Your friendly neighborhood epidemiologist, at your service!

My name is Sammy (they/them pronouns, please).

This will be a blog for discussing public health issues. This includes PSA-style posts, but will sometimes just be me posting about diseases I happen to be interested in, talking about biology, or answering questions if anyone has some.

I accept all questions relating to health, except for requests for medical advice. I am not a physician, am not qualified to give medical advice, and will simply reply: "ask your doctor, or go to the hospital if you are experiencing a life-threatening emergency." This is for both my protection and yours.

HOWEVER, I do have a Masters in Public Health in Epidemiology, and am well-qualified to answer questions about disease in general, how it spreads, clarifying terminology, biology of infectious organisms or disease processes, explaining studies you may have seen, and so on.

I will block people who knowingly attempt to spread misinformation in my replies. This includes anti-vaxxers, COVID deniers, HIV deniers, and so on. My blog will always be a safe space for people attempting to unlearn these conspiracies, or who want to educate themselves, but I will not allow these to spread on this page.

This blog will include discussion of sex, as it will discuss sexually transmitted infections and diseases of the reproductive system; however, this will be done in a clinical context, not graphic discussions. If this offends you, this might not be the page for you.

Sorry about that! I just have a lot going on and there wasn't a whole lot of activity on this blog so I decided to table it while I was busy.

All of epi is VERY math-heavy, really, but if math is your candy, you will enjoy a concentration in biostats far more than epi. ANOVA and ANCOVAs, multiple linear regressions, coding in SAS and Stata... you'll be playing with numbers a lot, and there's a fair bit of crossover with epi as well.

I do have to say though, and it breaks my heart to do this... but I kind of have to recommend against getting any public health degree in the USA right now. The job market is not there, and what few jobs there are are getting gobbled up (understandably) by displaced government workers. It's expensive to get a degree- even a TAship doesn't always help. You'll end up with all the debt of a grad student but no opportunity for what should be a highly prized, skilled career. If you want any chance at all of getting employed, you need to get a DrPH, but guess what? Those almost universally require a few years of worked experience after getting your MPH. That leaves a PhD, but those are still quite different to a DrPH, and are highly stressful, and that still gives you just a good chance of getting employed, not a guarantee.

In this Alternate Universe, let's work on the premise that there had been another giant meteor 20-30 years before the one that would take out humanity in the movie. When that meteor came, though, everyone had banded together to destroy the meteor; news stations covered its approach nonstop and panels of experts were convened, and listened to, to find the best way forward. With everyone's help, the meteor was destroyed.

Then come the events of Don't Look Up, with everything else the same for the most part; the experts are still dismissed and mocked. But the memory of how it used to be is still there to haunt them and twist the knife, and also, even worse, the past meteor is cited as proof the current batch of scientists are overreacting. "We had a meteor once and everyone was fine." "Remember all those scientists in the 80s who panicked about the meteor, but now we're totally fine? What liars scientists are."

The only fault of these scientists, of course, was doing their job too well; by preventing suffering, they led to the populace not quite grasping how severe the threat had been, letting them downplay it in future. But what else could have been done? Let the meteor crash back then? Who could have guessed that saving the public from the meteor back then would end up being one part of the chain of events that would make people apathetic to their death by meteor this time?

She was pregnant at the time of diagnosis. Pregnancy is contraindicated with the chemotherapy and radiation regimens she needed.

Florida denied her her abortion, using the reasoning that as she was terminally ill, an abortion wouldn't save her life, only prolong it. She was forced to travel out of state to get her abortion.

This is why "life of the mother" exceptions don't work. To anti-choicers, there is no condition deadly enough to actually qualify for one. They exist as a fig leaf to hide the reality of their views.

The actual science, though, is clear. Abortion is healthcare. It is not 'murder' and restrictions on it only lead to the procedure being attempted in unsafe conditions. Bans cause OBGYNs to leave the state in droves, and cause maternal mortality rates to rise drastically.

If you are showing signs of an overdose, allergic reaction, or other emergency relating to recreational drug use, it is okay to call an ambulance/go to the hospital. The police can't arrest you unless you have drugs or paraphernalia on your person. Your doctors and nurses won't turn you in, either, because they want people to come in when they are sick, and they know that this will guarantee no one reaches out in emergency. In fact, some states even have relatively new laws that explicitly prohibit hospitals from reporting these patients, just as an added safety measure.

If you took drugs recently, and you have a surgical procedure (including dental ones), you need to tell your care team. They won't report you, but they need to know, because the medications they use can kill you. It may be embarrassing to speak up, but it isn't worth your life.

Many cities have free Narcan in community buildings, and some colleges, fire stations, and etc have free trainings. Some bundle these in with first aid and CPR classes. Go if you can- it could save your life or someone else's.

If you think you are experiencing an emergency, don't let your drug use stop you from seeking help. You deserve to have your life saved, too. I won't lie and say every single doctor is perfect on this, because doctors are human beings, but your chances of one fucking you over and trying to get the police involved are low enough that I'd take that gamble over a potential overdose or allergic reaction any day.