Covid -19 science versus politics
Unexpected Elements
BBC
4.4 • 570 Ratings
🗓️ 13 September 2020
⏱️ 70 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
With the announcement in the UK of investment in rapid testing for people who may not have Covid -19 we ask why is this only happening now? For months on this programme we’ve featured scientific research suggesting such a strategy would be the quickest way to end the pandemic.
We speak with Connie Cepko and Brian Rabe who have developed a rapid test and Manu Prakash who is currently rolling it out to countries in the global south.
Could a huge motorcycle rally really have been the source of over a quarter of a million Covid -19 infections? That’s the finding of a study by economist Andrew Friedson he tells us how mobile phone data helped to determine that figure.
And the politics of vaccines, Many health officials in the US have spoken out against president Trumps claim that a vaccine may be ready before the November presidential election. Helen Branswell from Stat news tells us why there is so much concern over political attempts to manipulate science.
And Many of us enjoy cooking – but when did we switch from eating our food raw, to heating it? Listener Logan enjoys his beef burgers rare, but wants to know why he still feels compelled to grill them? Presenter Anand Jagatia travels to a remote South African cave where our ancestors first used fire at least a million years ago, which one man says could help prove when our species started cooking.
And he talks to a scientist who shows how the composition of food changes when it’s cooked, to allow us more access to give us more access to calories - and hears how a completely raw food diet could have disastrous consequences for health.
(Image:Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Oh, hello. You have chosen a BBC podcast, but before you listen to it, we thought you might |
| 0:04.7 | like our podcast too. You might. You might. It is called Sightracked with me, Nick Grimshaw. |
| 0:09.2 | And me, Annie Mack. And we talk about the week in music. All the news, all the cultural |
| 0:14.0 | happenings in the UK and beyond. And great guests. And it's on BBC Sounds. Yes, where you can |
| 0:19.7 | also enjoy lots of playlists, music mixes and |
| 0:22.6 | live radio, everything from my six music breakfast show to Radio 3 Unwind. But obviously start with |
| 0:29.3 | our podcast, sidetrack. Obviously. Obviously. So if you like music, listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:34.0 | This is the Science Hour from the BBC World Service, with me, Roland Pease, |
| 0:38.9 | where in half an hour, crowd science goes in search of the birth of cooking. |
| 0:46.5 | Even when it was cooked, that reed mace root was quite tough. |
| 0:50.7 | And although I was being polite, it really wasn't very tasty. It's a bit like cassava. |
| 0:57.2 | Very stringy. |
| 0:58.8 | So it's all uphill for Annan Chagatir as he explores where the cooking made us human later in the hour. |
| 1:05.9 | Before that on science and action, we've an update coming up on the locust plague that's afflicting East Africa. |
| 1:12.2 | The head of the Food and Agriculture Organization's Locust Program is in Kenya, assessing the situation. |
| 1:18.7 | I asked him, I said, you know, when was the last time you'd seen locusts, you know, before this year? |
| 1:23.4 | They said they'd never, ever seen them in their lives. And these, of course, village elders are |
| 1:28.2 | not youngsters. They are elder. But it's mostly developments in COVID-19 today. Six months have |
| 1:35.5 | passed since the WHO declared the outbreak to be a pandemic. And then there had been 120,000 recorded |
| 1:43.0 | cases, 4,000 deaths. Today we're at 27 million cases and |
| 1:48.2 | approaching a million deaths. The mantra back then was test, test, test, is the means to identify |
| 1:55.6 | and isolate anyone who may pass the virus on. But even now, it seems authorities are struggling to keep up |
... |
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