I teach a class called “Concepts and Methods in Infectious Disease Epidemiology” to graduate students at Emory University. This semester was intense for every student regardless of subject but to study infectious disease epidemiology in fall of 2020 was a festival of relevance. Textbook theory and once-dry readings became very real. Any student who got interested in this field because of a vague notion that it was important and intellectually fascinating was duly validated.
Not a week went by when the content in the syllabus wasn’t also raging in our lives, the media and in scientific journals. We calculated the reproductive number -- once an obscure measure that was the domain of epidemiologists and ecologists -- only to see heads of state explain the concept, albeit sometimes poorly. We learned about mathematical models of infectious diseases just as governments were taking drastic action based on the dire predictions of such models. We learned about vaccine epidemiology, as the trials were starting to announce remarkable efficacy results. Every other topic we covered from pathogen evolution, to human susceptibility and social contact patterns had their day. Shockingly, there was even a superspreading event in the White House within a week of covering that exact topic in class.
Credit: contributed
Credit: contributed
There were times when I questioned if it was insensitive to dive so deeply into the pandemic in class. On top of the challenges faced by all, some also had personal and family battles with COVID-19. Wisely, many instructors across campus decided to make their classrooms (or Zoom-rooms) a space free from the pandemic. But for a class on infectious disease epidemiology, that would have been tantamount to treating the virus as a hoax -- to not acknowledge the reality in front of us. Students could have said “this is too much.” But that’s not what I heard from them. One student told me that this was “the most immersive form of learning that I have experienced … with the pandemic’s daily unfolding serving to cement each abstract concept.” My recorded “asynchronous” lectures largely avoided the subject of the pandemic in favor of general principles while the students led discussions about how the week’s topic applied to the current moment. Another student commented that “what was lost in traditional classroom structure was replaced by the real-world pandemic.” The classroom became a place to deliberately and carefully make sense of the cacophony.
For years, I taught how novel infections spread exponentially. I taught how, in the beginning of an emerging epidemic, a pathogen can either look not-so-bad or even worse than it truly is and that one should be wary of politicians and pundits who latch onto the end of that spectrum that suits their purpose. I taught that epidemics come to an end when the herd immunity threshold is reached -- hopefully through immunization. Never did I expect to see these principles play out quite so clearly.
Now, well into my career, I have witnessed a pandemic of a novel pathogen for the first (and hopefully only) time. My students, meanwhile, are living through one at the launch of their careers. Learning infectious disease epidemiology during a pandemic has been tough.
These students experienced the outbreak unfolding at the same time they learned the tools of the trade and as they watched the pandemic largely conform to the theory they studied.
This, I hope, leads to a sense of purpose, confidence in their skills, and, even excitement, to confront the challenges of this pandemic, endemic infections and even pathogens yet-to-emerge that their generation of epidemiologists will face.
Ben Lopman, Ph.D., is a professor in the department of epidemiology at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health.
