Dr. Seema Yasmin, science author and disease detective, is one of the medical professionals spreading scientifically-backed information about the current COVID-19 pandemic.
Yasmin has worked with multiple news agencies to debunk some of the myths that circulate about the COVID-19 virus to offer concerned citizens accurate and up-to-date information. She has appeared frequently on CNN and other sites to spread this information, and offers debunking videos on Youtube.
Some of the videos that she has released include:
From Disease Detective to Medical Journalist
In an environment in which news constantly comes from all directions, Yasmin’s voice is critically important to spread accurate information. Though now a journalist by trade, Yasmin has not left her medical background in the past. After practicing as a doctor in her native England, Yasmin transitioned to the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service. She describes this job as a “disease detective” in an article she wrote for Rolling Stone. In this interview, Yasmin explains typical medical investigative procedure and how difficult it is to apply to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I was thinking a lot about living a life of impact,” Yasmin says, and credits that desire as the motivation to enter public health. Journalism offered a logical next step as a way to share the stories she accumulated as a “disease detective”. In this role, she can help shift public policy and advance material change. In addition to print journalism, an archive of which can be found here, Yasmin has published multiple books. Her first book, The Impatient Dr. Lange, focused on her mentor’s life and the history of the AIDS epidemic.
Also an activist, she published a book called Muslim Women Are Everything to combat the stereotypes that often persist in mass media, and founded the Yasmin Scholarship. The scholarship supports women and gender non-conforming artists of color and sponsors their residency at one of two artist colonies. “I’m tired of other people telling our stories,” Yasmin explains.
Seema Yasmin Inspired By Her Mother’s Story
Yasmin has been outspoken her whole life. In a joint interview with the Stanford Daily, Yasmin’s mother Yasmin Halima recalls how she would bring then five-year-old Seema to her university lectures. “At the end of every seminar, the professor loved Seema and would say, ‘Seema, would you like to add anything?’,” Halima remembers. “And she always did.”
In fact, her mother inspired her to pursue her multi-layered career. Halima’s decision to attend university with young Yasmin in hand met with resistance from the rest of the family. In fact, it resulted in her being disowned for a while. Now, she leads a number of HIV prevention programs and women’s health initiatives. “I’m more inspired by that than by any other individual things or individual subjects,” Yasmin says.
Yasmin’s Advice Regarding COVID-19
Yasmin has appeared on WIRED and CNN actively debunking some of the myths circulating about COVID-19. Some of these may be relatively harmless, such as sipping water every 15 minutes. “Now obviously, hydration is important to health, but there is no evidence whatsoever that drinking water will protect you from the coronavirus or flush the infection out of your body,” she says. She gives the same advice regarding excessive garlic consumption in hopes to stave off infection.
However, other pseudo-scientific tips could pose a serious threat to unsuspecting readers. These include “blasting a blowdryer into your mouth” due to myths of the virus not surviving in the heat, or drinking bleach. “Please don’t ever, for any reason, consume bleach,” Yasmin warns. She emphasizes the fact that this is a new disease, and for that reason our understanding of it and its patterns evolves every day. Yasmin also reinforces the measures recommended by the CDC and WHO, and tells WIRED that “we have to do physical distancing, aggressively, to stop the spread of disease.”
The CDC has published a list of recommendations to keep yourself and your loved ones healthy. Additional updates regarding COVID-19 from the World Health Organization are available here.
