To fight COVID-19, a young epidemiologist bridges the gulf between science and U.S. politics | Canada News Media
Connect with us

Politics

To fight COVID-19, a young epidemiologist bridges the gulf between science and U.S. politics

Published

 on

<!–

–>

“We must not become numb. Those numbers represent … people who were loved,” says Caitlin Rivers of Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

 

KATTY HUERTAS

Science’s COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center and the Heising-Simons Foundation.

In May, epidemiologist Caitlin Rivers made a rare outing amid coronavirus stay-at-home orders. She had been called for the first time in her career to testify before Congress—and she was intimidated. “You’re looking at the dais and seeing all these eminent people. It’s a really powerful experience,” she says.

Then, questions about the U.S. response to COVID-19 started to fly, and Rivers was in her element. Five years out of graduate school, she is already well-versed in talking to policymakers about the science of pandemics. She has developed models to predict the spread of Middle East respiratory syndrome and Ebola, briefed the Department of Defense (DOD) on outbreak response, and tracked respiratory disease among Army service members. She’s now at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, a think tank that advises U.S. and international leaders on epidemics and disasters.

In formal reports, private conversations with congressional staffers and local officials, and a growing presence on Twitter and in the popular press, Rivers has emerged as a clear-eyed, tactful narrator of the unfolding pandemic. “One of my goals,” she says, “is keeping the energy—the intention—around the bigger question, ‘Are we headed in the right direction?’”

Rivers got interested in epidemiology as an undergraduate at the University of New Hampshire, inspired in part by Tracy Kidder’s book Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World, which describes the medical anthropologist’s efforts to eradicate disease in developing countries. Rivers admired “the respect that he brought to the populations that he was working with,” she says, “and just the vision—he was not about to let anything stop him.”

Rivers majored in anthropology, and she brings an “anthropologist’s understanding of how what seem to be totally different cultures can communicate with each other—the policy world and the modeling epidemiologists,” says Stephen Eubank, an epidemiological modeler at the University of Virginia (UVA) who mentored Rivers during her graduate training in epidemiology and infectious disease at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech).

Her Ph.D. coincided with the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa, and in the lab of Virginia Tech epidemiologist Bryan Lewis, she helped prepare weekly updates for experts at DOD. “Caitlin would often be emailing me at like three in the morning: ‘I updated this to get this little thing in! You can put this on slide 12!’” Lewis, now also at UVA, recalls. The demands of an epidemic are “well-suited to my personality,” Rivers says. “I don’t mind working hard, and I like having a purpose.”

As she sat before an appropriations subcommittee in the House of Representatives in May, the country had made progress. Stay-at-home orders were starting to bring down new COVID-19 cases. But the nation was on the verge of widespread reopening that would put hard-won gains at risk. “We are in a critical moment of this fight,” she told the representatives, warning that a clear national plan for testing, contact tracing, and strengthening health care systems was essential to prevent tens of thousands more deaths.

As early as March, Rivers, former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, and colleagues at the American Enterprise Institute had laid out criteria for safely reopening businesses, including waiting for a sustained reduction in cases. In her May congressional testimony, she urged the federal government to develop a national plan to eliminate test shortages and anticipate bottlenecks in the supply of reagents and materials.

Things might have gone differently if more people in positions of power had taken Rivers’s advice. Four months later, the United States still logs tens of thousands of new cases per day and accounts for about one-fifth of the COVID-19 deaths documented worldwide.

“Things did not unfold as I would have liked them to, certainly,” Rivers says of the U.S. reopening. “Politics can get so frustrating because it feels—not necessarily as an adviser, but as a citizen—like, ‘Why can’t you see it the way that I see it?’” But, she adds, she’s sympathetic to the pressures that local decision-makers felt to restore their economies.

Laying blame and stirring controversy isn’t productive for someone eager to influence policy, Eubank says, citing National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci’s aversion to publicly discussing his relationship with the Trump administration. Of course, Eubank adds, Fauci has decades of experience threading this needle. But Rivers understands it too, and is holding her own just a few years out of grad school.

“As a junior faculty, we don’t have anyone helping. We don’t have staff,” says Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at the University of Florida who has co-authored editorials with Rivers on how to interpret antibody studies and the need for more detailed, transparent epidemiological data. “I think we’re both adjusting to just having so many more people ask things of us.”

It’s not just politicians who are turning to Rivers for clarity on the pandemic. On Twitter, which she previously used mostly to discuss new results with colleagues, she’s made an art of giving a big-picture, 280-character view to her followers, who now number more than 140,000.

“Early in an outbreak, we often find only the most severe cases,” she tweeted in February. “It seems like people are quite sick, which is scary. It’s something of an illusion.”

