Prognosis: Misconception

On the outside, city hospitals look just as they always have: big glass and steel buildings, an ER entrance with ambulances coming and going. But on the inside, Covid has completely transformed the hospital experience for patients, their families -- and for doctors and hospital staff. Once held in high esteem as the place where doctors performed miracles, hospitals have become more sombre places u...

The loss of the sense of smell affects almost one in every two people who get Covid-19. Usually it resolves within a week or two. But for some, like Dr. Alex McCutchan, smell and taste distortions persist for a year, leaving an invisible illness that disrupts daily life. Scientists like Leah Beauchamp are learning that its significance doesn’t end there. In this episode, Bloomberg’s Jason Gale mee...

Neuroscientist David Putrino doesn’t profess to understand why some Covid-19 survivors suffer persistent symptoms or how to cure them, but he’s finding ways to help “long haulers” take control of their symptoms. In this episode, Bloomberg’s Jason Gale takes a virtual tour of Putrino’s Manhattan long Covid rehab clinic to chronicle patients’ journey to recovery. See omnystudio.com/listener for priv...

In a secure air-locked chamber in the world’s largest research hospital, Dan Chertow and a half-dozen other scientists in astronaut-inspired protective gear are carrying out a microscopic search inside Covid-19 victims to try to unlock one of the pandemic’s biggest and most disturbing mysteries. On this episode, Bloomberg’s Jason Gale joins the critical-care physician on his exhaustive hunt for th...

With a loss of smell and a high fever, New Yorker Fiona Lowenstein had a classic case of Covid-19 before she knew what a classic Covid case was. But there was more she didn't know: she was also about to join a burgeoning group we now know as “long haulers.” On the first episode of “Breakthrough,” a new series from the Prognosis podcast, Bloomberg’s Jason Gale traces the early origins of a patient-...

On Breakthrough, a new series from the Prognosis podcast, we explore how the pandemic is changing our understanding of healthcare and medicine. We start with an examination of long Covid, a mysterious new illness that has stumped doctors attempting to treat symptoms that last for months and potentially years. It has changed the way hospitals work and forced healthcare officials to prepare for the...

Demographics alone would suggest Bradley County, Arkansas, should be struggling fiercely with local resistance against vaccines, just as many other counties are all across the southern U.S. Yet in July, Governor Asa Hutchinson announced that Bradley was the first county in Arkansas to inoculate at least half of its eligible population. At the time, that was more than twice the rate of several othe...

In our final episode of the season, we look at where vaccine hesitancy stands in America today. More Americans are getting vaccinated every day, but the numbers of skeptics are still high enough to seriously threaten efforts to achieve widespread immunity and end the pandemic. The answer to solving that problem, though, may be an attitude adjustment from public health. See omnystudio.com/listener...

We meet Dr. Timothy Sloan, a pastor of a black church in Texas, who is torn over how to talk to his congregants about the Covid-19 vaccines. He is skeptical about getting one, and knows the rest of his church is, too. But, the vaccines could also be a lifeline. Black Americans have died at about twice the rate of white Americans from the virus. So while there may be trust issues with the vaccines...

In October 2020, anti-vaccine elite gathered for a conference to discuss, among other things, how to use the pandemic to grow their movement. In this episode, we travel inside the world of anti-vaccine extremists to show how they weaponize uncertainty and mistrust to spread rumors about vaccines — rumors that threaten to prolong the global pandemic. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy informat...

The 2015 Disneyland measles outbreak was a pivotal moment in explaining the vaccine hesitation we see today. The outbreak made clear that number of people opting out of vaccination was significant. But it also changed the people protesting vaccines. Before that, activists speaking out about vaccines had mainly been parents concerned about the safety of their kids. California's push to get rid of v...

Meet the man behind all the myths: Andrew Wakefield. Wakefield’s retracted 1998 study linking autism to vaccines helped kickstart the modern vaccine hesitancy movement. We’ll explore the forces that helped propel Wakefield into the spotlight and show how groundwork Wakefield laid decades ago helped seed the mistrust we’re seeing in the age of the coronavirus. See omnystudio.com/listener for privac...

