On Labor Day, Revisiting Their Work

FILE -- Christina Tan, the New Jersey state epidemiologist, at the Department of Health offices in Trenton, N.J., March 20, 2018. She said that understanding how diseases spread can be data-heavy work, but it is an important component in preventing dangerous epidemics. “Most outbreak investigations are not glamorous or hyper-dramatic like in the movie ‘Contagion,'" she said. (Bryan Anselm/The New York Times)