Prognosis: Misconception

There's an innovative, but risky way we could speed up development of a COVID-19 vaccine. Some scientists argue we should intentionally infect volunteers with the coronavirus to get a vaccine sooner. How would it work? Today's special episode is a collaboration with Tradeoffs, a podcast about our costly, complicated and counter-intuitive health care system. Tradeoffs' Dan Gorenstein explores how s...

There’s a growing public health argument about how people should calculate risk when it comes to social distancing. Many states are now lifting stay-at-home restrictions, summer is around the corner, and people in the third month of what many hoped would be a weeks-long disruption are desperate to visit friends and get outside. That means we will be socializing a lot more--in many cases, without c...

Calls continue to mount for the release of inmates at risk of COVID-19 infection as cases rise at correctional facilities across the country. So far, 70 percent of inmates have tested positive for the coronavirus, according to the Bureau of Prisons. Oakdale Federal Correctional Complex, a low-security prison about 200 miles west of New Orleans, is one of the federal prisons hardest hit by the coro...

Covid-19 has sparked an unprecedented mobilization of researchers looking to create a drug that can stem the spread of the virus. Globally, drug developers are working on as many as 100 experimental vaccines. But as nations rush to ease lockdowns and restart economies, some countries seem to want to secure early supplies of a vaccine for themselves. James Paton reported on efforts to democratize i...

The Internet has been teeming with theories about the origin of the coronavirus. Scientists have been saying for more than three months that it most likely originated in a species of bat found in the south of China, and then managed to somehow jump into people. But alternative explanations have been floated. United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has repeatedly blamed China, and specifically...

The tedious and time-consuming practice of contact tracing is seen as an essential ingredient for suppressing the coronavirus around the world; but not every country has invested in it. The World Health Organization has praised Germany for its contact tracing practices. The country has about a quarter the deaths of neighboring France, despite a more flexible lockdown. Last weekend it continued its...

The aviation industry is wrestling with ways to control the coronavirus and get people back to flying. Airports have seen a 90 percent drop in passengers since mid-March. But as states ease lockdown restrictions, more people are expected to fly. Airports today are starting to make changes in the hopes that passengers will be safer as they fly. Justin Bachman reports on what it looks like to fly du...

When Covid-19 hit, Gilead Sciences Inc. had enough of its experimental drug remdesivir ready to test and start manufacturing it at a larger scale. That's because it had started stockpiling not just the drug, but its ingredients, at the first hint there may be a new coronavirus. Robert Langreth reports on why the company was able to act early to prepare for a pandemic when so many businesses and in...

As Covid-19 infects more and more people, doctors around are learning that the coronavirus doesn’t just attack the lungs. The virus can cause kidney failure; send the body’s immune system into high gear; and lead to a range of clotting-related disorders. Jason Gale reports on how much more we have yet to learn about what the virus does to the body. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy informati...

After months of sheltering in place, some people have begun looking for ways to get around some of the more onerous social distancing guidelines. That’s especially true as the weather warms up in the U.S. Bloomberg reporter Kristen V. Brown collected listener questions around social distancing etiquette, and brought them to an expert to clear up the confusion. If you have any more quarantine quest...

Last week, a five-year-old boy in New York died from Covid-19-related complications. Dozens of other children are becoming sick with a similar cluster of symptoms that mirror a rare condition called Kawasaki disease. The accepted wisdom had been that children could transmit the virus, but not get sick from it. The new illness is throwing that assumption into question. Jason Gale talked to the worl...

Last week, researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory released alarming news: At least one variant of the virus that causes Covid-19 had significantly mutated to become more contagious. If true, this would have major implications. A new variant could, for example, hamper efforts to develop a vaccine or mean that people who’ve already had Covid-19 might face a greater risk of getting it agai...

Antibody tests are suddenly everywhere. These tests are designed to determine whether someone contracted the virus in the past. They help policy makers understand how the virus spreads, and whether measures to contain the virus are working. Federal regulators relaxed guidelines to make it easier for companies to produce the tests, but this has allowed for a flood of unreliable--and sometimes fraud...

