Another member of Joe’s small public-health team, David Dynerman, also a mathematician, arrived with a different perspective. He’d been born in Poland and moved to the United States as a child. He had memories of Poland as a communist regime, and of the total breakdown of the government’s ability to be useful to its citizens. What he saw in the local U.S. public-health offices remined him of public services in Poland, but before the collapse of communism. “Poland now is not like this,” said David, after seeing the inside of a U.S. public-health office. “Poland now is more functional. Eastern
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