So one of the obstacles to self-confidence in this country is the rise of a new culture of fear in America.

I think we see that anything in fear in our culture of free speech

to fear of losing your job for saying the wrong thing,

but there's a different kind of fear

that we experienced during the early days of our COVID-19 pandemic, a fear of the unknown.

I think that's one of the things that allows the merger of state and corporate power to

prey on the insecurities and the fears of everyday citizens who don't know exactly what that unknown risk entails,

that risk of existential climate change, that the risk posed by climate change is an

existential threat to humanity. I think we went through a small version of that

through the COVID-19 pandemic in dealing with an unknown,

a new virus that was spreading across the United States,

and about which we had very few facts,

but had to make decisions even in the face of uncertainty.

And I think that there's a lot that we, if we were to go through this again, would have done very differently.

The question is there's no point in making mistakes if you don't learn from them.

And I think that's a big part of what I'm hoping to do today in the discussion that I'm having today with my guest,

Dr. Amish Adalja. So good to see you and thanks for joining me on the podcast and I'm looking forward to diving into not only your work but what we can learn from the last couple of years as we hopefully you know never have to go through this again but

God forbid even if we did what we would do about it so welcome to the podcast and

thanks for having me yeah thanks so you know I know a little bit about your

background but it might just be helpful to hear in your own voice, you know, what it is you do?

What's your, what's your core focus, you know, four core of research at Hopkins and otherwise, and then we'll get right into it.

Sure, so I'm in infectious disease, critical care, and emergency medicine physician.

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