#270 — What Have We Learned from the Pandemic?

Making Sense with Sam Harris

Waking Up with Sam Harris

Samharris, Currentevents, Politics, Ethics, Religion, Neuroscience, Science, Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.6 • 29.1K Ratings

🗓️ 14 December 2021

⏱️ 171 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, Sam Harris speaks with Nicholas Christakis about the lessons of the COVID pandemic. They discuss our failures to coordinate an effective response, the politics surrounding vaccination, vaccine efficacy, vaccine safety, how to think about scientific controversies, the epidemiology of excess deaths, transmission among the vaccinated, natural immunity, selection pressures and new variants, the failure of institutions, the lab-leak hypothesis, the efficacy of lockdowns, vaccine mandates, boosters, what would happen in a worse pandemic, and other topics.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast.
0:24.2	This is Sam Harris.
0:26.4	Okay, we are well into December here.
0:30.8	The end of the year is upon us.
0:33.6	I'm sure this has put you all in a reflective mood, as it has me.
0:38.9	Where did 2021 go?
0:41.5	That really felt like it was six months long at best.
0:46.6	It was amazing.
0:49.9	It has also been ten years since Christopher Hitchens died.
0:56.3	The anniversary has arrived the 15th of this month, which depending on when I release
1:04.0	this is either tomorrow or today.
1:09.9	And that remains a loss.
1:13.3	The truth is Hitch was really just hitting his stride when I came to know him.
1:18.9	I believe his book, God is not great, was his first bestseller.
1:25.5	He was famous in journalistic circles, but was really just connecting with a wider audience.
1:32.7	And then his memoir was the last book that he actually wrote.
1:39.1	His amazing short book, Mortality, was a collection of his vanity fair essays that came out
1:46.3	after he died.
1:48.4	Well worth reading.
1:49.7	Anyway, he is sorely missed in this post-institutional time where journalism and media and the ivory
1:59.6	tower were really the whole class of professional commentary it has heaped shame upon itself with
2:09.4	both hands.
	...

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