197 - What We've Learned About How COVID-19 Spreads
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 9 November 2020
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Before the pandemic, we didn't know as much about how infectious respiratory diseases spread. New knowledge about COVID-19 can help us make informed decisions about risks but it has also led to mixed messages. Hopkins environmental epidemiologist Dr. Tom Burke and dean of the University of Colorado School of Public Health Dr. Jon Samet talk with Stephanie Desmon about a panel they recently led on airborne transmission of COVID-19. They talk about everything we've learned about how COVID spreads, the CDC's changing guidance on "close contacts," the riskiest settings for transmission, and how current guidance may be even more effective than a vaccine.
KEYWORDS: aerosols; health communication; social distancing
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Season 2 of Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins |
| 0:11.6 | Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:13.6 | I'm Joshua Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, |
| 0:18.8 | and a former secretary of Maryland's Health Department. |
| 0:21.9 | Our goal is to bring scientific evidence and experience to the public health news of the day |
| 0:27.3 | through informative interviews with scientists, community leaders, policy experts, public health |
| 0:32.7 | officials, 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 podcast |
| 0:47.8 | episodes. Today, Stephanie Desmond talks to Hopkins Public Health Professor Tom Burke and John Samuth, the dean of the University of Colorado School of Public Health. |
| 0:58.7 | They recently led a panel on the airborne transmission of COVID-19 at the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. |
| 1:06.7 | They discuss all we've learned about how COVID spreads, how mixed messages can be harmful, |
| 1:11.6 | and how this information can help us make informed decisions about our own risk. |
| 1:16.6 | Let's listen. |
| 1:18.6 | John Samet and Tom Burke, thank you so much for joining me. |
| 1:21.6 | Glad to be here. |
| 1:22.6 | Thank you for having it. |
| 1:24.6 | So, Dr. Samet, let me start with you. |
| 1:27.7 | We have, from the very beginning of this pandemic, we have heard about different ways about |
| 1:33.9 | how this pandemic has been spreading. |
| 1:36.2 | So tell me what do we know and how is it spreading? |
| 1:39.2 | Okay, so probably to start with, most amazing is how little we knew about the transmission of infections |
| 1:46.3 | in general. |
... |
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