All tagged Epidemiology

Covid As Political Defeat: What Does It Mean For Public Health To Succeed?; The Ideological Assurances Of Data / Abby Cartus

Epidemiologist and writer Abby Cartus joins me in this two-part interview to explore a fascinating set of questions: What does it mean for public health to fail? What does it mean for it to succeed? Also, I asked Abby to clarify the kinds of data that are collected—mainly from wastewater sites—and how that data is modeled and presented at this phase of the pandemic.

Abby Cartus writes about these subjects for her newsletter, Closed Form, and this interview is based on several of the essays she's produced for it. Due to time constraints, we ended up recording our entire discussion over the course of two days, and was released in two parts.

We Want Them Infected: Contrarian Doctors & The Failed Quest For Herd Immunity / Jonathan Howard

Jonathan Howard MD joins me to discuss his timely book, We Want Them Infected: How the Failed Quest for Herd Immunity Led Doctors to Embrace the Anti-Vaccine Movement and Blinded Americans to the Threat of COVID, published by Redhawk Publications.

As much as Jonathan Howard’s book is a scathing examination of how various very influential and contrarian doctors misled the US public about the coronavirus pandemic, it is also a historical document. By meticulously, carefully, and thoroughly quoting countless social media posts, statements, essays, op-eds, and interviews from certain highly accredited doctors, Dr. Howard compares their claims to actual reality as the virus began to rip through the population. Over and over again, these outspoken figures made bold and inaccurate claims that the pandemic was just about to end; herd immunity was just around the corner; the worst of the plague had already past; children were unaffected; and so on. Over and over again, these contrarian figures were proven wrong. And yet, despite overwhelming evidence, they still maintain their professional status and accreditation to this day, seemingly unhindered—professionally, at least—by the widespread consequences of their repeated false assumptions and claims.

The Fault In Our SARS: Scientism, The People's CDC, & The Weight Of Virus Origin Stories / Rob Wallace

Evolutionary epidemiologist and author Rob Wallace returns to the podcast to discuss his new collection, The Fault in Our SARS: COVID-19 in the Biden Era, published through Monthly Review. 

This discussion is long, but certainly worth a listen. Entering year four of the pandemic, Rob Wallace has diligently, and extensively, written two books worth of essays on the various facets of the SARS-2 outbreak, many of which are examined in this interview. Rob skewers the Biden administration’s political, institutional, and rhetorical approach to the BSL-3 [Biosafety Level 3] pathogen’s burn through the population, picking apart the scientism, employed by both the political elite and their media lackeys, to rationalize and normalize the mass death and disability of millions. 

An Abandonment Of An Abandonment: Public Health At The End Of Empire / Rob Wallace

Rob Wallace — evolutionary epidemiologist, agroecologist, and author of Dead Epidemiologists: On the Origins of COVID-19 — joins me to discuss the complex interplay between the increase in infectious pathogens globally, the role of epidemiology within the neoliberal capitalist project, agribusiness and ecological destruction, and Empire at the end of the "cycle of accumulation" in late-stage capitalism. We reference his large body of work, but in particular two of his most recent Patreon pieces, A Spray of Split Seconds and Vic Berger's American Public Health.

Count Down: Toxic Disruptors & Reproductive Decline / Dr. Shanna Swan

World-renowned environmental and reproductive epidemiologist Dr. Shanna Swan joins me to discuss her groundbreaking research identifying the causes and rate of rapid decline of fertility in the Western world, documented in her new book Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race.