Blog Category
Let’s Get Caught Up
Posted on April 25, 2022
Did you miss me? I know I haven’t been writing here as much as I should, but I have been writing. I’ve been writing over at Medium, and I’ve been trying — trying hard — to keep it professional. It has been hard to keep it professional with so many attacks on public health. From […]
An Open Blog Post to My Non-Believer Relatives
Posted on January 18, 2022
As those who work in healthcare and science continue to fulfill our sense of duty and continue to work in this pandemic to keep people safe and save lives, we will face opposition from people and groups with a warped sense of liberty. (It’s Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness… In that order. Life above all else.) The last thing we need is our own family getting in our way and complicating things. We need you, dear family, to either help or get out of the way, but do not oppose us. If you disagree with us, stay quiet, especially if you are not experts. Just walk away.
We Have to Explain Risk to People as if They Were Five Years Old
Posted on January 16, 2022
People who are afraid of flying have an irrational fear of it, so it is difficult to try and rationalize things to fight that irrational fear. Teenagers with raging hormones hand over control of their actions to the more “autonomic” part of their brains. And people for whom life hurts will seek a way to ease that pain. What we do to respond to those fears, those urges, and that pain — and how we do it — will determine the level of harm we cause ourselves and each other. Without understanding the risks of the actions we take to do harm — and especially to reduce it — we will continue to make the same mistakes that end up hurting us.
“Cruella” and the Complexity of Being a Villain
Posted on November 15, 2021
We often think of the villains in our life as being driven by one thing and being born as villains into this world. The reality is that they are much more complex than we think, the result of a complex life, a complex environment, and a complex relationship with us. At least that is what I learned from watching “Cruella.”
Se Cayó La P
Posted on November 5, 2021
The only thing that I remember from that day is the letter P sitting on the floor next to the grating that ran at the bottom of the fridge. It was the same refrigerators that I had with me through college, a refrigerator that was gifted to my parents by my paternal grandfather when they […]
Until We Can’t Fight Anymore…
Posted on November 3, 2021
I went to sleep early the night of the presidential election of 2016. I was in Atlanta, training on what I needed to know before being deployed to Puerto Rico for 60 days of chasing Zika. I had been in training most of the day, and then I took a long walk to the hotel […]
The Teams You’ll Play and Work With
Posted on October 28, 2021
It’s the hot summer of 1997, and I’m running drills with the club soccer team as best as I can, given that I was up very late the previous night and had managed to forget to hydrate. The heat and altitude were getting to me, and I was definitely not giving my all. I worked […]
I Get It. You’re Scared.
Posted on August 19, 2021 1 Comment
I had a most interesting encounter with a dude on Facebook. Said dude decided that a few hundred deaths from COVID-19 each day are acceptable for several reasons, the most important of which — in his opinion — was that we could not lose our freedoms for the sake of saving the lives of people […]
The End of a Chapter
Posted on May 26, 2021
This week marks the end of my time as the chief of the outbreak team. The positivity rate in our health district is now at 1.25%. In Maryland, it is at 1.98%. In Washington, DC, it is at 1.5%. The number of cases from congregate settings has dropped precipitously as vaccination uptake reached well over 90% in most facilities among their residents, though it could be better among their staff. Overall in the communities, more than half of eligible adults have been vaccinated, with many parents taking their younger kids to get vaccinated and younger adults also participating (thanks in part to schools and universities requiring vaccination before returning to in-person teaching).
The Trauma of Your Ancestors
Posted on March 26, 2021 4 Comments
I listened today to a seminar on transgenerational trauma. The theory of such trauma boils down to a couple of basic things. Number one, someone in your lineage suffered trauma of some sort. Number two, they displayed that trauma and their children followed suit. Number three, you also display that trauma because that is how […]
EpidemioLogical 