The important questions
In the following passage, Osterholm compares being a public health epidemiologist to a detective and a reporter using a simile:
"Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?
Just like reporters and police detectives, this is what public health epidemiologists... always want to know."
Disease detectives
Osterholm uses a metaphor to describe health epidemiologists, who he calls "disease detectives." They have to ask the same questions as detectives, such as "why did this happen" and "how did this happen." Health epidemiologists also have to collect evidence like a detective and work out all the details about the case.
Abraham Lincoln simile
Osterholm uses a simile in the following passage to compare himself to the late president Abraham Lincoln, regarding his optimism in humanity:
"Like Abraham Lincoln, I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts."
The production of a vaccine
Osterholm compares making usual drugs like Prozac or Metformin as being like "building a Chevrolet on a General Motors assembly line." However, the production of a vaccine is apparently more like "growing lettuce in a field in California." Here, he is explaining how the process for manufacturing a vaccine is more unpredictable.
