BONUS: Omicron Update—The Good, The Bad, and the Unknown
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 7 January 2022
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dr. Josh Sharfstein checks in again with virologist Dr. Andy Pekosz about omicron and what we now know in terms of increased transmission, immune evasion, and lethality. Spoiler: If you're unvaccinated, you shouldn't assume that omicron will most likely lead to a mild infection. They also talk about what the omicron variant could mean for the future of the pandemic.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Season 5 of Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:13.0 | I'm Joshua Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, and a former health commissioner here in Baltimore, Maryland. |
| 0:21.7 | Our goal with this podcast is to bring scientific evidence and experience to shed light on critical |
| 0:27.5 | health issues. If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health |
| 0:33.0 | question at jhhhu.edu. That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:42.2 | Today, I catch up with Professor Andrew Peckoshe, a virologist at the Johns Hopkins |
| 0:47.6 | Bloomberg School of Public Health, on the latest about Amacron. |
| 0:52.5 | Let's listen. |
| 0:54.4 | Dr. Peckos, thank you so much for coming back to talk about Amacron. Let's listen. Dr. Peckos, thank you so much for coming back to talk about Amacron. |
| 0:59.0 | It has been only a few weeks since we first started in on this topic, but so much has happened. |
| 1:04.6 | Absolutely. |
| 1:05.8 | The pace at which we're seeing this Omicron surge go through the nation, in fact, the world, coupled with |
| 1:13.5 | all the information that we're learning about this virus and how quickly we're learning it, |
| 1:17.0 | it's just been, you know, staggering. So let's catch up on that information. When this first |
| 1:21.9 | started, one of the questions was, is this more transmissible? And the early science were yes. |
| 1:27.7 | So now what do we know? |
| 1:29.1 | Now it's abundantly clear that this is maybe even an order |
| 1:33.1 | of magnitude more transmissible than any other variant |
| 1:36.5 | that we've seen. |
| 1:37.7 | And what's important to note is that increased transmission |
| 1:41.7 | is occurring in people that have some level of immunity. |
| 1:45.5 | So it's occurring in people who have been vaccinated. |
... |
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