Take as Directed

Dr. Scott Rivkees served under Governor DeSantis as Florida’s Surgeon General and Secretary of Health for 27 months during the pandemic, in what became a rocky political experience. Behind the scenes, what was he able to achieve, in serving Florida’s 67 counties, and in particular, in protecting seniors, managing schools, setting early vaccine priorities? What were the hard lessons for public heal...

As part of our series on China post-COVID-19, Chris Murray reflects on where things stand, almost two months after President Xi threw off Zero-Covid controls.  A huge Covid-19 wave has likely led thus far to a million deaths. It is likely not over. Don’t expect greater Chinese government transparency on numbers. That remains a highly sensitive matter domestically and, no less important, an integra...

In our continued series on China post-Zero Covid, Dr. Scott Kennedy recounts the revelations from his six weeks in Beijing and Shanghai in late 2022, and reflects on what has transpired – societally, politically, medically -- since President Xi suddenly threw off the Zero-Covid controls in early December.  What is the “toll” for not preparing for the colossal speak of Covid? What to make of a “cri...

As 2023 opens, Yanzhong Huang, Council on Foreign Relations/Seton Hall University, kicks off our new podcast series focused on China. Over the past month, since Xi threw off Zero-Covid, China has experienced an extraordinary pace and scale of infection. “The worst is yet to come” as Lunar New Year migration rush – 200 million – spreads the virus into the countryside. Why should Americans care? Are...

In this 153rd episode, Doctors Kristina Box and Judy Monroe walk us through the recently concluded Indiana Governor’s Commission on Public Health. Why Indiana? What are the Commission’s mandate, methods, findings and recommendations? How did Commissioners navigate the polarization and anger? Indiana’s $55 per capita investment in public health lags far behind the $91 national average: how is India...

In Episode 152, we share the audio of the one-hour conversation J. Stephen Morrison held at CSIS on October 19 with Dr. Raj Panjabi, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Global Health Security and Biodefense at the National Security Council. The focus is the launch of the new U.S. National Biodefense Strategy and Implementation Plan and the issuance of the President’s Nationa...

In this special CCU episode, #151, we bring you the audio of a conversation that J. Stephen Morrison held with Dr. Ashish Jha on September 27. How is the bivalent vaccine launch going? How does the White House navigate the wildly divergent realities of the pandemic? We are living a tale of two cities: the drive to normality, built on major achievements that have lowered the threat of severe illnes...

In episode 150, Dr. Daskalakis, White House Deputy Coordinator of the monkey pox response, has been at his job for six weeks, attempting an urgent turnaround of a response that went very badly initially. He looks at “his medium term crystal ball” and sees several causes for cautious optimism: a deceleration of spread, changed behavior, greater vaccine availability, greater flexibility in use of HI...

In this special episode, we bring you the audio of a broadcast interview that J. Stephen Morrison held on Monday, September 19 with Dr. Fauci, Chief Medical Advisor to President Biden and Director, the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases. Dr. Fauci addresses the multiple tough challenges that confront us, as we approach year 3 of the pandemic, as well as the historic achievemen...

Dr. Krishna Udayakumar, founding director of the Duke Global Health Innovation Center, shares his trenchant insights into this confusing moment of transition in the global response to Covid-19. What should be the priorities and the principles to guide action? How to take account of the profound changes in the pandemic, while not losing focus on equity? Please give a listen!

On this 147th episode, we are offering the fireside chat, held on August 30 at CSIS, at which CDC Director Rochelle Walensky laid out her newly announced reform agenda, moderated by Julie Gerberding and Tom Inglesby. Julie is former director of the CDC and current director of the Foundation of the National Institutes of Health, and co-chair of the CSIS Commission on Strengthening America’s Health...

On this 146th episode, Dr. Chris Murray, IHME, delivers several sharp messages. Tracking Covid is increasingly difficult, a function of both underreporting of cases and overreporting of incidental hospital admissions. Studies are emerging which suggest that protection against severe ill and death may be waning after 20 weeks. Without far better data on hospital admissions, however, we are “flying...

Dan Diamond, Washington Post, joins J. Stephen Morrison, CSIS, for a tour d’horizon of rapidly unfolding Monkeypox developments: How to explain the early egregious USG stumbles? Are we correcting course in testing, vaccines, and therapies rapidly and effectively enough to head off the entrenchment of Monkeypox? Does the math surrounding vaccines and demand add up? Or are we sailing into a profound...

