From Goldman Sachs Research, this is Alison Nathan.

Welcome to Top of Mind, a podcast that explores macroeconomic issues on the minds of our clients.

In this episode, we're again focusing on the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as countries around the world continue to grapple with managing virus spread while restoring economic activity.

Indeed, the strong economic recovery underway since mid-April appears to have stalled in some places like Spain, Japan, and parts of the U.S.

that have been forced to roll back reopenings to stem new outbreaks.

Where the virus will go from here, what that means for the economy and markets, and how the

developing vaccine outlook might impact everything is top of mind.

To assess how the virus could evolve ahead, we first

turned to Dr. Mark Lipsich, professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public

Health. We started by asking him about where we stand in the pandemic. We are hearing some

people suggesting that we've actually reached a peak in this pandemic globally.

Do you think that is the case?

I think it's really hard to predict what will happen globally, but A, there are many places that are showing signs that there are plenty of susceptible people around the MB.

Control measures are not going to stay in place for very long

or very intensely, or maybe have already been let off like much of the U.S. And if you have

susceptible people and virus and inadequate control measures, cases will go up. In many parts of the

world, there is a lot of room for the virus to run still.

I got asked by one world leader actually.

An honest question that they had been told by someone that virus is a bit like a copier cartridge that they sort of run out of ink at some point.

But viruses just don't run out of ink there.

There's no natural limit on viral spread

other than immune people blocking chains of transmission or deliberate efforts to block chains

...