A weekly update on new research and developments concerning COVID-19 (and occasionally other infectious diseases that hit the news).
We take questions via call-in during the live broadcast, Mondays at 7:33am Pacific, streaming via kpfa.org. Podcasts with show notes go up later the same day. Between live shows, we take questions via email at upfront@kpfa.org .
Our guest most weeks is Dr. John Swartzberg, clinical professor emeritus of infectious diseases at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health. Our question-wrangler most weeks is Brian Edwards-Tiekert, host of KPFA’s morning public affairs program, UpFront.
Music: Now Son by Podington Bear, licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.
To send us a question in advance of next week’s show, write to: coronacalls@kpfa.org Tune in live Monday mornings at 7:30am Pacific at kpfa.org. Podcast music credit: Now Son by Podington Bear, licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.
Discussed in this episode: The CDC’s dashboard shows little indication of a winter surge in cases so far. This may only indicate a delayed surge, owing to residual population immunity from a summer case surge that carried into the fall. Brian (who is writing this) screwed up! A child illness in Marin possibly related to … Continued
Discussed in this episode: The USDA has announced a national program for testing milk samples from dairies for H5N1 avian influenza. A new study on health data in Singapore suggests getting boosted with newer bivalent vaccines reduced the chances of getting Long Covid after infection by about 38% (when compared to people who just got … Continued
Discussed in this episode: To head the National Institutes of Health, incoming President Donald Trump has picked Jay Bhattacharya, a medical doctor who’s never practiced medicine, and co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration — an early-covid manifesto that basically called for . . . letting it rip. To send us a question in advance of … Continued
Discussed in this episode: Donald Trump has announced his picks to hold key public health positions: prominent anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is up for Secretary of Health and Human Services; former Republican lawmaker David Weldon, a frequent critic of vaccination programs run by the Centers for Disease Control, is his pick to run . … Continued
To send us a question in advance of next week’s show, write to: coronacalls@kpfa.org. Tune in live Monday mornings (or Tuesdays when Monday’s a holiday) at 7:30am Pacific at kpfa.org Podcast music credit: Now Son by Podington Bear, licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.
Discussed in this episode: After considering reams of data, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) has recommended another round of COVID vaccination in the spring for people who are older or more-vulnerable for other reasons. The federal government has started to put some significant money into the development of next-generation COVID vaccines, including nasal … Continued
Discussed in this episode: California now has 13 confirmed cases of H5N1 Avian Influenza in humans – an order of magnitude more than any other state. It might be possible to build a vaccine using virus-like particles that induces long-lasting B-cell immunity, by placing the spike proteins closer together. To send us a question in … Continued
Discussed in the episode: Two new studies are out on the long-term impacts of COVID on the brain: the first tracked impacts on people with COVID severe enough to require hospitalization, and found cognitive deficits equivalent in magnitude to 20 years of ageing; the second studied the impacts of deliberately (!) exposing young, healthy volunteers … Continued
Discussed in the episode: Missouri has confirmed a case of H5N1 Avian Influenza in a person who had no identifiable contact with animals known to carry the disease, raising fears the virus may have become capable of human-to-human transmission. Several close contacts of the patient had symptoms as well, but none so far have tested … Continued