Dr. Marci Nielsen, Vice President for Policy and Advocacy at Resolve to Save Lives, joins J. Stephen Morrison for episode 144. For an 18 month period beginning in the fall of 2020, Dr. Nielsen served as Chief Advisor for COVID-19 Coordination for Kansas Governor, Laura Kelly, where she led outreach efforts across the state to advance dialogue, access to data, and transparency. Regular public fora...

Dr. Celine Gounder, senior fellow & editor-at-large for public health at KFF's Kaiser Health News, joins J. Stephen Morrison and Andrew Schwartz for this 143rd episode. Monkeypox has spread beyond the endemic regions, and is rapidly becoming a pandemic. It has already become de facto politicized in the United States because of the community affected, but monkeypox per se is not a gay disease and I...

Dr. Margaret Bourdeaux, Research Director of the Global Public Policy and Social Change Program, Harvard School of Medicine, joins J. Stephen Morrison for Episode 142. Her mentor Dr. Paul Farmer, who recently passed, inspired her with his exhortation to “do hard things together” even when the odds are against you. Her project, the Covid Academy, is developing a locally-informed model for standardi...

Apoorva Mandavilli, a science and global health reporter at The New York Times, joins J. Stephen Morrison and H. Andrew Schwartz for this 141st episode. Apoorva unpacks the sudden spread of Monkeypox into Europe and now the United States, outside African states where it is endemic, and the challenges this poses to Americans and Europeans weary of Covid-19, as well as to Africans who fear gross ine...

Dr. Jeffrey Gold, Chancellor of the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC), joins J. Stephen Morrison for this 140th episode. How did UNMC evolve over the past decades to become such a lead national institution in advancing America’s health security, through its Global Center for Health Security? In 1997, UNMC created a public health lab with the state of Nebraska, followed by 2004-2005 with...

In this 139th episode, Dr. Deborah Birx joins J. Stephen Morrison to discuss her new book, Silent Invasion. On that day, former President Trump responded to the book by, among other things, lamenting oddly that “Debbie Birx does not have a lot of dresses.” In her inside account, Deborah details the repeated failures both to acknowledge the power of silent transmission by fully vaccinated, asymptom...

In this episode, Andrew Schwartz and J. Stephen Morrison are joined by Victor Cha to discuss the Covid-19 outbreak in North Korea - which CSIS predicted back in March, the impact of the pandemic on the unvaccinated country, and the road ahead amidst ongoing health and food crises worsened by an extreme lockdown.

Yana Panfilova, a 24-year-old Ukrainian woman born with HIV, fled Kyiv shortly after Russia’s invasion and is currently based in Berlin with her mother, grandmother and cat. Eight years ago, she helped found Teenergizer, an organization supported by UNAIDS that seeks to end discrimination against youth in Ukraine living with HIV. Over time, its scope widened to include other youth groups and its s...

Yasmeen Abutaleb, health policy reporter at The Washington Post, joins Steve Morrison and Andrew Schwartz for this 136th episode. The Biden administration struggles on multiple fronts, from systemic dysfunction within agencies to increased polarization of virtually every measures to mitigate Covid-19. The administration wants to invest in a long-term vaccine strategy that protects against multiple...

Dr. Dylan George is the Director of Operations for the Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics (CFA), newly established at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Dr. George joins J. Stephen Morrison and Andrew Schwartz for this 135th episode following the April 19th White House CFA launch. Its mission: Predict, Inform, Innovate. Its data science team will strengthen advance war...

Dr. Larry Gostin is a professor of global health law and the faculty director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University. Dr. Gostin joins Steve Morrison and Andrew Schwartz for this 134th episode in the aftermath of the April 18 nationwide injunction to block government mask mandates on public transportation. In Judge Mizelle’s opinion, the C.D.C. has exc...

Dr. Yanzhong Huang is Professor at Seton Hall University's School of Diplomacy and International Relations, Senior Fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, and co-chair of the US-China Working Group of the CSIS Commission on Strengthening America’s Health Security.  He joined Steve Morrison in the our 133rd episode for a wide-ranging conversation: on China’s huge immunity gap;...