Epidemiologists and public-health specialists have been using mathematical models to forecast the future in an effort to curb the coronvirus’ spread. But infectious disease modeling is tricky. Epidemiologists warn that “[m]odels are not crystal balls,” and even sophisticated versions, like those that combine forecasts or use machine learning, can’t necessarily reveal when the pandemic will end or how many people will die.
Nukhet Varlik
Nükhet Varlık is a historian of the Ottoman Empire interested in disease, medicine, and public health. Her first book, "Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World: The Ottoman Experience, 1347–1600," is the first systematic scholarly study of the Ottoman experience of plague during the Black Death pandemic and the centuries that followed. She is translating and editing a number of sources pertaining to the history of Ottoman medicine, and is involved in multidisciplinary research projects that incorporate perspectives from molecular genetics (ancient DNA research in particular), bioarchaeology, disease ecology and climate science into historical inquiry.