376 - Rethinking Herd Immunity and COVID-19
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 27 September 2021
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
With the rollout of vaccines earlier this year, the concept of "herd immunity"—the idea that enough people would become immune to COVID-19 that we could more or less "return to normal"—seemed plausible. But a number of factors are complicating the US's fight against the pandemic and we're still seeing thousands of people dying every day. Epidemiologists Amber D'Souza and David Dowdy return to the podcast to talk with Stephanie Desmon about vaccinations and the delta variant, what the future might look like and why we may need to accept that COVID-19 is here to stay.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 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. |
| 0:46.8 | Hi, I'm Lindsay Smith-Rogers, producer of public health on call. Today, Stephanie Desmond |
| 0:52.1 | talks to Johns Hopkins epidemiologists Amber De'Souza and David Doughty |
| 0:56.4 | about the concept of herd immunity from COVID-19 and why reaching it won't be as simple as we hoped |
| 1:03.0 | for when the pandemic began 18 months ago. Let's listen. Amber D'Souza and David Doughty, thanks so much |
| 1:10.1 | for joining me. |
| 1:11.7 | Thank you. |
| 1:12.7 | Thanks, Pat, guys. |
| 1:14.1 | Let me start with you, David. |
| 1:18.5 | We're going to talk today about herd immunity and how to maybe look at it a little bit differently. |
| 1:23.5 | So when epidemiologists talk about herd immunity, what do they typically mean? |
| 1:24.5 | Thanks, Stephanie. |
| 1:30.1 | So herd immunity is a concept from infectious disease epidemiology, |
| 1:34.3 | where we think about the amount of immunity that exists in a population. |
| 1:41.0 | And once that level of immunity gets above a certain level, a certain threshold, if you will, |
| 1:46.7 | it makes it hard for viruses or other bugs to spread in the population. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.