The End of Ending the Pandemic
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 25 May 2022
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
More than a million people have died of COVID in America, and infection rates across the country are climbing again. But public officials seem reluctant to enact mask mandates or lockdowns this time around.
Doctors and scientists who work in public health are hoping that “harm reduction” techniques, which were developed to treat addiction and chronic illnesses, can tamp down this latest wave.
Guest: Dr. Deepika Slawek, assistant professor of medicine, Albert Einstein College of Medicine and an attending physician at Montefiore Comprehensive Family Care.
If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | There's gift I've ever received has to be a bike when I was younger, a pedal bike. |
| 0:07.0 | It was a sort of slick little road bike and I remember it was all like it was so it was all wrapped up |
| 0:12.7 | but it was so obvious what it was obviously because nothing shaped like a bike and I had a little ribbon on it |
| 0:16.4 | and I was so guest. For that was a life changer and I'm still sort of big on cycling around my area now |
| 0:21.6 | so for that one change me a little. |
| 0:23.8 | Join in every sip with red cups now back at Starbucks. |
| 0:35.9 | Last week the White House started up COVID briefings again. |
| 0:40.0 | Good morning everybody. My name is Ashish Shahn. I'm the White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator. |
| 0:45.1 | Welcome to the COVID-19 Response Team update. |
| 0:48.6 | These pressers had been on hiatus since April. They've got a new look now with the president's pandemic response coordinator |
| 0:56.4 | presenting in front of a giant screen TED Talk style. He gave off the same upbeat vibe of a TED Talk too |
| 1:04.6 | despite a sobering message. We have a pretty high degree of immunity in our population |
| 1:11.4 | but we're also seeing at this moment a lot of infections across the country. |
| 1:18.2 | Paces are on the rise Dr. Jaws said and Congress is not ponying up funding. |
| 1:25.2 | If we don't get more resources from Congress what we will find in the fall and winter |
| 1:30.0 | is we will find a period of time where Americans can look around and see their friends in other countries |
| 1:35.0 | in Europe and Canada with access to these treatments that Americans will not have. |
| 1:39.2 | At one point the director of the CDC weighed in. She said already right now nearly a third of the US |
| 1:47.1 | is at a medium high community transmission rate. That's the point where the government says to |
| 1:52.2 | consider precautions like masking indoors. New York is one of the places where transmission is up. |
| 1:59.4 | So I called Dr. Deepika Slawwek from Montefur Hospital up in the Bronx. I wanted to know |
| 2:05.5 | how her job was changing as she stared down another wave. She says the weird thing is how much |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate Podcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Slate Podcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.