Ask Epidemiologist Questions About Coronavirus [Update: Completed]
UPDATE: And you’re done! Many thanks to René F. Najera, DrPH. He is an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and is currently part of the Pandemic Response Team at the Department of Health in Washington, DC.
Epidemiology is the study of the health of entire communities . For example, epidemiologists are people who track the causes of pandemics and study how they spread and how to deal with them. (Epidemiology is more than just a disease, however: Najera’s doctoral dissertation used epidemiological tools to understand the Baltimore homicide epidemic.)
This isn’t even Najera’s first pandemic. He was the Influenza Surveillance Coordinator for the Maryland Department of Health during the 2009 H1N1 (influenza) pandemic. He also advised on disease surveillance in Colombia, where he helped track the chikungunya outbreak; with the CDC on the Zika virus response in Puerto Rico; and with local health departments on Ebola preparedness.
When he’s not here, you can catch Nader on Twitter @EpiRen or monitor for the project History of Vaccines , where he is the director of the project, Instagram on @historyvaccines .
And now happy readers, he is here to answer your questions about the current COVID-19 pandemic. The questions and answers are over! Thank you all for your thoughtful questions and thanks to Dr. Najera for taking the time to answer them.