In a series from the  American Natural History Museum, called “ Teen SciCafe: When a Pandemic Strikes” Jay Varma M.D, who is an epidemiologist and physician , talked about preventing and controlling the COVID-19 disease. The event also allowed for teens to ask questions and was also hosted by AMNH teens, and I felt like that was a powerful message about youth advocacy on COVID-19. Dr.Varma’s work is focused on how the recent pandemic says a lot about public health but also the pressing role of governments, academic medical centers and other organizations in working together on emerging health threats. He recently served NYC Mayor Bill DeBlasio’s senior adviser for public health, where he helped the mayor on the city’s public health response to the pandemic and organized initiatives like  COVID-19 testing, tracing, and vaccination campaigns. So he definitely played and still plays a large role in our response to all of this. He started off by showing graphs of COVID-19 cases and showing us how to read what the data says, and talks about how these numbers are actually counted. 

As Dr. Varma speaks about how as an epidemiologist, for him and other folks in the profession, the coronavirus pandemic did not come “out of nowhere” as it seemed like it did for most of the general public. This is because globalization has allowed us to get to places faster and quicker, so people are moving around more. Secondly, with urbanization we are increasingly going into territories like forest and wilderness making more human-animal interactions more likely.  Another factor is something he described as the combination of the two, which is climate change, warmer areas are more prone to diseases like Zika which comes from mosquitos. I found it interesting because for many years epidemiologists have been pointing to a possibility of a pandemic and it almost seems like the government ignored that. Importantly he spoke about the way in which we invest in things like the fire department even if there has not been a major fire in a neighborhood for years. Similarly with the military and police even if we are not actively in a war. He highlights the idea that health security is just as important as physical security, so we must invest in it collectively as a society. Many have pointed to how the US was not as prepared for the pandemic as we should have been (some may argue we still are not), and so funding  emergency preparedness should be a priority for global nations. He also spoke about how no one is really able to tell us when a new variant may arrive, at the time Omicron was not in our radar, but now that it is a lot of what Dr.Varma said still applies. And the idea is that diseases are really hard to cure, the most we can do is get people vaccinated because then your body is going to be doing all the work. 

I think having someone as skilled and knowledgeable as epidemiologist and physician Jay Varma is a great addition to a series like this at the AMNH because it allows teens to learn more about the issue. And I truly believe that since we are the generation that will be dealing with the issues of the future, we should be well versed in ways we can learn from the past and the present so that we can build a better future. I also found this interesting because I’m very interested in sociology, and epidemiology seems to mix the scientific knowledge and patterns of diseases and applies it to sociology. And sociology can really help inform why some diseases occur in certain areas and the spread of them as well. Dr.Varma connected the way the pandemic has exposed other “diseases” that have been present in our society for a while, things like how the disproportionate effect of COVID-19 on POC communities was sort of “built-in” historically. Because we failed to think about how people living in public housing, immigrant communities, and historically segregated communities would already have societal barriers to information, prevention, and being treated. Again this is why funding emergency preparedness needs to be at the forefront! I truly learned so much from this presentation and I feel more ready to advocate for some of the things that Dr.Varma mentioned.