In the series premiere of "Doubt," we meet Jon, a New York City paramedic struggling to decide whether he should get vaccinated. Bloomberg health reporter Kristen V. Brown shows how the pandemic has led many people like him to question vaccines for the first time — and how this distrust threatens to prolong the pandemic. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This month marks the one-year anniversary in the U.S. of nationwide school closures. The public health measure was designed to help stem the spread of Covid-19. But in doing so, it’s had a profound effect on children. That’s in contrast to the disease itself, which rarely makes young people seriously ill. Jason Gale talked to experts about kids and Covid, and why keeping children out of the classr...

Fast-moving variants of the coronavirus seen in England, South Africa and Brazil have sparked concern around the world. Researchers worry some may diminish the potency of existing vaccines and complicate efforts to escape the pandemic. As COVID-19 cases started to climb in early 2020, British scientists decided to track the evolution of the pathogen. James Paton reports that this project gives the...

A few decades ago, nobody really questioned vaccines. They were viewed as a standard part of staying healthy and safe. Today, the number of people questioning vaccines risks prolonging a pandemic that has already killed hundreds of thousands of Americans. How we got to this moment didn’t start with the rollout of vaccines or in March 2020, or even with the election of Donald Trump. Our confidence...

It’s been one year since Coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. And in that time, our lives have changed dramatically.  The virus has imposed disease, death and loss on the U.S. and the world. It forced sweeping changes to daily life almost overnight.  For this special episode of Prognosis, Bloomberg reporters Emma Court and Nic Querolo spoke with people across the U.S. about what this last y...

Israel has had one of the world’s most successful vaccination efforts yet. Now a new study from the country shows the Pfizer vaccine was overwhelmingly effective against the virus. Public-health experts say the Israeli study shows that immunizations could end the pandemic. Naomi Kresge reports on what makes the Israeli study so significant, and why it might point to an eventual way out of the pand...

More than 150 years after the end of slavery in the U.S., the net worth of a typical white family is nearly six times greater than that of the average Black family. Season 3 of The Pay Check digs into into how we got to where we are today and what can be done to narrow the yawning racial wealth gap in the U.S. Jackie Simmons and Rebecca Greenfield co-host the season, which kicks off with a persona...

Vaccine distribution still has the feel of a zero-sum game. Five days after Israel received 700,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine, Pfizer told other non-U.S. customers that it would cut supplies while it briefly closed a facility in Belgium. The disparity in vaccine allocation is the product of a company struggling to apportion doses while demand far exceeds supply. Stephanie Baker and Cynt...

In recent months, GOP lawmakers have heaped criticism on Democratic governors for how they handled outbreaks at nursing homes early in the pandemic. Michigan Republicans, who have been hostile to Governor Gretchen Whitmer throughout the crisis, are now asking the state’s attorney general to investigate how she coped with that challenge. Republicans say that people died unnecessarily thanks to Whit...

Now that Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine has been cleared by regulators, the company needs to ramp up doses fast. J and J is looking for manufacturing partnerships to increase supply. Riley Griffin spoke to the company’s chief executive officer, Alex Gorsky about his plan to immunize 20 million Americans by the end of the month, and 100 million by the end of June. See omnystudio.com/liste...

New York City’s museums, sports arenas and entertainment venues are slowly coming back to life. But the sector has contracted dramatically under the pressure of the global pandemic. Jobs in arts, entertainment and recreation fell the most of all the city’s economic sectors, erasing a decade of gains in what was one of New York’s most vibrant industries. Spencer Norris explains what that means for...

Almost a month after U.S. vaccination campaigns ramped up to give Covid-19 shots to more than a million people a day, their second doses are coming due. That’s putting a strain on state rollouts, and leaving some people without complete immunizations. John Tozzi reports that as President Joe Biden accelerates purchases and distribution, critical weaknesses in the system are starting to show. See o...

Nine vaccines have proved effective at protecting people from developing symptoms of Covid-19. But we don’t know yet how good they are at preventing asymptomatic infections, and keeping vaccinated people from passing the virus on to others. The good news is that preliminary signs suggest they do at least some of both. Jason Gale discusses what we’re learning about how the shots work, as vaccinatio...