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 jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes.

This new podcast has been downloaded over 1.5 million times over the last five months,

thanks to listeners like you.

Next week we'll be launching season two of the podcast, bringing you more evidence and

experience about a broader range of topics, including but not limited to COVID-19. This week,

we're checking in with people we interviewed in some of our most powerful episodes from

season one. Today, I'm talking with Dr. Monica Schock Spana, an expert on the mental health effects of the

novel coronavirus.

We speak about the challenge of the new resurgence in cases for our psychological well-being,

as well as a new report about what's needed for a safe and effective vaccine to be widely

and broadly accepted.

Let's listen.

Dr. Shok Spana, thanks so much for coming back to the podcast.

When we spoke a couple months ago, you were the first person to talk about the mental health

consequences of the coronavirus pandemic.

At that time, we were facing major shutdowns.

There was enormous anxiety about what would happen.

...