On stigma and outbreak response

In February, I found myself in line at the Brussels airport to go through passport control on my way back home to Geneva. I was returning from Dakar, where I had been fortunate to participate in one of the African continent’s first training sessions on laboratory testing for the 2019 novel coronavirus. Still dreary from the evening flight, I looked around the line and noticed a good number of people around me wearing surgical masks. At that time, the vast majority of COVID-19 cases were in China, with a few cases found in other parts of East and Southeast Asia. That was no problem for me, as I had…