of the lockdown
takes place. Despite these large absolute numbers, it represents a low
rate, he said. India has a population of 1,360 million people. Because
of the different age structure of the Indian population, Muliyil
predicted that the rate of death will be lower in India than elsewhere
despite the large number of deaths.
“Simply An
Epidemiologist”
Anthony Fauci,
Head
of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease has been
garnering headlines for weeks. In the process of advising the
President, he has created a fan base as well as a host of critics
because he has at times disagreed with the President in public. In a
colorfully worded article in the NY Post, Rich Lowry says of
Fauci, “He is neither the dastardly bureaucratic mastermind imposing
his will on the country that his detractors on the right make him out
to be, or the philosopher-king in waiting that his boosters on the
left inflate him into. He’s simply an epidemiologist, one who brings
considerable expertise and experience to the table, but at the end of
the day, his focus is inevitably and rightly quite
narrow.”
Missing: A Plan To
Reclose
Marc Lipsitch,
professor of epidemiology at Harvard was interviewed by JAMA to ask
about his predictions for the course of the pandemic in the US for the
summer and beyond. Lipsitch said “Almost every government is talking
about lifting control measures. Not every government, but many,
because of the economic burdens. Given the fairly high caseloads that
we have in the US, that’s a really risky thing to do right now…
Jurisdictions may learn more about which tactics work best in
mitigating transmission during this period and may learn whether some
mitigation tactics such as school closings are valuable…But the
downside is that many jurisdictions will have a plan to open up but
not a plan to reclose, leading to more situations like New York, New
Orleans, and Detroit where there’s extreme strains on the health
care.”
https://bit.ly/2A8wcwJ ■
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