To learn more, click the following link: Do Not Sell My Personal Information. He is also professor of Psychiatry, Health Management and Policy, History, and Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases. Perhaps the biggest was that social distancing was a policy that would need to be enacted only once, for a brief period, after which the virus would be defeated and life would return to normal. It's the most vexing phase of an epidemic -- once an illness peters out, healthy people begin to place it in the past. had calculated a case-fatality rate of 3.8 per cent for the novel coronavirus; by comparison, the rate of death during the 1918 flu pandemic was about 2.5 per cent. [citation needed]. The fates of twenty-three “double-humped” cities were equally telling: having released the brakes too soon, they suffered a second spike in cases and in deaths, sometimes worse than the first. He is the author or editor of 10 books, including “Quarantine! Here’s What We Can Learn From the 1918 Flu, What history revealed about cities that socially distanced during a pandemic. No one in that crowded ballroom imagined a stubborn, persistent pathogen like the novel coronavirus; we were thinking of influenza, which tends to burn out as temperatures rise. a vivid narrative of two of the most remarkable of the many contributors to our understanding of human biology and function. Sign up for our daily newsletter and get the best of, Fighting the Coronavirus, from New York to Utah, How do doctors assess urgency during a pandemic, how to handle childbirth during the pandemic. He is also a professor of psychiatry, public health, history, and pediatrics. Expert Interview: The Rise Of Opioid Addiction, “Cocaine’s Historical Ties to Rubber Gloves, Beverages, Freud’s Nightmares”. As they venture back into a reopened world in which the virus is still circulating, they are at risk. In an ideal world, government, at every level, would be behind such changes. Markel then joined the University of Michigan faculty as a Professor of Pediatrics and Professor of the History of Medicine. When our health officials asked us to stay home, we did so, despite the disruptions. "—The New Yorker. Dr. Markel has appeared on numerous national radio and television news broadcasts and in film documentaries about the history of medicine and public health for National Public Radio (All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Talk of the Nation, Science Friday, Here and Now, Tell Me More, andMarketplace), ABC’s Good Morning America, PBS (Nova, Frontline, NewsHour), PRI’s The World, CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and the History Channel. In a study published in Science in April, researchers at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health estimated that, in the absence of a vaccine for the coronavirus, periods of social distancing would be necessary into the year 2022. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. During the 2014 Ebola epidemic, Markel contributed his expertise on the history of epidemics and quarantines to public forums such as NPR's All Things Considered,[11] the BBC World Service,[12] CNN/Sanjay Gupta MD,[13] PBS NewsHour,[14] and The New Yorker. Find Howard Markel's phone number, address, and email on Spokeo, the leading online directory for contact information. Like many epidemiologists of his vintage, he was a true-blue “vaccine man,” for whom the immunizations created in the course of the twentieth century were the pinnacle of modern medicine. 7am - 5pm PST, Mon - Fri * 10:00am - … The United States is in the midst of a terrible and deadly epidemic, but it is not caused by infectious scourges that once stalked the planet. He is also a professor of psychiatry, public health, history, and pediatrics. HOWARD MARKEL, M.D., Ph.D., is the George E. Wantz Distinguished Professor of the History of Medicine, director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan, and editor in chief of The Milbank Quarterly.His books include Quarantine!, When Germs Travel, and An Anatomy of Addiction.