Three Things Thursday highlights three things I am paying attention to as an epidemiologist each week. Avian influenza continues to dominate the headlines AND now two new COVID variants are circulating (wonderfully named FLiRT, an acronym using the technical names for the mutations that caused the family of variants).
As an epidemiologist, avian influenza keeps me up at night. There is so much information about the disease, asymptomatic spread among dairy cows, and spread of disease to new species (the latest is a bald eagle here in Pennsylvania).
Despite all the news about avian influenza, there is NO need to panic yet.
I do NOT see any cause for concern or worry yet.1 I do NOT think you need to change your behaviors; you do NOT need to track the news daily.
We — the general population — are not there, yet.
The same is true for the new COVID variants — we know that one of the FLiRT variants has overtaken JN.1 as the dominant COVID variant in the United States. The new variants do NOT appear (based on limited data) to be making people sicker. Many news headlines are screaming that these new variants will likely cause a summer surge — true, but we expected a summer surge regardless of new variants.2
Given that we do NOT need to worry or panic (yet), today’s Three Things Thursday will NOT be about flu or COVID. I will share an update on flu & COVID, including a list of the things keeping me awake (as an epidemiologist) at night on Monday. Be sure you subscribed so you do not miss Monday’s deep dive —
Today I want to acknowledge & celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week. I want to celebrate all of the teachers out there. And all the amazing work they are doing to create healthy communities.
Hoping this post helps to educate and empower you
to be healthy and create healthy communities.
Before sharing three specific examples of how teachers work to create healthy communities, I want to begin with a story that was originally told by Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher and theologian —
One night, a group of thieves broke into a jewelry store. But rather than stealing anything, they simply switched all the price tags. The next day no one could tell what was valuable and what was cheap. The expensive jewels had suddenly become cheap, and the costume jewelry, which had been virtually worthless before, was suddenly of great value.
Dr. Bill Foege, retells Kierkegaard’s story of the jewelry store often when he is talking to public health students. Dr. Foege notes —
“And that’s the world you are going into. A world with distorted pricetags. High prices for athletes, Wall St bankers, CEOs. Low prices for public health workers and school teachers…
The world keeps telling you to go for power, money, and publicity. And they pass that on as wisdom.
RESIST IT.”
With Kierkegaard’s story and Dr. Foege’s reflection in the foreground of your mind, I share three stories of teacher appreciation…
#1 — the power of becoming a reader
I learned how to read in Miss Boyle/Mrs. Zierenberg’s 1st-grade class (she got married halfway through the year). Mrs. Z was nothing short of a rockstar, cheerleader, and kind soul rolled into one. In her classroom, we learned how to sound out the letters, blend sounds, form words, and then comprehend what we were reading. She also read to us, took us to the school library, and encouraged us to write and tell our own stories. She placed the cornerstone for reading deep in my heart.
I had other incredible teachers. I remember weeping as Mrs. Black read the end of Where the Red Fern Grows in my 3rd-grade classroom. And I wish I could remember which of my high school English teachers3 recommended I read Les Miserables, one of my favorite books. As a college student, my mentors, Eric Pallant & Giovanna Di Chiro, introduced me to the environmental public health literature, and my world was turned upside down!
Reading is a superpower.
Reading is really important.
According to Dr. Suess (yes, only the best sources here) —
“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”
From a health perspective, reading is really healthy for you. It can increase your empathy toward others. It helps you to relax. And it helps you to sleep better (mainly because you get off your screen before bed).
“Reading affects a host of everyday medical processes, everything from understanding discharge paperwork and drug labels, to selecting healthy foods and understanding immunizations, as well as understanding legislation that affects healthcare. Medical literacy also helps patients to have intelligent conversations with healthcare workers about their own bodies.
On the internet, medical literacy also includes being able to determine correct health information from the large amount of medical misinformation available. Doing your own research sometimes makes things worse.”
Thank you, teachers, for teaching us to read.
#2 — seeing things from various points of view
In 4th grade, my teacher, Mr. Bleil, had a huge assignment/competition where we had to work in groups to design a car (which had to be unique, mine had wings), price it, market it, and then sell it to teachers and staff within our building. Our groups had to think about the design of the car, how much we wanted to spend to build the car and market it, how much we wanted to sell the car for, etc… It was a competition, too, where the group that netted the most income from car sales won (do you see the math/accounting lessons there?!?!).
