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Careful with looking at this through normal political lenses.

Two things that leapt out at me were first “epidemiologist”, and that he had worked in India with TB mitigation. (Granted, saying that he had been a “community organizer” was almost a deal breaker.)

The NYC Department of Health has been heavily influenced for many years from an odd direction: The New Yorker Magazine. They had a very popular author, named Berton Roueché, who published a large number of short stories in his own “Annals of Medicine” section in the magazine, compiled into books about the “Medical Detectives”, citing somewhat fictionalized actual cases. For almost 50 years.

A combination of epidemiology and Sherlock Holmes, they are a unique and popular literary genre, which even today are attributed to the concept behind the popular TV series “House, M.D.”

The Berton Roueché books are still an entertaining read, and to be recommended, but importantly have inspired many people to take up a career in medicine, and especially, epidemiology.

But the influence they have had on the New York City Public Health Department has been enormous. As a gateway to the world, this made the NYCPHD intensely aware of contagious diseases and the city’s vulnerabilities to them.

In short, a leading epidemiologist who works for them is going to be on the ball. Since a decade ago, drug resistant Tuberculosis was seen as a primary threat to the public health, this is why he was probably sent to India to learn as much as he could.

Now epidemiologists are not your typical doctor. Their interest lies in contagious diseases, and stopping their spread. As such, they can be very authoritarian, but in a good sort of way. They are trying to stop epidemics.

In the face of an epidemic, the Public Health Service in any country can become the most authoritarian government agency in that nation. It can have close to absolute authority to stop a deadly disease—its singular focus—and national resources, including the military, can instantly be at its disposal.

Civil liberties mean nothing in the face of a dangerous contagious disease. When a few cases of Extremely Drug Resistant Tuberculosis turned up in the US, there was no hesitation in detaining them in maximum security until they were either cured or dead—all at the direction of the health authorities. No lawyers or judges involved.

An epidemiologist is *not* someone you put in charge of tobacco or trans-fats, because they will treat it like an outbreak of Typhus. However, if you *do* have a deadly epidemic, an epidemiologist is not going to mess around, resulting in hundreds or thousands of infections. He will act.

Berton Roueché books I will recommend to start:

Eleven Blue Men
The Incurable Wound
A Man Named Hoffman