“What worries me is the communities where vaccination is suboptimal,” said Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, professor of epidemiology and medicine at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.
Vincent Racaniello, a virologist at Columbia University, said he agreed with the CDC’s updated stance. “We have vaccines and drugs that can protect us. What else are we waiting for?” he said.
“One of the issues for epidemiologists is thinking about whether maybe [MPV] sustains itself better in the human population than we realize,” said Stephen Morse.
The highs in Europe and the U.S. could pass the limits of what the human body can handle, according to Kim Knowlton, an assistant professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University.
“This is not a mild disease, for a percentage of people it is much worse than I would have anticipated,” said Dr. Jason Zucker, an infectious disease specialist at the NewYork-Presbyterian clinic.
The calls are particularly helpful when the counselors are properly trained in suicide-risk management, said Madelyn Gould, a Columbia University epidemiologist.
