This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Angela Rasmussen, who leads the core virology team at the Viral Emergence Research Initiative at the Georgetown University Center for Global Health, Science and Security. A renowned expert on emerging pathogens that pose great harm to human health, she helps us unlock some of the mysteries around Sars-CoV-2, the COVID-19 virus. She talks about the swift production of the vaccine as a “scientific achievement of our lifetimes”. And looks at the risk of the growing number of variants of the virus, highlighting need to speed up global distribution of the vaccine to protect the population from greater threats.

This week, Hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Alejandro Cravioto, Chair of SAGE, the international panel of experts making COVID-19 vaccine recommendations to the World Health Organization (WHO). Dr. Cravioto talks about their global team of scientists and the rigorous guidelines governing the approval process for emergency authorization for the Pfizer vaccine – as well as all others in the queue. He also discusses the need to scale up production for global distribution, as well as the need to ensure that vaccines are distributed equitably throughout all countries in the world.

This week hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Paul Offit, Director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, co-creator of the rotavirus vaccine, and member of the FDA Advisory Committee that approved emergency authorization for the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer. Dr. Offit says development of this new vaccine is a remarkable achievement backed by decades of scientific research that the Advisory Committee found to be safe an efficacious for widespread distribution. He’s hoping the Biden Administration will accelerate distribution efforts.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter reflect on 2020 at the end of a year like no other. When the COVID-19 pandemic began to take hold, they welcomed many of the world’s most renowned infectious disease, virology, and epidemiology experts. From Dr. Anthony Fauci to Dr. Ashish Jha, from New York Times writer and “Pandemic” docu-series producer Dr. Sheri Fink, to innovative scientists like Dr. Eric Topol, Dr. Zeke Emanuel, Dr. Michael Osterholm to US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, we learned about this emerging pathogen from some of the most gifted people in health care.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with notable vaccine scientist Dr. Peter Hotez, founding Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor University College of Medicine. Author of “Preventing the Next Pandemic: Vaccine Diplomacy in a Time of Anti-Science”, Dr. Hotez warns deaths from COVID-19 will continue to rise dramatically until a national program of masks, testing, and social distancing is in place. He warns that we are months away from widespread vaccine distribution, and that multiple vaccine candidates should be deployed by next year. He’s also calling for a national messaging strategy to counter the anti-vaccination sector, which he says is being fueled largely on the internet by Russian bots.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, who is leading the COVID-19 response at the NIH. Dr. Fauci addresses the ongoing pandemic and concerning rise in daily infection rates in the US, vaccine development, monoclonal antibodies, and what we all need to be doing to stop the spread of the disease.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Nora Volkow, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Volkow discusses her pioneering work in brain imaging which has given us a window into how addiction works in the brain. She discusses her recent report on susceptibility to COVID-19 for those with Substance Use Disorder, her concerns about increase in overdoses during the pandemic, and the need to curtail the vaping industry which is leading to a dangerous spike in nicotine addiction among young adults.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Farzad Mostashari, Founder and CEO of Aledade, former National Coordinator for Health IT, and Chair of the COVID-19 Symptom Data Challenge, a partnership with Facebook Data for Good, Carnegie Melon, Duke, University of Maryland, Resolve to Save Lives and organized by Catalyst @Health 2.0. The challenge is encouraging developers to create tools to mine data submitted by tens of millions of Facebook users, tracking real time COVID-19 symptoms to identify potential pandemic hotspots, for better epidemiological forecasting.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Sara Goza, President of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the largest organization dedicated to advancing the physical, mental and social health of the nation’s infants, children and young adults. Dr. Goza discusses how pediatricians can help inform the tough decisions families are making to keep kids safe while sending them back to school, the vital importance of continued well-visits and vaccinations for kids, and the policy agenda being promoted by the Academy to insure the health and safety of all children, including gun violence, poverty and social determinants of health.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Daniel Kraft, physician-scientist, inventor, entrepreneur and Chair of the XPrize Pandemic Alliance Task Force, which is holding competitions to develop better tools for addressing COVID-19. Dr. Kraft, who is also founder and Executive Director of Exponential Medicine, looks at emerging developments that will lead to better rapid tests, masks as well as tech and AI-enabled interventions that will offer earlier diagnosis of infection, and better treatment and management of diseases like coronavirus in the future.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. William Haseltine, President of ACCESS Health International, a global health think tank. He is also a renowned scientist, entrepreneur, philanthropist and founder of Harvard Medical School’s HIV/AIDS and cancer research centers. He discusses his two new books: A Family Guide to COVID: Questions and Answers for Parents, Grandparents and Children, and A COVID Back To School Guide which are continually-updating ‘living e-books’ offering answers to the many questions families have about how to navigate their way through the pandemic.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with New York Times Science and Global Health Reporter Apoorva Mandavilli, who has been covering emerging discoveries around the COVID-19 pandemic. She discusses the rapidly-evolving science on how this novel pathogen spreads, the guidelines for sending kids and teachers back into schools, and the rapid development of therapeutics and vaccines to treat and prevent infection.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Naor Bar-Zeev, Deputy Director of the International Vaccine Access Center at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He examines the scientific guidelines governing COVID-19 vaccine phase 3 clinical trials, including a broad demographic representation to ensure vaccine safety across multiple populations, and the need to address vaccine hesitancy as well as the global supply chain needed to distribute billions of doses.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Eric Topol, Founder and Director of the Scripps Translational Institute, and author of “The Creative Destruction of Medicine”. Dr. Topol is a renowned cardiologist and health data champion, and shares a harsh assessment of federal handling of the COVID-19 Pandemic in the US. He’s heartened by the many collaborations yielding significant scientific discovery around rapid testing technology and vaccines. He’s concerned the anti-science movement will undermine deployment of an effective vaccination program, once one makes it to the public.

