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.hu.edu for future podcast episodes.

Today, I speak to Dr. Jonae Caldoun, the chief medical executive and chief deputy director

for health for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

Dr. Caldun has been the top health official

steering the state of Michigan through the COVID pandemic.

We speak about the difficult early days,

the state's response to racial disparities

in COVID illness and death, opposition to public health measures,

and the outlook for the future.

Let's listen. Dr. Caldune, thank you so much for joining me.

I know you're super busy and have been for quite a while because of the coronavirus pandemic.

I wonder if you could take us back to the beginning and how Michigan dealt with what was a pretty

early surge in cases in your state.

Right. So first of all, thank you for having me on today. It's certainly an honor. I'd say that,

you know, Michigan, like every other state, we've been watching the disease spread, you know,

from starting in China back in December of last year. And in January, we started prepping our teams,

...