Coronavirus: Reflections of an epidemiologist and public health practitioner

(World Bank Blogs) Not a day passes without us being bombarded by the rapidly evolving medical literature and media on the hitherto unknown COVID-19. Rightfully so, as we now have an outbreak with more than 100,000 cases confirmed globally.

Yet, I cannot help but wonder how the general public is dealing with such an onslaught of information, if I, as a trained physician, epidemiologist and a global public health practitioner, find it too much to take in and digest. How do we expect a lay person to sift through it all, separate the chaff from the grain, avoid fear mongering – No, you do not get COVID-19 if you receive a package from China, or eat in a Chinese restaurant – and stick with the most relevant information and the essentials for behavioral change? This is ultimately what counts the most:, arming people with the right messaging and instructions for compliance with the science-based best practice. With local community transmission in about 20 countries across several regions of the globe, we must ask ourselves could we have done better?

To answer that question, let us rewind a bit to early January, and skip what caused the outbreak. Human ecology is increasingly overlapping with animal ecology – think of the clearance of the Amazon for farming and livestock, or of the felling of Kalimantan forest tapestry for palm oil production. Zoonoses are bound to emerge with more frequency as rapid environmental and climatic changes occur, and as we human beings encroach upon the territoriality of animals, including those that are vectors of zoonotic diseases. And we do trap, handle and consume many of those animals, often with total disregard for basic food hygiene.

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