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.