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What Next | Daily News and Analysis

The Master of Monkeypox Messaging

What Next | Daily News and Analysis

Slate Podcasts

News, Daily News, News Commentary

4.3 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 15 September 2022

⏱️ 24 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

One of the many things laid bare by COVID-19 was the importance of public health messaging—and the many ways it can fail. So when monkeypox began spreading in the U.S., the White House found someone who understands just how important it is to know your audience. 


Guest: Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, White House National Monkeypox Response Deputy Coordinator and former director of the CDC Division of HIV Prevention.


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Transcript

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0:00.0

I think that the holidays feel like frozen noses. I love walking with the dog for long periods of time.

0:10.0

Hopefully it's snowing and you've got to wrap up warm. So I think a frozen nose is

0:13.6

then sweaty armpits because like you're wrapped up so warm but then you're climbing hamps

0:17.9

and heath and you get to the top and you're like and then you can see the breath

0:22.2

but then your nose is still freezing to touch.

0:25.0

Joy in every sip with red cups now back at Starbucks.

0:37.0

The first time I thought I'd really like to talk to Demetri Daskalakis

0:41.0

was nearly ten years ago. I'd read about the work he was doing in the newspaper.

0:45.0

A reporter had followed him around and an after hours gay sex club in New York City called Paddles.

0:52.0

It was four in the morning and he was there to give men men and gytus vaccines.

0:56.0

That was an exciting knock-match the time.

1:00.0

Back then bacterial men and gytus was tearing through the gay community in New York.

1:08.0

A handful of people had died in this outbreak. Dr. Daskalakis didn't have an official role.

1:14.0

He was just an attending physician at a public hospital.

1:18.0

Regardless, Dr. Dmitri was becoming a familiar face at New York's bath houses and leather clubs.

1:24.0

It started out with me with a backpack and some rapid tests that I went in with and did some tests.

1:30.0

I found out that 13% of the people that I tested had undiagnosed HIV.

1:34.0

Wow.

1:34.0

So it already kind of been the bath house HIV testing doctors.

1:38.0

You were that guy.

1:42.0

That was that guy.

1:44.0

He had this sort of infrastructure, but then you know, it's one thing to sort of stick someone's figure.

...

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