984 - Sneak Attacks: How Viruses Can Hide In Our Bodies and Cause Problems Years Later
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 8 December 2025
⏱️ 18 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
About this episode:
After recovering from an illness like the flu or mononucleosis, most of us will return to our normal lives without complications. But for some, viruses can linger in the body—sometimes for years—and reemerge, wreaking new havoc on the immune system and even triggering chronic diseases. In this episode: Virologist Maggie Bartlett explains how viruses—many of which are vaccine-preventable—can cause post-acute infection syndrome and what's needed to improve the diagnosis and treatment of these conditions.
Watch the video version of this episode.
Guests:
Maggie L. Bartlett, PhD, is an assistant research professor in Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the co-host of "Why Should I Trust You?".
Host:
Lindsay Smith Rogers, MA, is the producer of the Public Health On Call podcast, an editor for Expert Insights, and the director of content strategy for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Show links and related content:
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Vaccines Do More Than Prevent Disease—Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
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The Virus That Never Leaves—Dr. Maggie's Substack
-
What We Know—And Still Don't Know—About Long COVID—Public Health On Call (October 2025)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, |
| 0:05.8 | where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges. |
| 0:16.1 | If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jhh.edu. |
| 0:23.7 | That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:30.8 | It's Lindsay Smith Rogers. |
| 0:32.7 | Today, all the ways viruses can be sneaky. |
| 0:35.8 | Biologist Maggie Bartlett returned to the podcast to talk with me |
| 0:38.8 | about how viruses can hide in our systems and years later resurface and cause new infections |
| 0:44.1 | and complications. We also talk about viruses and chronic disease and how there's so much we need |
| 0:49.5 | to learn when it comes to diagnoses and treatments and where vaccination fits into the whole conversation. |
| 0:54.7 | Just to note that this episode is also available as a video and you can find the link to watch in the show notes. |
| 1:00.0 | Let's listen. |
| 1:01.5 | Maggie Bartlett, welcome back to Public Health on Call. |
| 1:04.0 | Thank you so much for having me again. |
| 1:05.7 | I'm so excited to be here. |
| 1:06.8 | Really good to see you. |
| 1:08.1 | Maggie is a virologist and a co-host of Why Should I Trust You Podcast. And today we're here to talk about sneaky viruses. |
| 1:17.0 | Yes, one of my favorite topics. I'm so pleased that you reached out for this. |
| 1:20.9 | Would you tell us why it's one of your favorite topics? |
| 1:23.8 | Yeah. So honestly, I think the scariest viruses are the ones that you think you've survived, but hang around. Yeah. So honestly, I think the scariest viruses are the ones that you think you've survived, but hang around. And there's tons of examples of that. And I don't think that it gets nearly the attention as like the acute, the pandemic viruses, which I also have a passion for. But it's this piece of, I think, pandemic preparedness that we don't |
| 1:46.8 | really appreciate is what happens after long COVID is a great example of that. There are still |
| 1:52.1 | millions who are suffering. We're still trying to figure out the mechanisms. But for some, it is |
... |
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