EPIDEMIC with Dr. Celine Gounder

"This is an invisible war and if we don't use our weapons we are not going to win it." -Ester Sabino In the fall of 2020, the Brazilian city of Manaus had the highest SARS CoV-2 infection rate in the world — possibly as high as 75 percent. Some speculated that with rates of infection this high, there would not be enough people left for the virus to infect. Had the city reached so-called natural he...

"We easily have never had  as high a level of vaccination acceptance as we have now but we've asked a lot more of the public. The resistance that we see today is a response, in part, to that compounded request over time." - Elena Conis The vast majority of Americans accept vaccines but concerns about the effect vaccines could theoretically have on kids have been some of the oldest and most resilie...

"Every generation has generated its own anti-vaccinationism based on very similar concerns." -Jonathan Berman Vaccines are a safe and critical public health tool. They prevent crippling childhood diseases like polio. They’re responsible for the eradication of one of the deadliest diseases ever — smallpox — and, today, they’re one of the most important measures we have to end the coronavirus pandem...

"When we think about a virus we don't think as much about the immune response to the virus but it is just so, so critical." -David Fajgenbaum Where do treatments come from when there's a new disease like COVID-19? The vast majority of drugs prescribed to treat COVID during the pandemic are actually old drugs. Some of the most effective have been around for as much as 70 years. In this episode of E...

"It just shows how difficult it is to be reactive with this virus. By the time you've detected something and understood the significance of it you're already several steps behind the virus." -Richard Lessells This is the second in our series on variants of concern. Our previous episode looked at the UK variant, and today we’re looking at the variant that emerged in South Africa: 501Y.V2. This vari...

"I had been assuming that my life and everyone else's life would get closer to normal in March. This [variant] has me worried that it won't be March, that we'll have a spring wave and I don't know how big that will be."  -Trevor Bedford This winter a new, more contagious variant of SARS-CoV-2 arose in the United Kingdom: B.1.1.7. The CDC estimates that this will become the dominant strain of coron...

"When we interact with nature there are  unpredictable and weird mechanisms by which pathogens might be able to move between the species." -Tony Goldberg There’s a lot we don’t know about the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus but there is a consensus that it came from animals. This is called zoonosis. HIV, Zika, and Ebola were all viruses in animals before jumping to humans. This is a serious problem...

"This is not like a lot of the other disasters that people have studied. It looks a lot more like what you'd expect to see in people who have lived through a war. " -Roy Perlis This is the second in our two-part series about deaths of despair during the pandemic. We speak with experts and review the latest data on how the pandemic is affecting rates of depression, anxiety, and even suicide in the...

"When the pandemic hit, many of our recovery groups went online but that's really not the same. All that great work we had been building momentum towards came to a screeching halt." -Will Cooke Overdoses have spiked during the pandemic. One of the reasons is a breakdown in the community support so critical to keeping people off drugs. Social distancing measures and quarantine have created deadly c...

"It's my responsibility as an owner to figure out how to afford to pay everyone an ethical, fair, livable wage but we have to start from the premise of paying them an ethical, livable wage" -Pete Ternes We’re revisiting restaurants as part of our series on industries disrupted by the pandemic. In this episode we speak with restaurateurs and a labor activist about how the pandemic is reshaping how...

Transcript "That's the challenge with infodemics: too much information and not knowing who to trust." - Claire Wardle Combating misinformation has become more important than ever during the pandemic. The novel coronavirus,  social media, and a polarized political environment created something public health experts have dubbed an "infodemic" — a flood of misleading information and conspiracy theori...

Transcript "Masks are absolutely essential because you can't always control when someone gets too close to you. You can't control the ventilation in every room that you go into. The thing you control the most, that you have one hundred percent control over, is that mask." - Kimberly Prather As the death toll from COVID-19 surpassed 300,000 in the United States this week, wearing a mask has never b...

