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 of 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.edu for future podcast episodes.

It's Friday, so we're back to our routine of Q&A.

I'm asking questions submitted by listeners to the Director of the Center for Health Security

at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public

Health, Dr. Tom Inglesby. Let's listen. Dr. Inglesby, thank you so much for joining me to

answer listener questions on the podcast. Thanks for having me, Josh. So my first question is why

the United States

has had such a harder time with the virus than Europe.

You may have seen this figure that's circulating on the internet

showing the curves look pretty different.

The United States still seeing quite a large number of cases

and deaths in Europe seeing far fewer.

Why do you think that's the case?

Well, I don't think we know for sure.

I don't think there have been large studies that really have isolated particular differences,

but I think it's reasonable to say that Europe has, or many places in Europe, opened up more slowly, not all, but many, than many places in the United States.

I think at a general level, there has been good partnership between public health agencies and

...