#32 - COVID-19: The Malady of Our Time: A Dialogue with Nicholas Christakis

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Nicholas Christakis about the COVID-19 global pandemic. They discuss how he wrote his latest book, Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live, while the pandemic was happening in real time. They discuss the basic facts about the COVID-19 virus along with the lethality and infectious rates. They briefly consider if there is any validity that the virus is the result of a lab leak. They also present an overview of vaccine history and how the current mRNA vaccines work. They stress the importance of everyone getting a vaccine sooner than later and how the current vaccines appear to defend well against the virus variants. They also discuss herd immunity and what the timeline towards a return to normal looks like. 

Nicholas Christakis is a physician and sociologist who conducts research at his Human Nature Lab at Yale University on social networks. Currently, he is the Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science, Internal Medicine, & Biomedical Engineering at Yale University.  He has his MPH and MD from Harvard University along with his PhD in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania. In 2009, he was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. He is the author of Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives, Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of A Good Society, and Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live. You can find his lab here. You can find the app mentioned in this episode here. Twitter: @nachristakis