Did We Predict the Pandemic?

Science Vs

Spotify Studios

Education, Science, Health & Fitness

4.4 • 12.4K Ratings

🗓️ 11 May 2023

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Just two months before Covid-19 broke out, we made a fictional pandemic episode that was like “Contagion” but with citations. And we played it for Dr. Anthony Fauci. Today, we’re looking back at that episode and asking — how much of the pandemic did we predict? This episode has some unbleeped curse words. Find our transcript here: https://bit.ly/ScienceVsPandemic In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Chapter One: Why we’re sharing this episode (03:42) Chapter Two: Meet Dr. Anthony Fauci (07:10) Chapter Three: The fictional pandemic begins (26:50) Chapter Four: Fauci’s thoughts on our fake pandemic (33:53) Chapter Five: Wendy and Blythe’s reaction The original pandemic episode was produced by Kaitlyn Sawrey, with help from Wendy Zukerman, Michelle Dang, Lexi Krupp, Rose Rimler and Meryl Horn. It was edited by Caitlin Kenney and Blythe Terrell. Extra writing help from Kevin Christopher Snipes. Fact checking by Diane Kelly. Mix and sound design by Peter Leonard. Music written by Peter Leonard, Bobby Lord and Marcus Thorne Bagala. This new update was produced by Rose Rimler and fact checked by Erika Akiko Howard, and mixed by Bobby lord. Thank you to all the scientists and researchers we got in touch with for this episode, including Dr. Eric Toner, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, Beth Maldin Morgenthau, Dr. Melvin Sanicas, Dr. Mandy Izzo, Dr. Kurt Frey, Professor Michael Osterholm, Dr. Patrick Saunders Hastings, Rosemary Gibson, Thomas Bollyky, Dr. Ashleigh Tuite, Professor Stephen Morse, Dr. Lalitha Sundaram, Professor David N. Fisman, Lynette Brammer, the late Dr. Mohamed Naguib, Dr. Yeulong Shu, Dr. Dan Jernigan, Dr. Kirsty Short, and special thanks to Bess Davenport at CDC. Thanks to our actors, Annabelle Fox as Mindy, as well as the late William Dufris, Alice Kors, Dani Cervone, Robin Miles, Jordan Cobb, Jonathan Woodward, Ian Lowe and Casey Wortmann. Directed by William Dufris with help from Wendy Zukerman, Kaitlyn Sawrey and Fred Greenhalgh. Recording by Fred Greenhalgh and Peter Leonard. Also thank you to all the Gimlet people who performed various drafts during edits, including Chad Chenail, Gabe Lozada, Jasmine Romero and MR Daniel. And a huge thank you to Frank Lopez, Jorge Just, Joel Werner, R.E. Natowicz, Stevie Lane, Phoebe Flanigan, Chris Giliberti, Justin McGolrick, Katie Pastore, the Zukerman Family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson. Gimlet’s managing director is Nicole Beemsterboer. Science Vs is a Spotify Original Podcast and a Gimlet production. Follow Science vs on Spotify. Tap the bell to receive new episode notifications. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Versus from Gimlet.
0:03.4	Today, we're pinning facts against fortune tellers.
0:09.3	I'm here with the Blifed Realm, our editor.
0:17.0	Hey, Blad.
0:18.0	Hey, Wendy.
0:19.0	So, last week, big pandemic news, the World Health Organization declared that COVID is no
0:26.1	longer a global emergency anymore.
0:29.2	Wow.
0:30.2	COVID isn't going anywhere.
0:32.7	My friends just had it.
0:34.4	Oh no.
0:35.6	Some are calling this a big symbolic step towards the end of the official pandemic.
0:41.9	Right.
0:42.9	And so we thought on the show, it was a really good time to go back to this episode
0:48.9	that we made a few years ago.
0:50.7	Yeah.
0:51.7	Okay.
0:52.7	So, this is an episode we made before the pandemic.
0:55.2	It's a fictional episode where we pretended that a dangerous virus was spreading.
1:02.0	And we scripted it.
1:03.0	We hired actors.
1:04.5	And actually, even Wendy, you may remember, we talked to somebody very special.
	...

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