328 - Laying the Groundwork for a COVID-19 Commission
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 2 June 2021
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
After 9-11, the US government convened a crisis commission to investigate what happened and why, and to glean lessons to inform crisis prevention and response in the future. Philip Zelikow, the executive director of the 9-11 Commission, talks with Stephanie Desmon about laying the groundwork for a COVID-19 Commission. They talk about why it's so important to take stock of what's happened and create an informed story, the differences between a one-time attack like 9-11 and a sustained disaster like COVID, and how the commission could mean a better response to a future pandemic.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Season 4 of Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:13.0 | I'm Josh Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, and a former Commissioner of Health in Baltimore City. |
| 0:20.0 | Our goal is to bring |
| 0:21.7 | scientific evidence and experience to current topics in public health through engaging interviews |
| 0:27.1 | with scientists, community leaders, policy experts, public health officials, clinicians, and more. |
| 0:32.8 | If you have ideas or questions for us to cover, please email us at public health question at jhhhu.edu. |
| 0:40.4 | That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:46.5 | Hi, I'm Lindsay Smith-Rogers, producer of Public Health On Call. |
| 0:50.2 | Today, Stephanie Desmond talks to Philip Zellico, the executive director of the 9-11 commission, |
| 0:56.2 | about his efforts to lay the groundwork for a COVID-19 commission. |
| 1:00.8 | Let's listen. |
| 1:02.2 | Philip Zellico, thanks so much for joining me. |
| 1:05.3 | Pleased to be with you. |
| 1:07.0 | So I guess the big question is, why do we need a commission for COVID-19? |
| 1:11.6 | Well, we've just been suffering perhaps the most impactful trauma on the United States since |
| 1:21.6 | 1945, possibly the most impactful trauma on the world. Usually after these tremendous events, there's some |
| 1:30.5 | major effort to take stock of what happened and why. People will form a story about what happened |
| 1:36.9 | and why. The question basically is, will that story be well informed or not so well informed? |
| 1:45.0 | So usually, many governments will try to make a systematic effort to provide a foundation of knowledge of what happened and why. |
| 1:54.0 | That's what happened after 9-11 when I directed the 9-11 commission. I've been involved in a couple of other |
| 2:02.4 | crisis commissions. After the Second World War, the United States organized a gigantic |
| 2:09.5 | set of official histories to try to provide some core understanding of what had happened |
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