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Coronavirus Crisis Update

News & Politics Podcasts

Coronavirus Crisis Update is the podcast series of the CSIS Global Health Policy Center (GHPC) focused on the Covid-19 pandemic. In Coronavirus Crisis Update, J. Stephen Morrison, GHPC’s Director, and H. Andrew Schwartz, CSIS Chief Communications Officer, speak to those leading the global response and fighting the pandemic in the United States. These conversations dive deep into how the pandemic is impacting America across economics, national security, foreign policy, and health, and where we go from here.

Coronavirus Crisis Update is the podcast series of the CSIS Global Health Policy Center (GHPC) focused on the Covid-19 pandemic. In Coronavirus Crisis Update, J. Stephen Morrison, GHPC’s Director, and H. Andrew Schwartz, CSIS Chief Communications Officer, speak to those leading the global response and fighting the pandemic in the United States. These conversations dive deep into how the pandemic is impacting America across economics, national security, foreign policy, and health, and where we go from here.

Location:

United States

Description:

Coronavirus Crisis Update is the podcast series of the CSIS Global Health Policy Center (GHPC) focused on the Covid-19 pandemic. In Coronavirus Crisis Update, J. Stephen Morrison, GHPC’s Director, and H. Andrew Schwartz, CSIS Chief Communications Officer, speak to those leading the global response and fighting the pandemic in the United States. These conversations dive deep into how the pandemic is impacting America across economics, national security, foreign policy, and health, and where we go from here.

Language:

English

Episodes

Mollyann Brodie, KFF: “Accept People Where They Are.”

4/21/2021
We sat down this week with the acclaimed survey expert, Mollyann Brodie who been exceptionally busy in recent months, engaging over 11,000 American adults. She finds it remarkable “how fast and dynamic vaccine confidence has moved” across all population groups, reaching acceptance among two-thirds of Americans. The “moveable middle,” of persons waiting to decide, has been cut by half to 17%. Black and Hispanic populations have moved towards higher acceptance but still account for a large...

Duration:00:38:47

Dr. Deborah Birx: “Moms Out There, Call Your Sons!”

4/13/2021
Dr. Deborah Birx, former Trump White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator and renowned global HIV/AIDS leader, spoke to us about a rich assortment of issues: the recent drama surrounding her statements about the Trump administration; her almost 7 months on the road across America, far from Washington, visiting with 44 governors; the corrosive divisions in our society; what might cure vaccine hesitancy; President Biden’s early achievements; DOD’s profound contributions; the secret power of...

Duration:00:48:02

Frances Stead Sellers: Vaccines “Are Not Bulletproof Vests”

4/8/2021
Journalist, writer, editor Frances Stead Sellers returned to share new insights. Leaders like Henrietta Fore, UNICEF, struggle with “incredible added burdens” dealing with crises in childhood education and disrupted immunizations while “vaccinating the world” against Covid-19 with Gavi. “Imagine being Henrietta Fore. .. The strains on the organization are enormous.” Francis Collins, head of NIH, faces similar expansive responsibilities, and uses his own voice “as a person of faith” to...

Duration:00:30:25

Coronavirus Crisis Update: Dr. Jennifer Kates & Josh Michaud “A Race Against Time.”

3/30/2021
Dr. Jennifer Kates and Josh Michaud, Kaiser Family Foundation, take us on a tour d’horizon. Rapidly accelerating vaccine coverage has resulted in “a huge, huge change.” By the end of June, we will have twice the volume of vaccines needed to inoculate America’s 260 million adults. Improvements in testing and surveillance lag – “We can’t just focus on one intervention.” At the same time, state leaders relax controls, and variants increase transmissibility, concentrated among youth. “We are...

Duration:00:45:13

Coronavirus Crisis Update: Dr. LaQuandra Nesbitt “We Have Made Health Equity Everybody’s Business Here.”

3/25/2021
Dr. LaQuandra Nesbitt, director of the Washington DC Department of Health, shares her insights into battling the pandemic. Washington is the opposite of self-contained. Protesters of many stripes transport their grievances to Washington, often stoking “strife and agitation” with little regard for the health of the community. Emergency preparations intensified beginning in 2015: “We were ready” in 2020 but had “still so much to learn” as the pandemic unfolded. Messaging in the fog of a...

