S1E33 / The Privilege of Immunity / Kathryn Olivarius, Juanita Mora, Esha Bhandari

EPIDEMIC with Dr. Celine Gounder

KFF Health News and Just Human Productions

Science, #Coronavirus, Health & Fitness, #Smallpox, Documentary, #Covid19, #Sarscov2, #Eradication, Life Sciences, Society & Culture, #Covid, Medicine

4.6 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 7 July 2020

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

“An immunity passport system would create a two-tier system because it would divide all of us into those who are immune to COVID-19 and those who are not. And the people who are immune will get all of the benefits and privileges that come with that while everybody else who's not immune will be in a second class status.” - Esha Bhandari How do we balance the reopening of the economy with public health and safety? Some have proposed an “immune passport” system, where those with proven COVID immunity could be cleared to resume normal work and life. This idea is not a new one — it has been tried once before during the 19th-century Yellow Fever epidemic. In today’s episode, we examine the insidious use of “immune privilege” during the Yellow Fever epidemic, its historical impacts, and its parallels to today. Our host, Dr. Celine Gounder, speaks with Dr. Juanita Mora, an allergist and immunologist practicing in Chicago, Dr. Kathryn Olivarius, professor of history at Stanford University, and Esha Bhandari senior staff attorney with the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. Nominations for the 2020 People's Choice Podcast Awards opened on July 1st. To show your support, please go to podcastawards.com and nominate us in the People’s Choice and Health categories. This podcast was created by Just Human Productions. We're powered and distributed by Simplecast. We're supported, in part, by listeners like you. #SARSCoV2 #COVID19 #COVID #coronavirus

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi everyone I'm Julie Levy and I'm an intern working on epidemic with Just Human Productions.
0:07.0	Nominations for the 2020 People's Choice Podcast Awards opened on July 1st. To show your support, please go to
0:15.0	podcast awards.com and nominate us in the health category. That's
0:19.3	Podcast Awards.com. Thank you. I'm Dr. Saline Gounder and this is epidemic.
0:36.2	Today is Tuesday July 7th. Dr Juanita Mora is a first generation Mexican American living in Chicago.
0:51.4	My dad was a butcher, my m a stay-at-home mom. My grandparents were part of the
0:57.0	Bracero movement, which is they worked the lands here in the United States and it led me to work really hard and be very involved with the
1:05.5	Latino community. Health officials in Chicago reported the city's first
1:10.1	COVID case on January 30th. Over the following weeks, Dr. Juanita Mora saw it take
1:16.2	its toll on the Latin X community in Chicago. Juanita runs a private allergy
1:21.6	and immunology practice and so she decided to open it up to the
1:25.1	community for COVID testing. I wound up getting a lot of patients who for example
1:30.5	had outbreaks at tortilla factories at grocery shops at meat packing
1:37.3	companies as well too where seven or eight of their coworkers were sick.
1:42.1	Her services were in high demand. seven or eight of their coworkers were sick.
1:43.0	Her services were in high demand,
1:45.1	but she saw a lot of anxiety in her patients,
1:48.2	especially those who were undocumented.
1:51.3	And what wound up happening is some were threatened and said,
1:55.0	we're not planning to do social distancing. We're not planning to institute any
2:00.0	actual safety measures. Here's a job if you wanted and if you don't then feel free to leave this job.
2:08.4	Walking away from a job wasn't an option for most of her patients, but there wasn't much they could do to demand safer working conditions of their employers.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from KFF Health News and Just Human Productions, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of KFF Health News and Just Human Productions and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.