I’m going to change focus on this site for a little while. Fact is - I have two careers. In the evenings I like to write and make books. I’ve had varying degrees of success in that endeavor, but that endeavor is subsidized by my dayjob. I have degrees in Biomedical Engineering and Applied Mathematics. Fifteen years ago two colleagues and I started a small group in a mid-sized company focused on human health effects and medical response modeling. We are now a division of around 60 people spread out over four offices. We work on a lot of projects across the division, but I specialize in the physiological health effects and medical response to chemical injuries and biological illnesses. I have done analyses and built tools for the medical response to pandemics, and because of that I’ve been making some longer posts on FaceBook about COVID-19.
These posts are being made to put the disease into perspective for my friends and family. I was quickly asked to make them public. I then put them on Twitter. Now I’m being asked to make them more shareable. So this is my attempt to do that.
I don’t know how many I’m going to do, but I’ll make this page the central repository for whatever I post. A couple of things I have to state:
These are my opinions and thoughts and analyses - I am not representing any government agency or my company.
I am not working COVID-19. I work mainly in advanced planning and tool development, exercise support, etc. This is beyond the advanced planning phase. Edit: Since early April I have been doing some COVID-19 modeling.
However, I have done analyses for pandemic influenza, smallpox, and pneumonic plague so I’m drawing on those experiences.
I’m not going to talk about politics or specific models in any of these posts. I am only trying to give some background in a non-partisan manner.
Also, Liz is not going to be editing these so don’t blame her for any typos or poorly-worded phrases. These are going to be a bit more off-the-cuff. Before I get to the links, if you’re having a hard time believing I’m a scientist and a writer, so did I for a long time. I talked about reconciling those identities for Story Collider, and you can listen to that story here. Ok, the links…
2 - The Mathematics of Pandemics.
4 - On Severity and Case Fatality Rates
6 - What Does It Mean To Quarantine?
7 - How To Model Disease Severity