Duration:00:43:40

Coronavirus Crisis Update: Helen Branswell “Are Vaccines Having a Moment?”

3/16/2021
Helen last joined us on April 2, 2020, a dark moment. She returned to explore with us whether the joy, relief, and gratitude that millions are experiencing through Covid vaccines generate gains in other disease areas, where adult vaccination “is a hard field.” “These vaccines have been extraordinary” with “very few side effects.” Among Republicans, especially in rural areas, “a good chunk of people are not intending to be vaccinated.” It was a lost opportunity when President Trump did not go...

Duration:00:26:46

Coronavirus Crisis Update: Peter Hotez- The Unending Fight in Texas

3/11/2021
Peter Hotez joins us for a Texas-centered conversation. After 11 years in Washington DC, Peter migrated to Texas where over the past several years he has established himself as a leading research scientist, public voice on infectious disease, including SARS-CoV-2, vocal advocate of vaccines, and opponent of anti-science, anti-vaccine voices. How did this happen? How has this changed his life? In recent days, Governor Abbott made his sudden, unforeseen decision to lift the mask mandate and...

Duration:00:41:37

Coronavirus Crisis Update: Ashish Jha “Equity is All About the Ground Game.”

3/2/2021
Ashish Jha, a determined optimist, gives the Biden administration an A- for its first six weeks. The picture today is “dramatically better.” “A light switch went on after January 20,” when states could suddenly ask for – and receive – help. An “extraordinary bump-up” in vaccinations is underway: “We have more vaccines coming than we will know what to do with.” More needs to happen in building out testing, developing strategies for variants, and planning for when variants may escape vaccines....

Duration:00:47:19

Coronavirus Crisis Update: Sheryl Gay Stolberg “Spring is Just Around the Corner.”

3/1/2021
Sheryl Gay Stolberg, the NYT’s health policy correspondent, returned to our podcast to reflect on the first month of the Biden administration. Its approach “could not be more different” than that of the Trump administration. The transition has “brought order,” the pieces are “ a lot more buttoned-down.” Caution is a watchword: the President does not want to overpromise, aware of the race against variants, and the unpredictability of the virus. Much of the change in tone stems from President...

Duration:00:37:12

Coronavirus Crisis Update: Chris Murray, IHME “This Is a Very Tricky Time”

2/17/2021
Chris Murray kindly returned to the podcast for another round. We know now that variants increase transmissibility “by quite a bit,” and have the potential to increase the fatality rate and escape vaccines, lowering efficacy rates. The Novavax trial, ominously, showed that one variant can reinfect individuals previously infected. It’s a new, uncertain world in which SAR-COV-2 is not overcome and eliminated, but rather becomes endemic, a “seasonal flu only ten times worse.” We know that...

Duration:00:30:22

Coronavirus Crisis Update: Bill Frist – “You Are Not Going to See the Snake Over In the Bush…”

2/10/2021
…if you are fed misinformation from the top of the US government. Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist joined us to reflect on his life and where our country is. “I have radically changed my life … for the better. Refocused my life on nature.” In his 12 years in the Senate, he was the only doctor who had taken care of a patient… the only scientist. It was tough selling his 2005 Manhattan Project plan for pandemic preparedness. Today with Covid-19: “We have failed as a country.” Trump...

Duration:00:46:32

Coronavirus Crisis Update: Scott Kirby, United Airlines “Perhaps This Is the End of the Beginning”

2/3/2021
We were delighted to join this week with Scott Kirby, the CEO of United Airlines. The impact of the pandemic upon the airline industry has been “devastating,” the worst in its history. Luckily, bipartisan broad-based support for the industry – contained in the CARES Act and the December $900 B emergency measure – has preserved this critical infrastructure. Variants are a stark threat: “We’re giving the virus a large playing field upon which to mutate, for variants to become more deadly, more...

Duration:00:30:29

Coronavirus Crisis Update: Dr. Alisha Kramer, the “New Normal” is “Not So Normal”

2/2/2021
Dr. Alisha Kramer, a CSIS alum and young doctor serving poor, black, pregnant women in Atlanta hospitals, rejoins us for a second podcast. One year into the pandemic, a “new normal” has arisen that is still jarring, a “disconnect” in the changes in medical practice. Vaccine hesitancy is a “shocking” matter among nursing staff. Black persons “have every right to be distrustful” of the health system. If we give the “microphone back to the experts… based on the science,” if we rely on neighbor...

