Epidemics expert learns firsthand about swine flu
Assistant Professor Mark Lurie, who primarily studies the HIV virus, found himself at the center of the swine flu whirlwind this fall when he and his family became infected.
Epidemiologist Mark Lurie went for a bike ride on an early September morning and realized within a few miles that his energy was spent. Something didn’t feel right, so he quickly returned home and rested.
Within a day, however, he came down with a high fever, sweats, chills, and a cough. Lurie, assistant professor of community health and medicine in Brown’s Alpert Medical School, found himself at the center of one of the biggest health stories in recent memory: He had come down with the H1N1 virus, also known as swine flu.
Lurie was in bed for the next week. His daughter and wife also contracted the virus. All have now returned to health. As someone who researches the transmission of disease, having swine flu proved to be a unique experience for Lurie. He recently spoke about what he went through and what he learned.
How does it feel to have had swine flu, considering all the public concern?
It feels good to have it over with. I am not going to get it again, and nobody in our family is. It’s kind of nice to be infected with something exotic that doesn’t have long-term consequences. And as an infectious-disease person, that is interesting to me; it’s a little badge of courage to wear. I am current, I am up to date, and I am a little ahead of the curve in a way. But it was brutal. It was unpleasant and it went on for a long time and it made me very sick.
As an epidemiologist, what did you learn from this experience?
I learned swine flu is highly infectious. I watched my neighbor next door get infected, then watched his entire house get infected, then the neighbor across the street after it washed through our house. We had a little mini-epidemic in our neighborhood. I’ve become fascinated with the basic epidemiology of H1N1: How long are people infectious, and how likely are they to transmit the virus to people with whom they have casual contact? These are similar to the questions I ask in my own research on HIV in Africa.
Did you gain any insight into the hysteria over swine flu?
The prevailing assumption is that (hysteria) is not warranted. It is not likely to kill a lot of otherwise healthy adults – although we have already seen 12 deaths in Rhode Island. But in the sense that it has caused and is going to cause a lot more people to get sick, many quite seriously for a week or more, that is not inconsequential. So, is (the hysteria) overblown? I don’t know. Is it going to kill you? Probably not. Is it going to make you sick? Probably.
How will it inform your teaching, moving ahead?
I am teaching a new graduate course next semester in infectious disease epidemiology. Now I feel I’m uniquely qualified to teach that. H1N1 will be a prime case study of an epidemic unfolding in real time.
Will you use your own experience in class?
To some extent. We will step back and look at infectiousness and transmissibility and contact patterns, and how those influence the spread of any infectious diseases. My experience is less relevant than all of that, but it will be present.