Dozens of research teams across the world are racing to deliver a vaccine for the coronavirus. Developing, testing and bringing a vaccine to market is a process that usually takes years, even decades. But that process is being ramped up to warp speed as the virus ravages the globe. A small group of volunteers is already receiving an experimental vaccine. Jason Gale spoke to one of them, and gives...

Doctor Richard Besser was the acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2009, when the H1N1 Swine flu pandemic broke out. The physician-turned-epidemiologist now runs the Robert Wood Johnson foundation with a mission to improve health equality. Reporter Riley Griffin spoke to him about what happens to the most vulnerable communities as states begin to relax social distan...

Health-care workers are under threat from more than just the coronavirus itself: The mental health effects of the work are grave. Doctors and nurses fighting Covid-19 are watching patients die at rates rarely seen in civilian medicine; and they’re delivering the news to family members who aren’t allowed inside the hospital for fear of spreading the disease. Hospitals are trying to treat the minds...

Scientists are facing unparalleled pressure to provide information about the coronavirus as quickly as possible. And when every day brings forth new data, what was clear one day may be confusing the next. Guidance has shifted rapidly about the benefits of wearing masks, how the virus spreads, and even the efficacy of promising new drugs like Remdesivir. Science doesn't usually move this fast. Mich...

As Covid-19 spreads, doctors are learning more about why some patients get very sick, and why others only get mildly ill. Some of the people most at risk for severe illness have underlying conditions that affect their lungs. Older people are also at a higher risk. But certain factors, when combined with age, create a powder keg for the effects of the disease. Both smoking and obesity are condition...

As states grapple with the question of when it will be safe to reopen businesses and relax social distancing, there's increasing urgency to better understand who's immune to Covid-19. Does having the virus and recovering mean you can't get it again, or at least that you can’t be reinfected for some time? No one yet has good answers to these questions. Kristen V. Brown looked into what we do, and d...

The Trump administration announced a plan yesterday to ramp up coronavirus testing. But even as it announces this new push, the Federal government has pushed much of the responsibility for testing to states. Experts say the lack of Federal leadership has led to a free-for-all, where states compete to get their hands on tests, and few states are left in a good position to reopen. Emma Court and Joh...

Iceland has become one of the best places in the world to study Covid-19. That’s because the country is an island nation with only one real port of entry and a small population. It also introduced widespread testing as soon as the virus arrived in March. Bloomberg reporter Kristen V. Brown traveled to Reykjavik, the capital, just as the global scale of the pandemic was starting to become clear. Sh...

Ventilators have become prized in hospitals across the U.S. and beyond because they are desperately needed to treat very ill Covid-19 patients. But they are also feared for the damage they can inflict, and for the slim odds of survival they offer. Michelle Fay Cortez and Olivia Carville report that it's not yet clear what the long-term consequences ventilators have for those lucky enough to recove...

Millions in Wuhan, China, the city where the novel coronavirus first emerged, are trying to figure out what life looks like in the bustling industrial city after the worst pandemic in a century. Bloomberg’s Beijing bureau chief Sharon Chen went to Wuhan recently to explore life after lockdown. She found a world that still feels far from normal, and a population that’s keenly aware of both the thre...

The pandemic is putting care on hold for a lot of people with other serious health conditions, like cancer. Doctors are delaying procedures and surgeries in order to save resources like hospital beds and ventilators for Covid-19 patients, and prevent the infection from spreading. Emma Court reports on the difficult choices doctors are forced to make, and the danger that we're creating another heal...

The shortages of protective masks that keep healthcare workers safe from Covid-19 are well documented by now. To meet the need, U.S. hospitals have taken the extreme step of turning directly to Chinese manufacturers. Reporter Riley Griffin reports that the demand has helped spur a Wild West scenario, where Profiteering middlemen ratchet up prices. Buyers must sometimes go to extraordinary lengths...