Transcript "If you're going to be traveling, if you're going to be in a situation where you might be exposed to others or where you can protect others by quarantining yourself, right now is the time to do it and to do it carefully because this is when it can be especially effective" -Jeffrey Townsend Quarantines are an effective way to stop the spread of the coronavirus but they have been one of t...

Transcript "This, quite frankly, is our generation's Manhattan project" -Sree Chaguturu This has been a big week for vaccines. There are two vaccines under review by the FDA and the United Kingdom has become the first country to authorize Pfizer's mRNA vaccine. In this episode, we'll talk about the science behind mRNA vaccines, and discuss the physical and mental logistics needed to get these revo...

Transcript "I was watching the nurses and the doctors and everyone in the healthcare industry just going through this trauma... It was just like people needed help and I had a chance to help." -Jon Gunnell Thanksgiving is right around the corner but new daily cases of coronavirus are worse than ever. In this episode, we'll hear some tips for how to stay safe this holiday season. We'll also hear th...

Transcript "Food is not going to solve the world's problems because food is itself a part of the problem, but food is an opportunity to begin thinking about it." - Tunde Wey When airlines and other big industries were getting federal aid at the start of the pandemic, chef and artist Tunde Wey argued that the restaurant industry — his own industry — wasn’t worth saving. In this episode, we’ll hear...

Transcript "There's this toxic cocktail of low endowment per student, high tuition, low experience, low certification... Those universities could be out of business in a year." - Scott Galloway Coronavirus concerns forced many universities to close their campuses this fall. The mix of fewer students on campus, canceled athletics, and online courses is threatening the viability of many traditional...

Transcript "We have this long history of seeking personal and individual solutions to public problems and I think the zombie films highlight that." - Robert Wonser From Night of the Living Dead , to 28 Days Later , and World War Z , pandemics have always been at the heart of zombie movies. In this Halloween edition of Epidemic, we find out what these films get right and wrong about the current cor...

Transcript "I would put this in very plain English: The way to protect the vulnerable is to have fewer infections, not more infections." - Dr. Tom Frieden Talk of achieving herd immunity without a vaccine is back in the news, despite the consensus among public health experts that this approach would cost hundreds of thousands of American lives. Former CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden talks about his r...

Transcript “What could be more political [than] the determination of whether the president can fulfill the powers and duties of his office.” —Prof. George Annas Earlier this month, President Trump announced that he was COVID-positive and was hospitalized for treatment. Since then, a flurry of questions has been raised about his health, and his ability to lead moving forward. Though COVID is new, t...

Transcript "Healthcare is political. There's a difference between politics and partisanship. Thinking about healthcare as not being political I think is where many doctors and unfortunately our healthcare system stand to lose the most." —Dr. Alister Martin COVID has made voting a public health issue this year. In this episode, we'll hear how nursing-home workers, doctors, and entrepreneurs are wor...

Transcript “It's not like the straight trajectory towards recovery… It very feels very much like a one step forward, two steps back. People referred to it as the Corona coaster, because you don't know where it's going to take you next” —Diana Berrent COVID “long-haulers” are people who have extended experiences with COVID symptoms that never let up, or keep recurring. The virus is so new that we d...

Transcript “Public health is one of the few agencies locally that you can guarantee is apolitical. They just care about protecting the health of the community. … But these measures and these tactics by health officers are seen as political and an attempt to limit people's rights.” —Lori Freeman, CEO of the National Association of County and City Health Officials Public health experts have faced st...

Transcript “I think it's a fascinating microcosm of the situation we’re in as a country. I do think the plan has also may be shown a way that the pandemic needs to be attacked on a larger scale, which is what can be done when testing is plentiful and accessible; what can be done when people are taking mask-wearing seriously; what can be done when people are social distancing, seriously, what can w...

Transcript “Right now … we are in the middle of it, [a] very politicized situation… a lot of divisiveness in our country. So when you try to get a public health message out, unfortunately, it becomes so political that there are those who are in favor of what you want to do from a public health standpoint and those who oppose it to the point of almost as if you were doing something to hurt them.” —...