Testing, Tracing, Containing: COVID Response Strategies are Anything but New

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For many people, COVID may be the first time you’ve thought about public health beyond things like the existence of vaccines. You may never have known that some diseases have to be reported straightaway to health authorities and that someone calls you if you’ve tested positive. You may never have heard of an epidemiologist or thought that we do something with skin.

Since COVID, though, you’re likely hearing terms like “contact tracing,” “quarantine,” and “isolation” all over the place. You may have heard about PCR testing and serological surveys using antibody testing. It’s possible you’ve even become a bit of an armchair epidemiologist. It might be the first time you’ve heard these words, but they’re far from new to public health. Below I talk a little about some terms you may have heard related to public health and some of their history.

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We Live in Each Other’s Shadow: Social Distancing is Our Social Responsibility

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As you may know, a new coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2 has been spreading, causing a disease that epidemiologists have named COVID-19. The disease is new (so the majority of people aren’t immune), spreads easily from person-to-person, and can cause severe illness in the elderly and medically fragile. The spread of the disease to so many people in so many places has led the World Health Organisation to declare the spread COVID-19 a pandemic.

The situation is very, very serious, but there are lots of steps you can be taking to keep yourself healthy. At this stage, Public Health is also needing us to keep our communities healthy through actions we call “social distancing.”

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Preparing not Panicking: Finding Good Information in a (Potential) Pandemic

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COVID-19 is a respiratory illness caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. Coronaviruses are a family of viruses (like influenza viruses are a family of viruses) and circulate in our communities every year. They usually cause mild, flu-like illness. Notable exceptions to this were SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and MERS (Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome). This coronavirus is new to humans and so public health scientists are still learning a lot about it. Like other coronaviruses, this one seems to be a zoonotic infection and crossed into humans from an animal—likely bats.

COVID-19, like its coronavirus brethren, causes fever, cough, and breathing difficulty. Public health scientists estimate 80% of people who come down with COVID-19 would experience mild symptoms and not need hospitalisation. Several cases in Washington State alone have managed their own illness without hospitalisation. While most people will have very mild illness, some people may get quite ill. Public health scientists expect that most of the severe illnesses will be in patients who are older. They also expect that most deaths will occur among older individuals.

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Season’s Greetings: Welcome to Influenza Season

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The air is crisp, the days are shortening, Starbucks is hocking their pumpkin spice creations, and I see people sneezing into their hands everywhere I go. Although we often think of there being only four seasons, many cultures recognise more than just those four. In Bangladesh, there are 6 in total and autumn is broken into shorotkal (early autumn) and hemontokal (late autumn). For public health practitioners, we also acknowledge a special season: Influenza Season.

Public Health measures the calendar year broken into what we call CDC or Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) weeks. They run Sunday-Saturday and Week 1 begins the first Sunday of each year. Influenza Season (in the Northern Hemisphere) is generally considered to be between Week 40 (around the first week of October) through Week 20 (the end of May).

Unfortunately, just as cold, dry air makes our noses more hospitable to the virus entering our bodies and and poorer weather keeps us indoors, school also begins and large numbers of children spend whole days sneezing on each other and refusing to wash their hands. It’s an annual recipe for disaster.

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It's Just Food Poisoning

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When I think of food poisoning, I often think back to President Josiah Bartlet calling the Butterball Hotline after Toby Ziegler warned him that cooking the stuffing in his Thanksgiving turkey would make his guests ill (and possibly kill them). President Bartlet is surprised by this and has a series of ridiculous interactions with his staffers trying to track down the truth of the matter before finally receiving some excellent advice from the Butterball Hotline.

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