Pandemic Planet

Live From Munich: Dr. Jeremy Farrar: “We Must Not Be Caught Vulnerable Again”

Pandemic Planet

Show Notes

Two years ago, Dr. Jeremy Farrar joined Steve for the first iteration of Live From Munich, when the Covid-19 Pandemic was just emerging. Today, for the third installment of this Live From Munich mini-series, he returns to discuss this murky transition into the next stage of the pandemic. Dr. Farrar predicts that “political interest will wane from the pandemic because other events take over.” Politics are turning towards an exhausted, frustrated, even sometimes violent public. “We all feel fed up with this pandemic. But our emotional state doesn't determine the outcome of the pandemic.” We must be prepared for all scenarios, not just the ones we prefer. Dr. Farrar takes a lesson from the Munich Security Conference: “The truth is that the security community does this all the time. They think of a central scenario that is the most likely and they put most of their planning around it, but they do not ignore the other scenarios.”

Dr. Jeremy Farrar is the Director of Wellcome Trust.

More from Pandemic Planet

Dec 16, 2022

Katherine is joined by Jeffrey L. Sturchio, Senior Associate (Non-Resident) with the CSIS Global Health Policy Center and co-author of the new report, The Ending the HIV Epidemic in the U.S. Initiative: An Interim Assessment and Policy Recommendations. The EHE initiative began in 2019 with a goal of reducing new HIV infections by 75% by 2025 and 90% by 2030. However, thanks to limited funding and the diversion of resources during the Covid-19 pandemic, it is not currently on track to meet those ambitious targets. Jeff explains the various factors that could prevent EHE from achieving the 2025 and 2030 goals and shares examples of innovative, person-centered programs in San Francisco, CA and East Baton Rouge, LA that “meet people where they are” and create incentives for people to seek testing and stay on treatment. Jeff and Katherine discuss the importance of adapting lessons from global HIV programs, including PEPFAR, to the domestic epidemic and the opportunity to educate a new cohort of elected officials about EHE as the new Congress takes office in 2023.

Oct 28, 2022

Dr. Heidi Larson, co-founder of the Global Listening Project and founding director of the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, joins Katherine to discuss the impacts of Covid-19 on global vaccine confidence and the importance of listening closely to people’s stories to better understand how individuals experience and navigate global health threats. Prior to the pandemic, nationally representative surveys suggested that many people accepted routine immunizations, but the explosion of information and misinformation about new Covid-19 vaccines has led more people to question the value of immunization programs, and coverage has gone down. Social cohesion has also been negatively affected by the pandemic, with the World Economic Forum 2022 Risk Report showing a nearly 30% decline since early 2020. Noting that we have all experienced a kind of trauma over the past three years, Heidi argues that it’s essential to enable people to tell their own stories of survival if we want to prepare, as a society, for future shocks and crises. The Global Listening Project aims to capture people’s experiences and develop an index of public readiness that is informed by the public so that future interventions will be more relevant to people’s lives. Dr. Heidi Larson is a Professor of Anthropology, Risk and Decision Science and is the Founding Director of the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. She is the author of STUCK: How Vaccine Rumors Start – and Why They Don’t Go Away.

Oct 14, 2022

In this episode, Katherine is joined by Dr. Jeni Miller, Executive Director of the Global Climate and Health Alliance, to discuss the ways in which a changing climate affects health outcomes, as well as the ways in which health professionals can work with those in other sectors to advocate for greater focus on the climate-health nexus. Arguing that a shared interest in health and well-being can unite groups that might otherwise hold opposing views on how to address climate change, Jeni points to progress in raising attention to health within global climate discussions and explains what she expects to see at the upcoming Climate Change Conference (COP27) scheduled to take place in Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt, in November.

Sep 30, 2022

In this crossover episode with AIDS' Existential Moment, recorded during the International AIDS Conference in Montreal, Canada, on July 30th, Jeff Sturchio speaks with Dr. Mark Feinberg, president and CEO of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI).

Sep 23, 2022

In this crossover episode with AIDS' Existential Moment, recorded during the International AIDS Conference in Montreal, Canada, on July 30th, Jeff Sturchio speaks with Solange Baptiste, Executive Director of the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition (ITPC). This is one in a series of podcasts in which we explore what needs to be done to end the AIDS pandemic, both globally and domestically.

See all episodes →