BA.5 and Our Disappearing Immunity (with Bill Hanage)
In the Bubble with Andy Slavitt
Lemonada Media
4.6 • 3.5K Ratings
🗓️ 13 July 2022
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Reinfections across the country are being driven by an explosion in cases of BA.5, the latest variant of COVID-19. Andy asks Harvard epidemiologist Bill Hanage whether our vaccines and immune systems have a fighting chance, if infections are more severe than other Omicron offshoots, and what we need to do to safely get through the summer and fall. Will those who have managed to avoid the virus for years finally succumb to this wave? Find out.
Keep up with Andy on Twitter @ASlavitt.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's CVS Health, they know the women's physical, mental, and sexual health matters. |
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| 1:01.0 | Now, come on out. |
| 1:23.0 | Welcome to the bubble. This is your host Andy Slavitt. |
| 1:26.0 | It's Wednesday, July 13th. How are you doing? We have an episode today that's going to focus squarely on what's the evolving picture looks like from the BA5 |
| 1:38.0 | variant as it makes its presence known here in the US. To do that, we have on the show the same person that I invite on every time we have a new variant with Omicron, |
| 1:48.0 | Bill Hanich from Harvard. Bill is a delight. You're really going to get a lot out of this show. We're going to get right into it. |
| 1:57.0 | But let me take you to get a little bit of a painting of the picture for you. BA5, along with BA4, but I think BA5 is the more relevant and stronger of the two. |
| 2:08.0 | We're making it way around the country, infecting a lot of people, particularly so in the south, starting to hit Florida, and we've got a lot of open questions. My most important questions are number one, what's happening to our immune system? |
| 2:24.0 | What's happening to our immune system? Is our prior immunity holding or is BA5 dodging it? I think there's a lot to be learned there and going to go there with Bill. |
| 2:32.0 | Secondly, is this thing more severe? We get some mixed data from different parts of the world. Some of which says it might be more severe, some of which says it might not. |
... |
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