Welcome to Public Health On Call, a new podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Our focus is the novel coronavirus.

I'm Josh Sharfstein, a faculty member at Johns Hopkins, and also a former secretary of Maryland's health department.

Our goal with this podcast is to bring evidence and experts to help you understand today's

news about the novel coronavirus and what it means for tomorrow.

If you have questions, you can email them to public health question at jhh.edu.

That's public health question at jh.h. That's public health question at jh.u.edu for future podcast episodes.

Today I'm talking to two nationally renowned ethicists,

Professor Jeffrey Khan and Professor Nancy Cass,

who are the director and deputy director of the Berman Institute of Bioethics

at Johns Hopkins University.

I spoke with them about whether it's right to publicly disclose information about people who are sick with COVID-19,

about society's obligations to people who are quarantined, and about whether it's time to start thinking

about how to allocate critical health care resources

in case this epidemic stretches the health system beyond its capacity to care for everyone.

Let's listen.

Dr. Khan and Dr. Cass, thank you so much for joining me. I think we're at the point in this coronavirus situation

where it's important

to talk about some ethical questions that are coming up. And I'd like to start with you, Dr.

Khan. When there is a case that's announced, there's a huge clamor for information, who's the

person, where have they been, a lot of personal information. Some of it's coming out. Some of it isn't.

There's frustration when people want to know more

...