Global Health Institute

This presentation by Joshua S. Weitz will explore asymptomatic transmission and its consequences. The first part of the talk will revisit competing narratives of the COVID-19 threat and explain via models and epidemic data how SARS-CoV-2's ability to silently spread between individuals made it catastrophic for society as a whole. The second part of the talk will look ahead as a means to leverage lessons learned from model-informed interventions to improve public health readiness and response. Throughout, the argument will be made that confronting future pandemic threats to public health and socioeconomic well-being depends on stopping transmission—even when individuals feel fine.

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Joshua S. Weitz, Ph.D., is a professor of biology at the University of Maryland where he holds the Clark Leadership Chair in Data Analytics. Previously, he held the Tom and Marie Patton Chair at Georgia Tech where he founded the Graduate Program in Quantitative Biosciences. Weitz received his Ph.D. in physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and did postdoctoral training in ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton. He directs an interdisciplinary group focusing on understanding how viruses transform the fate of cells, populations, and ecosystems and is the author of multiple books, including Asymptomatic (2024) from Johns Hopkins University Press. Weitz is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Academy of Microbiology.