Physician COVID-19 Questions Answered, Part 1, with Jennifer Kasten, MD, MSc, MSc

Jennifer Kasten, MD, MSc, MSc, is a practicing pediatric pathologist with degrees in medicine from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, infectious disease epidemiology (CID) from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, a year's postgraduate work in the mathematical modeling of infectious disease at Oxford University, and a master's in the history of medicine and science, also from Oxford University. That’s a lot of school. She has only had a Facebook page since March, but she has already become a phenomenon with many of her posts going viral. If you don’t follow her, you should.

Her understanding of pathology, lab testing, virology, and mathematical modeling make her uniquely suited to understand so many facets of this pandemic. I crowdsourced some questions from the COVID-19 Physician Facebook group and she was kind enough to sit with me for over an hour and a half answering those questions.

In this first half we discuss the epidemiology. We try to explain why some locations are hot spots, R naught (or how many people one person typically spreads it to), droplet vs. aerosol, why you don’t need a hazmat suit for the grocery store, the true mortality rate, and current testing.

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