407 - Navigating Another COVID Holiday Season
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 10 December 2021
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Coming into this holiday season, things seemed a lot brighter than they did a year ago in terms of COVID safety: We have a broader toolbox including masks, ventilation, rapid tests, vaccines, and more. But a new variant of concern and rising levels of transmission remind us that we are still in a pandemic. Epidemiologist Keri Althoff and mental health expert Elizabeth Stuart return to the podcast to talk with Stephanie Desmon about navigating holiday gatherings and travel this year, and how we're slowly moving towards the ultimate goal of living with COVID as an endemic virus.
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. |
| 0:46.7 | Hi, I'm Lindsay Smith-Rogers, producer of public health on call. Today, Stephanie Desmond |
| 0:51.6 | welcomes back Johns Hopkins faculty, Elizabeth Stewart and |
| 0:55.0 | Carrie Altaff, to talk about the COVID-19 risks to consider this holiday season and how we can |
| 1:00.6 | mitigate them. They discuss the disruptions we may face, but also how this year we can be |
| 1:06.2 | much safer than last. Let's listen. Liz Stewart and Carrie Altaf. |
| 1:10.9 | Thanks so much for joining me. |
| 1:12.4 | Great to be here. |
| 1:13.5 | Good to see you, Stephanie. |
| 1:15.1 | So let's start with you today, Carrie. |
| 1:17.0 | We are hitting another holiday season. |
| 1:19.6 | We're right in the middle of it. |
| 1:21.1 | Another COVID holiday season. |
| 1:23.6 | So we've just been hearing about this new Omicron variant. So tell me how things are different than a year ago and what we know. |
| 1:33.8 | So COVID is still with us, not different from last year. But our toolbox and what's in it ridiculously different in so many good ways, right? So we have vaccines that are available. We have |
| 1:45.9 | boosters to that primary series that are available. We know how well masking works. We have good data |
... |
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