Epidemiologist is the kind of word that makes you grateful for spellcheck. I haven’t gotten it right yet.

As it happens, I know one with a PhD and everything. If you had known him when you and he were teenagers and college students, you would not have expected the enormous contributions he has made to world public health. He should probably have gotten a Nobel Prize, but he certainly wins my award for the world’s most unlikely epidemiologist.

In 1965, when we both had summer jobs on Wall Street, we would get together for eggs benedict lunches at Eberlin’s, a restaurant near the New York Stock Exchange where the waiters were famously rude, but the service was quick. It closed a few years later and didn’t leave much of a trace on the internet. The picture isn’t it, but it is close enough to give you the idea.

In my continuing quest to keep you all entertained and perhaps even informed in your confinement, I emailed him the other day. Here is most of what I said. I left out the bits that would readily identify him.

Caption: Epidemiologist

Thank God for spell check. I spell that word wrong every time.

I guess that shows how little I know about your world.

I bet you’d have some great advice for people on thinking about the spread of a virus and wise steps to take.

Should we do a FaceTime or phone interview so either you or I could write something useful for the Pundificator?

I would happily give you complete editing rights so that only your best thinking was represented.

Well, maybe unless I write gooder than you.

And here is what came back.

“This contains all the epidemiological principles you need to know understand Corvid 19.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6qFG0uop9k