The coronavirus pandemic has us all asking a lot of questions: How long will I have to practice “social distancing”? Will there be a cure for COVID-19? Can I ever touch my face again?
WABE health reporter Sam Whitehead and guests will try to answer those questions. He’ll talk with experts, public officials, journalists, and everyday people about how the coronavirus is affecting their lives.
Joshua Weitz, who studies how viruses transform human health at Georgia Tech, has created a tool to help people calculate the likelihood of being exposed to the coronavirus at events of different sizes. He shares how it works and discusses the current state of the pandemic. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Jodie Guest, from the Emory University Rollins School of Public Health, lays out some of the basics of two COVID-19 vaccines that could soon be approved for emergency use by U.S. regulators. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Holley Wilkin, who teaches health communication at Georgia State University, says it's not enough for officials to set appropriate public health policies to slow coronavirus transmission--they also need to be good at messaging them. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Dr. Willarda Edwards, with the American Medical Association, says the health disparities laid bare by COVID-19 contributed to the AMA's recent decision to officially recognize racism as a public health threat. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Sarah Owermohle, who covers health care for Politico, says some Americans could get access to COVID-19 vaccines before the end of the year. Still, many questions remain about their long term efficacy and how they'll be distributed. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Even if you've managed to hold on to a job, keep food on the table, stay healthy, keep the kids learning, and not get too overwhelmed by politics, this is an incredibly stressful time. And for many people, those things haven't all fallen into place. Dr. Vaile Wright, senior director for healthcare innovation at the American Psychological Association, says chronic stress, as so many people are experiencing, can have long-term effects, even once the pandemic is over. See omnystudio.com/listener fo...
Dr. Stanley Perlman, a virologist at the University of Iowa, says we've learned a lot about SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 since it was first discovered, but there is still much we don't know. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
John Haupert, CEO of the Grady Health System, says his Atlanta hospital is treating a rising number of people with coronavirus infections and that the current surge could surpass the one the region saw this summer. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Pien Huang, who covers health for NPR, says the decision to strip the Centers for Disease Control of Prevention of its job of collecting COVID-19 from hospitals has far-reaching consequences. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Cria Perrine, an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, says Thanksgiving gatherings could be the "perfect storm" for spreading the coronavirus. She shares the agency's tips for how to celebrate safely. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ariel Hart, health care reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, says Governor Brian Kemp's plans to overhaul the individual health insurance market in Georgia could affect hundreds of thousands of people and could be undone if the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down the Affordable Care Act. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Keren Landman, a freelance reporter in Atlanta, read through thousands of emails from state officials to uncover the story of how Georgia public health officials didn't have much control over the state's COVID-19 data dashboard. Read her story here: https://www.atlantamagazine.com/great-reads/behind-georgias-covid-19-dashboard-disaster/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Dr. Paulina Rebolledo, from Emory University, says there are a number of reasons members of the Latinx community are more likely to become severely ill from COVID-19 and many of them are structural. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Brent Stephens, who studies indoor air quality at the Illinois Institute of Technology, says there's increasing evidence that SARS-CoV-2 can spread through tiny, floating droplets. He says there are some steps people can take to make indoor spaces safer. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Erin Lipp, a professor of environmental health science at the University of Georgia, leads a team using wastewater to track the spread of the coronavirus. She says our waste can tell us a lot about how the pandemic is progressing. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Jen Kates, with the Kaiser Family Foundation, says President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden have different pitches for how they'll handle the coronavirus pandemic if they win next month's election. It's an issue that's top of mind for many voters. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Sarah Evanega, from the Cornell University Alliance For Science, says the coronavirus has spawned a pandemic of misinformation. In a recent study, she found a few important super-spreaders of falsehoods and conspiracy theories. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Roxanne Scott, who covers the U.S. Census for WABE, says the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown the national headcount into disarray. It's sparked a legal fight that has pushed the final deadline back and forth on the calendar, and experts say that could lead to an undercount in Georgia. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Drs. Colleen Kelley and Valeria Cantos are helping run a coronavirus vaccine trial at Emory University. They say it's not easy to get Black and Latinx people to volunteer for medical research, even though they've been the groups hardest hit by COVID-19. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Yamil Berard, an investigative reporter with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, says dealing with the coronavirus has pushed many rural hospitals in Georgia to the brink and has forced some to close their doors. (Read more from Berard here: https://www.ajc.com/news/investigations/push-comes-to-shove-moment-for-rural-hospitals-in-georgia/OUDVXKRW7JHHDPQ7TKIZJYWUZY/ ) See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Deirdre Barret, who studies dreams at Harvard Medical School, says the pandemic is affecting how people dream and that women are seeing outsized effects. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, says it's time for the U.S. leaders to rethink how they're handling the COVID-19 outbreak, especially as there's still a long way to go before life returns to something resembling normal. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Apoorva Mandavilli, a reporter for the New York Times, says recent changes to Centers For Disease Control and Prevention's coronavirus testing guidance were made against the objections of agency scientists. (More on the story here: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/17/health/coronavirus-testing-cdc.html ) See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Dr. James Hildreth, president of Meharry Medical College, and the other heads of the country's historically Black medical schools want to make sure the people most impacted by the pandemic have access to a vaccine that's proven to work for them. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Dr. Tom Frieden, a former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, says efforts from elected officials to undermine the public health agency could draw-out our fight against the coronavirus. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Kelly Girtz, the mayor of Athens-Clarke County, talks about what the spike in coronavirus infections at the University of Georgia has means for his community--and what he thinks should be done to slow the spread of COVID-19. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
John King, Georgia's insurance commissioner, has been tapped by Governor Brian Kemp to set up a network to distribute a possible coronavirus vaccine. He shares his vision for how such a system could work and some of the challenges the effort could face. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Dr. Laura Blaisdell, a pediatrician in Maine, says implementing multiple interventions helped prevent the spread of the coronavirus at four summer camps. She shares the findings of her recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Melanie McNeil, Georgia's long-term care ombudsman, says the pandemic has hit nursing homes and other long-term care facilities hard--causing thousands of resident deaths and months of isolation from the outside world. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Dr. Kathleen Toomey, head of the Georgia Department of Public Health, says the summer spike in COVID-19 cases can be linked to people not following state guidelines. She's urging people to adhere to best practices during the coming Labor Day weekend. Toomey also discusses the latest on testing and contact tracing in the state. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