This week hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Andy Slavitt, former Acting Administrator of CMS under President Obama. He is founder of United States of Care and Town Hall Ventures, two entities committed to advancing health coverage and health reform in the US through bipartisan coalitions. Mr. Slavitt analyzes the failed national response to COVID-19 here in the US, the need for a more unified and robust strategy to protect the public, and his recommendations for fixing America’s flawed health care system.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Donald Warne, Director of Indians Into Medicine (INMED) at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine. A renowned expert on American Indian health policies, Dr. Warne talks about the devastating toll COVID-19 is exacting on communities of color, particularly American Indians, who already suffer the effects of long term poverty, health disparities and Congress’ repeated failure to fully fund Indian Health Services which has led to a huge burden of chronic disease.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Michael Osterholm, world-renowned epidemiologist, pandemic expert and Director of the Center for Infectious Disease, Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. The author of The Deadliest Enemy: Our War with Killer Germs, Dr Osterholm has warned for years of the likelihood of a pandemic such as COVID-19.He extols the need for ongoing measures to protect the public health and front line health care workers through mask use, social distancing and tests, and the herculean scientific efforts to produce treatments and a vaccine.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. Ashish Jha, Director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, who is advising state, federal and international governments on Covid-19. He laments the delayed and inadequate response by the federal government to the threat of Covid-19, how failure to deploy a cohesive testing strategy has cost lives, and how an aggressive national approach is needed to safely navigate the way through this pandemic. He predicts the coronavirus will change training of future health professionals, as well as the way the American health care system is run.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter speak with Dr. John Halamka, President of the Mayo Clinic Platform, a partnership with Google and multiple entities to improve healthcare through better data. He recently launched the COVID-19 Healthcare Coalition, with more than 800 private sector and academic partners collaborating on multiple fronts to combat COVID-19. They discuss the “five phases” to a “new normal” including isolation, infection and antibody testing, contact tracing and vaccine development as precursors fully reopening society.

This week, hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter welcome US Surgeon General under President Obama, Dr. Vivek Murthy, whose new book “Together: The Healing Power of Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World” examines the causes and harmful effects of the epidemic of loneliness in America and its impact on health. Dr. Murthy examines how the COVID-19 pandemic is amplifying this crisis, and how we, as a society, must address this issue.