The COVID Tracking Project Part 3

Reveal

The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX

News

4.7 • 8K Ratings

🗓️ 29 April 2023

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This is the third episode in our three-part series taking listeners inside the failed federal response to COVID-19. Series host Jessica Malaty Rivera and reporters Artis Curiskis and Kara Oehler bring us the conclusion of The COVID Tracking Project story and an interview with the current CDC director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky.

We look at the myth that COVID-19 was “the great equalizer,” an idea touted by celebrities and politicians from Madonna to then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Ibram X. Kendi and Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research worked with The COVID Tracking Project to compile national numbers on how COVID-19 affected people of color in the U.S. Their effort, The COVID Racial Data Tracker, showed that people of color died from the disease at around twice the rate of White people.

The COVID Tracking Project’s volunteer data collection team waited months for the CDC to release COVID-19 testing data. But when the CDC finally started publishing the data, it was different from what states were publishing – in some instances, it was off by hundreds of thousands of tests. With no clear answers about why, The COVID Tracking Project’s quest to keep national data flowing every day continued until March 2021.

Lastly, Rivera talks with the director of the CDC, Walensky, to try to understand what went wrong in the agency’s response to the pandemic and ask whether it’s prepared for the next one.

Check out our whole COVID Tracking Project series here.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	From the Center for Investigative Reporting in PRX, this is Reveal. I'm Al Letson and let's go back to March 2020.
0:11.0	It's the early days of the pandemic. Most of us are at home trying to figure out what's safe.
0:19.0	I'm going to treat this fruit. I'm going to dump it in some soapy water here, disinfecting more liberally, spray the disinfectant right on those items.
0:29.0	On these groceries. Life just shifts into this alternate reality. People start dancing together on Instagram.
0:39.0	Celebrities do concerts from their living rooms.
0:44.0	I want to thank all the healthcare workers risking their lives to save hours. Thank you guys so much.
0:49.0	Yellow yellow yellow yellow yellow yellow yellow yellow yellow yellow yellow yellow yellow.
0:54.0	Somebody to lean on. Madonna posted video that goes viral.
1:00.0	That's the thing about COVID-19. It doesn't care about how rich you are, how famous you are, how fun you are, how smart you are, how old you are.
1:16.0	She's in a bathtub. The water is cloudy and filled with flower petals.
1:21.0	It's the great equalizer.
1:24.0	Suddenly, Madonna's deep thoughts in the bathtub start shaping the way people talk about COVID.
1:31.0	Everyone is subject to this virus. It is the great equalizer.
1:38.0	Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York at the time, starts running with it.
1:42.0	And if you listen to him side by side with that Madonna video, you can tell it matches almost verbatim.
1:49.0	I don't care how smart, how smart you are, how rich, how rich you are, how powerful you think you are.
1:58.0	I don't care how young, how old, how old you are. This virus is the great equalizer.
2:05.0	This idea that COVID makes us all equally vulnerable starts popping up all over.
2:11.0	COVID-19 has been the great equalizer.
2:16.0	But the thing is, it's not true.
2:20.0	People wanted to believe the myth that COVID was the great equalizer and that race didn't matter, just as I think people want to believe that myth in general.
2:34.0	Ibermex Kendi is a MacArthur genius fellow and author of How to Be an Anti-Rasis.
	...

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