164 - Economist James K. Galbraith on COVID-19
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 23 September 2020
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
At the beginning of the pandemic, many in the US seemed to view public health measures like lockdowns and social distancing and economic recovery as a tradeoff. But economist Dr. James Galbraith says this is an incorrect assumption, and that early failures to contain the virus mean the US now has uncontrolled spread and a less resilient economy. Galbraith talks with Dr. Josh Sharfstein about the current state of the US economy, the failure of the government to launch an effective public health response, why another shutdown may be necessary, and what we need to think about to address urgent economic impacts to low-income and minority populations hit hard by the pandemic.
KEYWORDS: unemployment; health equity; schools
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Season 2 of Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:13.6 | I'm Joshua Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, |
| 0:18.7 | and a former secretary of Maryland's Health Department. |
| 0:21.6 | Our goal is to bring scientific evidence and experience to the public health news of the day |
| 0:27.6 | through informative interviews with scientists, community leaders, policy experts, public health officials, |
| 0:33.6 | clinicians, and more. If you have ideas or questions for us to cover, please email us at |
| 0:39.8 | Public Health Question at jhhhu.edu. That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future |
| 0:47.2 | podcast episodes. Today, I speak to Professor James Galbraith, an economist at the University of Texas at Austin, |
| 0:55.9 | and director of the University of Texas Inequality Project. |
| 0:59.7 | We speak about the state of the US economy |
| 1:02.4 | at this point in the pandemic, including why |
| 1:05.3 | he recommends taking far more aggressive actions |
| 1:08.8 | against the coronavirus now in order to strengthen the recovery. |
| 1:14.3 | Let's listen. |
| 1:16.3 | Professor Galbra, thank you so much for joining me today. |
| 1:19.6 | We've talked a lot on this podcast about the public health |
| 1:22.3 | trajectory of the COVID pandemic. |
| 1:24.6 | And I wonder if we might start by giving |
| 1:27.1 | your sense of the economic trajectory of this pandemic here in the United pandemic. And I wonder if we might start by your giving your sense of the economic trajectory |
| 1:28.9 | of this pandemic here in the United States. Sure. First of all, it's a pleasure to be with you |
| 1:33.6 | and have a chance to talk to you. I think it's fair to say that as the pandemic began, most |
| 1:40.5 | economists and other commentators and certainly the political leadership in thinking about the economic effects basically had two views. |
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