I’m an epidemiologist, and this is what keeps me up at night.
In 2011, the movie Contagion did a superb and very realistic job of describing how the world would react if a pandemic occurred. In that movie, a colony of bats is disturbed by deforestation, and one of the bats makes its home above some pigs. The bad defecates over the pigs’ food, infecting the pig with a virus reminiscent of the Nipah virus, a zoonotic virus that already has caused outbreaks in Southeast Asia with a high death rate. …
An Epidemiologist’s Tale
On February 4, 2020, I woke up around 4 in the morning and started to get ready for what would be a very long day. The previous evening, a friend in Washington, DC, had asked if I was available for a radio interview the next morning. A local radio station in DC — a Spanish language station — wanted to talk to someone about the virus from Wuhan, China, that was causing a stir. I agreed to do the interview, which meant that I had to be in DC by no later than 5:30 in the morning.
Our Neighbor to the South Played a Big Role in Ending Slavery and Setting Up the Path to the Civil War in the United States
When my wife and I visited The Alamo in San Antonio, Texas, we heard the story of the siege that took place there in 1836. The siege ended with Texans being defeated by Mexican troops, and the slaughter became a rallying cry for those who fought for Texas’ independence. A woman in the audience started explaining the battle to her young son, referring to the Mexicans as “the bad guys” and the Texans as “the good guys.”
Mexico’s Immigration and Slavery Problem
In 1836, the political situation in Texas was complicated, to say the least. For many years, white immigrants from the United States had…
Some code from here and there, a very small computer and a small e-paper screen, and you get a nice little breaking news notification machine.
Putting Twitter breaking news on display every few minutes on the Pimoroni Inky PHAT took some code modification, but what else is new when it comes to coding, right? We’re always adapting someone else’s work and coming up with new solutions. All the code I refer to in this instructional blog post can be found at my GitHub repository: https://github.com/RFNajera/Inky-PHAT-Breaking-News
What you need
- Raspberry Pi Zero W (or WH). If you get the W, then you’ll have to do some soldering. No big deal.
- Pimoroni Inky PHAT
- 5V mini-USB power supply for the Raspberry
- Micro SD card of at least 8GB capacity
Initial Raspberry Pi Set Up
Many concepts you learned in school — but have probably forgotten — have come together to begin the end of the pandemic
When I was about to graduate from college with a degree in medical technology (MT), the MT (now CLS) program held a small ceremony to celebrate the accomplishment of those of us who made it through the program. It was a tough program, with any score under 75% being an F and a minimum of a B grade in all courses being required to pass. If you failed a course, you had to start the program all over again, and you only got one chance to do that re-start. …
Scientific discussions are going up against cultural debates, and people can’t tell the difference between the two.
I was having a discussion on social media with a friend the other day, when one of their friends decided to jump in and post their comments. My friend and I are epidemiologists. They hold a master’s degree in public health with a specialization in epidemiology. I have the same degree plus a doctoral degree in public health, also in epidemiology. Between us, we have almost 30 years of public health practice experience. Their friend? He’s a car mechanic.
No, I’m Not Being Elitist
Now, if you think that I’m going to be an elitist and say that the third person in the discussion doesn’t…
An epidemic of homicides started in Baltimore in 2015 and continues without signs of slowing down.
My doctoral dissertation was a study of homicides in Baltimore between 2005 and 2017 in order to better understand what is going on. Right off the start, I used data to show that, indeed, there is an epidemic of homicides in Baltimore that started right around April of 2015, and that intensified since the unrest following the homicide of Freddie Gray Jr. From there, the dissertation was presented in three parts.
The Personal Characteristics
The first part of the dissertation looked at the 3,366 homicide victims reported between January 1, 2005, and December 31, 2017. The age, gender and other individual characteristics of…
America’s unjust status quo threatens the intervention we need most
In 1954, a very risky experiment took place across many different cities in the United States. Families lined up for hours in the summer heat so parents could have their children immunized against polio. At the time, polio was affecting children in the U.S. in waves, mostly in the summer, and mostly around communities with swimming pools, schools, and daycare facilities that offered the virus plenty of chances to jump from one person to another. …
The World’s Public Health Protector Needs a Reboot of Sorts
I posted on social media the other day that it was time for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to effectively “end.” Man, was I ever in for a controversy. As a doctor of public health working in a local health department during the pandemic, I’ve depended a lot on the science and guidance from the CDC from the very beginning of the pandemic. In fact, going back to before I received my Master of Public Health (MPH) degree, I relied on CDC for all sorts of neat educational and scientific material. …
Once you do statistics by hand, you understand the concepts a little bit better.
There’s a neat YouTube channel I discovered a couple of years ago where Eugene O’Loughlin, Ph.D., does some statistical analyses by hand. I thought it was neat because it allows us to see that statistical analysis is not something that only computers can do. Sure, computers can do these analyses much faster than we ever could, but you really can do a lot with just a pen and paper and a good calculator.
Of course, you need some knowledge of numbers and how they work, and the basic statistical concepts that will help you get the work done, but there’s…
Rene F. Najera, MPH, DrPH
Doctor of Public Health in Epidemiology. Associate at JHSPH. Adjunct at George Mason Univ. Epidemiologist at a large County Health Department. Father. Husband.
