Pitt to host coronavirus panel discussion Wednesday evening

Public health, history, political experts and epidemiologists will gather Wednesday at the University of Pittsburgh to discuss the coronavirus outbreak.

The event is sponsored by the Pitt Asian Studies Center. Mari Webel, an assistant professor of history, pulled together the panel in an effort to address the lack of information, abundance of misinformation and anxiety surrounding the respiratory virus that surfaced in the city of Wuhan in China’s Hubei province late last year and has since spread around the globe.

The virus that The New York Times said had sickened more than 40,000 people and left more than 1,000 dead in China as of Tuesday, stoked health and economic fears, both founded and unfounded, as U.S. universities and companies canceled plans to travel to China and other nations took steps to quarantine returning travelers.

“We felt like we at Pitt were in a position to address the situation from a variety of perspectives. As a public university, we have a particular role to play and especially on something health related, we’re uniquely well situated to be this kind of resource,” said Michael Goodhart, a political science professor who is director of Pitt’s Global Studies Center in the University Center for International Studies. He will moderate the panel discussion.

The event is free and open to the public. It will begin at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday in Room 120 of the David Lawrence Hall, 3942 Forbes Ave., Oakland.

Amy Hartman, an assistant professor in the Center for Vaccine Research, Infectious Diseases and Microbiology at Pitt’s Graduate School of Public Health, will be on the panel. She studies emerging viruses, focusing on diseases that are transmitted from animals to people and then from people to other people.

“That’s what the coronavirus is,” she said.”When outbreaks like these happen, there is a lot of misinformation because information is coming out very quickly and it’s hard to put all the information together in real time and really know the facts. I would encourage people to read legitimate publications from sources such as the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control,” Hartman said.

She said it is important to keep things in perspective and realize that we’re far more likely to encounter diseases like the common cold, a stomach virus or the flu.

In addition to Webel, Hartman and Goodhart, others scheduled to participate in the panel include Zhaojin Zeng, a visiting assistant professor in Pitt’s history department; Megan Culler Freeman, a pediatric infectious diseases senior fellow at Pitt’s School of Medicine; and Kristen Mertz, a medical epidemiologist at the Allegheny County Health Department.

Questions will be taken from the audience.