Welcome to Season 4 of Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

I'm Josh Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, and a former Commissioner of Health in Baltimore City.

Our goal is to bring

scientific evidence and experience to current topics in public health through engaging interviews

with scientists, community leaders, policy experts, public health officials, clinicians, and more.

If you have ideas or questions for us to cover, please email us at public health question at jhhhu.edu.

That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes.

Hi, I'm Lindsay Smith-Rogers, producer of public health on call.

Recently, Dr. J. Varma, who advised New York Mayor Bill de Blasio on the pandemic response,

penned a piece for the Atlantic called Not Every Question has a scientific answer.

In the article, Dr. Varma talks about the critical role of politicians in determining difficult

COVID-19 policy questions. When it comes to closing restaurants and schools, there's more to it than just following the science.

In this special bonus episode, Dr. Josh Sharfstein calls Dr. Varma to talk about his take.

Let's listen.

Jay Barma, it is great to see you.

Thanks for joining me again on the podcast.

Great.

Thank you, Josh, for having me.

So I think I'd like just to start

by reminding our listeners all the work you've done in New York and what you're doing now.

Sure. Yeah, thank you very much for having me. So, Josh, I'm a physician and epidemiologist who spent the

past 20 years working on infectious disease control

...