OPCVL: OPCVL

OPCVL Example

Source citation:

Quick, Jonathan D. "What We Can Learn from the 20th Century's Deadliest Pandemic." Wall Street Journal, 7 Mar. 2020, sec. C, pp. 1-2, https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-we-can-learn-from-the-20th-centurys-deadliest-pandemic-11583510468?shareToken=st3a1df91b046a4cd2a68f18d2530a3510. Accessed 7 March 2020.

"What We Can Learn from the 20th Century's Deadliest Pandemic." is a newspaper column printed in the Wall Street Journal on March 7, 2020.  Dr. Jonathan Quick is considered an expert on the topic of public health. His credentials include, adjunct professor at the Duke Global Health Institute and former president of the Management sciences for Health, a global public health organization.  He is also the author of The End of Epidemics: The Looming Threat to Humanity and How to Stop It published in 2018. The purpose of the column is to inform readers about the Spanish Influenza of 1918 and point out lessons we can learn from studying past epidemics.  The column is organized much like an APEC essay.  Dr. Quick emphasizes three points that he thinks will help with the current situation: provide effective leadership, rely on classic public health measures, and give accurate information to build public trust.  Each topic is supported by examples from 1918 that prove why the topic was important. For example, in 1918 Philadelphia experienced a much higher death rate than St. Louis. One reason this happened is because the director of Philadelphia’s Public Health and Charities department was not an experienced public health official and when faced with important decisions he did not act quickly.  The opposite was true in St. Louis. The city health commissioner was a doctor who understood what could happen. He worked quickly and involved other leaders in the city to systematically form a plan and inform the citizens of St. Louis how best to combat the virus. The value of this newspaper column is it’s timeliness, specific recommendations and brief history of the Spanish Influenza of 1918 which provides context and perspective for what is happening with the Coronavirus today.  One possible limitation is that the article is published in a subscription based newspaper that needs to sell copies to make money. The Coronavirus is a “hot topic” and news editors can perpetuate excitement about a topic by keeping it in the headlines in hopes of selling more copies of the newspaper.

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