As some regions turned a corner in April, she predicted “growing agitation about whether staying home was necessary. Make no mistake, it is and was.”

“We must not become numb,” she urged in July as the United States passed 150,000 deaths. “Those numbers represent people, people who were loved.”

Readers gravitate to these level-headed summaries even when the news is bad, says Dean, who describes Rivers as her “pandemic pal.” Their friendship was born on Twitter, she says, where they connected over the struggle of caring for young children while working from home. (Rivers has 19-month-old twins and a 6-year-old.)

Rivers admits the demands of the pandemic have been “a lot to manage,” but she also sees opportunities, including the chance to revive a proposal that would better prepare the country for the next viral threat. While she was in graduate school, Rivers and colleagues proposed creating a National Infectious Disease Forecasting Center, akin to the National Weather Service, that would put a coordinated team of epidemic modeling experts inside the government.

Currently, academic experts largely volunteer their time. “There is no other capability of national strategic importance that we handle like that,” she says. “We don’t let the military self-organize. We don’t let the national hurricane center be academics in various universities who volunteer.”

In 2015, the proposal seemed to have a chance. Rivers, with colleagues including biodefense adviser Dylan George, then at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, discussed the idea at a White House meeting on epidemic preparedness. But it never advanced to a formal initiative or a line in the federal budget. “We hit the budget cycle at the wrong time,” says George, who is now at the national security investment firm In-Q-Tel.

COVID-19 has put new momentum behind the effort. Rivers says she has been meeting with congressional staff about it, and she is hopeful that the past efforts laid the groundwork even though they didn’t pay off in time to help with COVID-19. She wishes the initiative had been launched in 2015, she says, “but the second best time is now.”

 

Source: – Science Magazine

Source link

Politics

‘Disgraceful:’ N.S. Tory leader slams school’s request that military remove uniform

Published

 on

 

HALIFAX – Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston says it’s “disgraceful and demeaning” that a Halifax-area school would request that service members not wear military uniforms to its Remembrance Day ceremony.

Houston’s comments were part of a chorus of criticism levelled at the school — Sackville Heights Elementary — whose administration decided to back away from the plan after the outcry.

A November newsletter from the school in Middle Sackville, N.S., invited Armed Forces members to attend its ceremony but asked that all attendees arrive in civilian attire to “maintain a welcoming environment for all.”

Houston, who is currently running for re-election, accused the school’s leaders of “disgracing themselves while demeaning the people who protect our country” in a post on the social media platform X Thursday night.

“If the people behind this decision had a shred of the courage that our veterans have, this cowardly and insulting idea would have been rejected immediately,” Houston’s post read. There were also several calls for resignations within the school’s administration attached to Houston’s post.

In an email to families Thursday night, the school’s principal, Rachael Webster, apologized and welcomed military family members to attend “in the attire that makes them most comfortable.”

“I recognize this request has caused harm and I am deeply sorry,” Webster’s email read, adding later that the school has the “utmost respect for what the uniform represents.”

Webster said the initial request was out of concern for some students who come from countries experiencing conflict and who she said expressed discomfort with images of war, including military uniforms.

Her email said any students who have concerns about seeing Armed Forces members in uniform can be accommodated in a way that makes them feel safe, but she provided no further details in the message.

Webster did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

At a news conference Friday, Houston said he’s glad the initial request was reversed but said he is still concerned.

“I can’t actually fathom how a decision like that was made,” Houston told reporters Friday, adding that he grew up moving between military bases around the country while his father was in the Armed Forces.

“My story of growing up in a military family is not unique in our province. The tradition of service is something so many of us share,” he said.

“Saying ‘lest we forget’ is a solemn promise to the fallen. It’s our commitment to those that continue to serve and our commitment that we will pass on our respects to the next generation.”

Liberal Leader Zach Churchill also said he’s happy with the school’s decision to allow uniformed Armed Forces members to attend the ceremony, but he said he didn’t think it was fair to question the intentions of those behind the original decision.

“We need to have them (uniforms) on display at Remembrance Day,” he said. “Not only are we celebrating (veterans) … we’re also commemorating our dead who gave the greatest sacrifice for our country and for the freedoms we have.”

NDP Leader Claudia Chender said that while Remembrance Day is an important occasion to honour veterans and current service members’ sacrifices, she said she hopes Houston wasn’t taking advantage of the decision to “play politics with this solemn occasion for his own political gain.”

“I hope Tim Houston reached out to the principal of the school before making a public statement,” she said in a statement.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Source link

Continue Reading

Politics

Saskatchewan NDP’s Beck holds first caucus meeting after election, outlines plans

Published

 on

 

REGINA – Saskatchewan Opposition NDP Leader Carla Beck says she wants to prove to residents her party is the government in waiting as she heads into the incoming legislative session.

