Sociologist Zeynep Tufekci on the Key to this Pandemic

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KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 27 October 2020

⏱️ 54 minutes

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Summary

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told CNN Sunday that the U.S. is “not going to control the pandemic,” because “it is a contagious virus just like the flu.” But thinking of COVID-19 like the flu and employing a flu-pandemic playbook is not an effective response, according to sociologist Zeynep Tufekci. In her latest piece for The Atlantic, Tufekci highlights a factor she says is key to this pandemic: COVID-19 is an "overdispersed" virus, which means it tends to spread in clusters. When dealing with overdispersion, she writes "identifying transmission events (someone infected someone else) is more important than identifying infected individuals." Tufekci outlines how countries like South Korea and Japan have used aggressive contact-tracing approaches that include backwards tracing to the original contact, as well as clamping down on potential super-spreader events, to slow the spread. That's in stark contrast to the U.S., where the federal response has been the idea of creating "herd immunity" and where the White House itself became the source of a super-spreader event earlier this month. Tufekci, who the New York Times has called "perhaps the only good amateur epidemiologist,” joins us to talk about the rising cases across the country, prospects for getting the pandemic under control and feelings of "pandemic fatigue." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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1:28.7	Coming up on forum, we get an update on fires burning in Orange County that have put nearly 100,000 residents under evacuation orders.
1:36.8	Then we talk with sociologists and Atlantic contributing writer Zaynep Tufekchi,
1:41.2	whose warnings about COVID-19 proved prescient and whose ability to see clear patterns in the virus's murky path inspired a New York Times profile with the headline how Zainep Tufekchi keeps getting the big things right. We'll get Tufekchi's latest observations on the virus's behavior, her thoughts on what's driving yet another surge in COVID-19 cases and the role of so-called
2:02.8	pandemic fatigue. Forum is next after this news.
2:13.3	This is Forum. I'm Mina Kim. White House Chief of Staff Mark Me Meadows, told CNN Sunday that the U.S. is not going to control the pandemic because it's a contagious virus just like the flu.
2:25.9	But the virus behaves very differently from the flu, according to sociologist Zane Uptufecci. And she says the sooner we understand why it tends to spread in big bursts a la super spreader events,
2:36.8	the sooner we can put more targeted preventative practices in place.
2:40.6	Early in the pandemic, Tufecchi challenged the U.S.'s official line on masks as unnecessary
2:45.6	and even harmful if worn incorrectly.
2:48.0	And months before the CDC acknowledged airborne transmission of the virus,
2:52.3	Tufecchi published a piece in the Atlantic hammering the importance of ventilation.
	...

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