Anyway — the assignment forced us to design a car that looked great but also could be sold for a profit. We had to think about our car from multiple points of view to maximize our profit. We also had to work together as a team, drawing on our strengths as artists, designers, marketers, salespeople, developers, and accountants.
The lessons learned — working collaboratively and approaching our work from multiple points of view — are used to create healthy communities.
Just this past week one of my favorite health reporters, Helen Branswell, wrote an article titled WHO’s top scientist learned a hard lesson about H5N1 two decades ago: Stopping it takes more than biology. In the article, Branswell tracks the work of Jeremy Farrar, now the WHO’s chief scientist. Twenty years ago when the H5N1 virus spread across Asia, Farrar was working in Vietnam. He got to see H5N1 spread in poultry. Based on his experience with H5N1 years ago, Farrar remarked —
“You can’t just take the virus and the biological surveillance and divorce it from the environment and the social construct that it’s happening in…
It’s an epidemic of a virus, but the social context it’s happening in is just critical.”
While … the risk of a human flu pandemic triggered by the H5N1 virus is low, should it happen, the social context will also be crucial... The mental toll of the taxing COVID-19 pandemic hangs over the public, healthcare workers, public health agencies, and governments. Getting people to again buy into measures that might slow spread, such as social distancing or school closures, would likely be tough.
We need to cooperate to address the wicked health problems facing our communities. And we also need to remember the lessons I learned in my design & sell a car project, including seeing things from multiple points of view.
Thank you, teachers, for designing amazing group projects that teach us important skills (even at an early age).
#3 — teaching kindness through our actions
I became pregnant at the beginning of the second semester of my PhD program. I completed my second semester + summer classes but I would not be able to enroll in classes nor complete any research during the fall of my second year. As a result, I would not be able to take a statistics class that I was required to take before completing my PhD qualifying exam (which is normally taken in the Spring of one’s second year).
After finding out I was pregnant, I met with the director of my program. I had everything planned out — I would take the fall semester off, return in the spring, and take my qualifying exams a year later than planned.
Delaying my qualifying exams would delay starting my dissertation. And would extend my time in the program. I was frustrated, but I knew the rules. And understood the process.
However, when I met with the director of the program, she shared with me that when she was finishing her PhD the director of her program had allowed her to finish her dissertation remotely (in the 1980s) because of a family move. She told me that being allowed to finish the program remotely was a gift of kindness that she was not able to repay, but definitely a gift she could pay forward.
And so — right there — she permitted me to take my qualifying exam during my second year (despite missing a semester’s worth of classes, including the mandatory statistics class). It was a gift of kindness — extended from teacher to student. This gift of kindness required me to learn material from the class I missed on my own. I had to study extra hard (with a newborn). And I still had to take and pass that statistics class a year later.
Despite all of this, it was an unexpected gift of kindness. I stayed on schedule. I was able to take my qualifying exam with my cohort of friends. I was able to start my dissertation as planned (pre-pregnancy). And I graduated on time.
It was a priceless gift of kindness from teacher to student. A gift that I hope to be able to pay forward one day.
It was a BIG gift of kindness. One that I hope to pay forward in a big way!
But big or small — teachers are constantly teaching kindness and showing kindness to their students. And being kind to one another is healthy.
As Teacher Appreciation Week comes to a close, do you have a favorite teacher or assignment to share? Can you make a connection between those amazing teachers or assignments and creating healthy communities? Please share your stories…!!!
And be sure to share this post with your friends & family — that is the best way to support our teachers and create healthy communities. Thanks.
Epi(demiology) Matters is written by Dr. Becky Dawson, PhD MPH — an epidemiologist, teacher, mom, wife, and dedicated yogi. She is a tenured professor at Allegheny College, Research Director at a community hospital, and an exclusive contributor (all things health & medicine) at Erie News Now (NBC/CBS). Her goal is to create healthy communities for all. She writes Epi Matters — first & foremost because epidemiology does matter (to all of us) and she hopes that each post will help to educate and empower readers to be healthy and create healthy communities.
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Unless you work on a farm or care for wild animals.
I wrote about a summer COVID surge a month ago.
I assume it was MLEW (IFKYK), as she knew me so well!