Duration:00:27:58

Coronavirus Crisis Update: Céline Gounder “Fatalism is the Greatest Threat to Public Health.”

1/26/2021
Dr. Céline Gounder, a member of the Biden-Harris Transition Covid-19 Advisory Board, takes a look at where we are, less than one week after President Biden assumed power. Deborah Birx and Tony Fauci have each come forward, unshackled, to discuss the moral and professional quandaries they faced, including threats and coercion, as Trump erected false narratives, intensifying in the fall electoral season and beyond, steering Americans into a human catastrophe. “Proximity to power is...

Duration:00:31:26

Coronavirus Crisis Update: Chef Jose Andres “The Fuel That Moves Humanity is Food.”

1/14/2021
Chef Jose Andres sat down with us to reflect on his life, the organizations he has founded, and his unique, powerful vision for using food to transform communities, battle inequities, advance unity and strengthen economies. When he landed in America as a young man, “I became an American way before I became an American by a passport.” Two years later, at age 23, he chose Washington to be his home: it is the “place where things can happen.” He created relief organization World Central Kitchen...

Duration:00:38:11

Coronavirus Crisis Update: Luciana Borio – “It’s Gonna Be Hard.”

1/11/2021
Dr. Luciana Borio, a member of President-elect Biden’s Covid-19 Advisory Group and the transition team, scanned the horizon. On the development of Covid-19 vaccines: “All in all, this has been a spectacular success.” Special tribute goes to the FDA career staff, the “heroes” who charted the path forward. Now most worrying: ensuring large scale manufacturing of the MRNA vaccines, and fixing logistics - “the gaping hole” created by a wholesale lack of planning. Vaccine hesitancy, equity, and...

Duration:00:24:13

Coronavirus Crisis Update: Chris Murray, America’s Reopening

12/16/2020
Chris Murray, the renowned modeler, joined us to share his year-end reflections. In this year unlike any other, Covid-19 pushed modeling onto new ground, as forecasting of individual and governmental behavior became essential to inform decisions in the near to medium term. It’s been “a steep learning curve.” Looking ahead to 2021, in Q1 and 2 we will see a profound pivot, as vaccinations are scaled, winter ends, government policies evolve, and immunity within the population rises. We should...

Duration:00:33:15

Coronavirus Crisis Update: Artist Suzanne Firstenberg – a Sea of 267,080 White Flags

12/10/2020
Steve and Andrew had the good fortune to catch Suzanne Firstenberg shortly after the recent conclusion of her stunning public art installation, ‘In America…. How could this happen?,’ a dramatic tribute to those lost to Covid-19. This “awakening,” comprised of 267, 080 white flags, stood on the parade grounds of the Washington DC National Guard Armory between October 23 and November 30. What motivated her to act so boldly, and how was it possible to succeed so rapidly, moving in just a few...

Duration:00:26:53

Coronavirus Crisis Update: Dr. Carissa Etienne – the Americas at the Epicenter of Covid-19

12/9/2020
Dr. Carissa Etienne, Director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), joined Steve Morrison and CSIS Senior Fellow Katherine Bliss for an extended conversation. Why have the Americas become the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic? What does it signal in terms of deep inequities, weak health systems, and quality of leadership? The region faces cascading crises – debt, extreme poverty, malnutrition, interrupted health services. How are these threats to be blunted? And what role can...

Duration:00:47:28

Coronavirus Crisis Update: Dr. Leana Wen – We are at a Breaking Point

11/30/2020
A renowned medical and public health voice of compassion, personal advice, pragmatism and vision, Dr. Leana Wen joined us for a tour d’horizon of the pandemic, at this moment of “explosive exponential growth.” Why is it so crucial today to have credible, trusted public health voices? Why have so many Americans disregarded the recent Thanksgiving warnings, and why do so many Americans continue to minimize the threat of Covid-19? The Phase 3 vaccine results are “great news” and we now have to...

Duration:00:27:45

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