Beck held her first caucus meeting with 27 members, nearly double than what she had before the Oct. 28 election but short of the 31 required to form a majority in the 61-seat legislature.

She says her priorities will be health care and cost-of-living issues.

Beck says people need affordability help right now and will press Premier Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party government to cut the gas tax and the provincial sales tax on children’s clothing and some grocery items.

Beck’s NDP is Saskatchewan’s largest Opposition in nearly two decades after sweeping Regina and winning all but one seat in Saskatoon.

The Saskatchewan Party won 34 seats, retaining its hold on all of the rural ridings and smaller cities.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Source link

Continue Reading

Politics

Nova Scotia election: Liberals say province’s immigration levels are too high

Published

 on

 

HALIFAX – Nova Scotia‘s growing population was the subject of debate on Day 12 of the provincial election campaign, with Liberal Leader Zach Churchill arguing immigration levels must be reduced until the province can provide enough housing and health-care services.

Churchill said Thursday a plan by the incumbent Progressive Conservatives to double the province’s population to two million people by the year 2060 is unrealistic and unsustainable.

“That’s a big leap and it’s making life harder for people who live here, (including ) young people looking for a place to live and seniors looking to downsize,” he told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.

Anticipating that his call for less immigration might provoke protests from the immigrant community, Churchill was careful to note that he is among the third generation of a family that moved to Nova Scotia from Lebanon.

“I know the value of immigration, the importance of it to our province. We have been built on the backs of an immigrant population. But we just need to do it in a responsible way.”

The Liberal leader said Tim Houston’s Tories, who are seeking a second term in office, have made a mistake by exceeding immigration targets set by the province’s Department of Labour and Immigration. Churchill said a Liberal government would abide by the department’s targets.

In the most recent fiscal year, the government welcomed almost 12,000 immigrants through its nominee program, exceeding the department’s limit by more than 4,000, he said. The numbers aren’t huge, but the increase won’t help ease the province’s shortages in housing and doctors, and the increased strain on its infrastructure, including roads, schools and cellphone networks, Churchill said.

“(The Immigration Department) has done the hard work on this,” he said. “They know where the labour gaps are, and they know what growth is sustainable.”

In response, Houston said his commitment to double the population was a “stretch goal.” And he said the province had long struggled with a declining population before that trend was recently reversed.

“The only immigration that can come into this province at this time is if they are a skilled trade worker or a health-care worker,” Houston said. “The population has grown by two per cent a year, actually quite similar growth to what we experienced under the Liberal government before us.”

Still, Houston said he’s heard Nova Scotians’ concerns about population growth, and he then pivoted to criticize Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for trying to send 6,000 asylum seekers to Nova Scotia, an assertion the federal government has denied.

Churchill said Houston’s claim about asylum seekers was shameful.

“It’s smoke and mirrors,” the Liberal leader said. “He is overshooting his own department’s numbers for sustainable population growth and yet he is trying to blame this on asylum seekers … who aren’t even here.”

In September, federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller said there is no plan to send any asylum seekers to the province without compensation or the consent of the premier. He said the 6,000 number was an “aspirational” figure based on models that reflect each province’s population.

In Halifax, NDP Leader Claudia Chender said it’s clear Nova Scotia needs more doctors, nurses and skilled trades people.

“Immigration has been and always will be a part of the Nova Scotia story, but we need to build as we grow,” Chender said. “This is why we have been pushing the Houston government to build more affordable housing.”

Chender was in a Halifax cafe on Thursday when she promised her party would remove the province’s portion of the harmonized sales tax from all grocery, cellphone and internet bills if elected to govern on Nov. 26. The tax would also be removed from the sale and installation of heat pumps.

“Our focus is on helping people to afford their lives,” Chender told reporters. “We know there are certain things that you can’t live without: food, internet and a phone …. So we know this will have the single biggest impact.”

The party estimates the measure would save the average Nova Scotia family about $1,300 a year.

“That’s a lot more than a one or two per cent HST cut,” Chender said, referring to the Progressive Conservative pledge to reduce the tax by one percentage point and the Liberal promise to trim it by two percentage points.

Elsewhere on the campaign trail, Houston announced that a Progressive Conservative government would make parking free at all Nova Scotia hospitals and health-care centres. The promise was also made by the Liberals in their election platform released Monday.

“Free parking may not seem like a big deal to some, but … the parking, especially for people working at the facilities, can add up to hundreds of dollars,” the premier told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.

— With files from Keith Doucette in Halifax

Source link

Continue Reading

Trending

Exit mobile version