Dr. Anthony Fauci appearing before a Senate committee hearing on Covid-19 at the US Capitol in July.AP Photo/Allison Robbert
Lettuce contaminated with cyclospora. Cruise ship passengers contracting a deadly form of hantavirus. Legionnaires’ disease (yet again) in big cities. RFK Jr. refusing any responsibility for measles outbreaks. That’s just a brief list of public health stories in America this summer. And we haven’t even mentioned Dr. Anthony Fauci being held in contempt of Congress during a hostile Congressional hearing over the Covid-19 pandemic.
Public health stories are everywhere right now. So that’s why we invited epidemiologist and science communicator Jessica Malaty Rivera back onto the show. Malaty Rivera fills a vital role through her work translating medical breakthroughs and sorting through conflicting health advice. It’s a role she says the public needs now more than ever.
“I think we are in a long-haul journey of repairing the fractures that have happened in public trust in science and public trust in public health,” Malaty Rivera tells our host Al Letson. “And if the Dems or if any party wants to get back on track with science, they need people to make science make sense.”
On this week’s More To The Story, Malaty Rivera talks through the ongoing efforts to link vaccines and autism at the highest levels of the Trump administration, which produce we should (and shouldn’t) be eating right now, and the many ways the federal government’s response to public health crises today are driven by politics rather than science.
Find More To The Story on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Pandora, or your favorite podcast app, and don’t forget to subscribe.