My colleagues Christine Ekenga, Kim Johnson and I wrote this article published in Washington University’s The Source on Monday (March 30, 2020). They called it “WashU Experts: COVID-19 fact vs. fiction“
It’s exciting to be called an expert, for sure, but this is a bit disingenuous because I’m an expert on the epidemiology of eating disorders and related psychiatric disorders, not a coronavirus expert. (At least the author of this article identified me as a psychiatric epidemiologist, although I suspect that at least some readers wondered why a psychiatric epidemiologist was being quoted on the use of masks.) Am I expert enough to be quoted in news articles? This is something I’ve been struggling with a bit over the past few weeks as I have been getting an increasing number of requests for interviews and opinions. I am not an infectious disease epidemiologist or a virologist or even a biologist. On the other hand, everyone seems to think they are an expert these days, and at least I have a PhD in Epidemiology, which included a course in infectious disease epidemiology, and I am professor of public health who has been teaching Epidemiology for fifteen years. This means that I have more training in infectious disease epidemiology than >99% of people, including most physicians, so I guess I know more than most people. I’ve also been following the news and the scientific literature and analyzing the data on the spread of the virus. It is my understanding there is not enough of the bonafide coronavirus experts (in my view these would be people in infectious disease epidemiology, virology, and infectious disease medicine) to go around at present, and people like me are probably the next best thing. We are certainly better qualified than all of the people with no training in public health and wide audiences who have been freely giving their uninformed opinions regarding COVID-19. I don’t suppose such people have given a second (or even a first) thought about whether or not they are qualified to be weighing in on the topic. Perhaps I should stop worrying about it, too…
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