How Covid Could Launch a New Health Era

10/02/20 • 16 min

On Oct. 4, 1957, Russia shocked the U.S. by launching the world’s first artificial satellite into orbit. Sputnik’s launch ignited a 20-year Space Race that would put men on the moon and push science and technology forward leaps and bounds. Now, as COVID-19 shocks the world again, Regina Dugan says we could be entering a new era marked by big breakthroughs in medical science.

Dugan, former director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and CEO of Wellcome Leap, says this Health Age could lower research costs, speed up clinical trials and improve mental health treatments — and bring us a coronavirus vaccine along the way. The first step in all of this? Capturing the nation’s imagination to go beyond what we think possible.

Previous Episode

How We'll Live with COVID-19

As COVID-19 began to sweep through the U.S. in early March, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, among others, declared it the “great equalizer” — an experience uniquely universal. But six months and 200,000 deaths later, it’s clear that the pandemic has made an unequal society, well, more unequal.

According to political scientist and international risk consultant Ian Bremmer, economic disparity and political polarization are on the rise globally too. When we finally reach a long-sought post-pandemic world, steady access to education, testing and travel will give the wealthy a headstart to recovery, says Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media. Plus, according to Megan Scudellari, a health and science journalist, that recovery is still a long way off.

Next Episode

Keeping America Number 1

The pandemic has caused a steep economic decline in the U.S. But many experts worried we were already in trouble before the coronavirus because of the rise of economic powerhouses with huge populations, such as China and India. That has also been a concern of Matthew Yglesias who has a radical solution for our economic woes: take the current U.S. population and triple it in the decades to come.

Yglesias, the co-founder of Vox and the author of “One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger,” walks us through his progressive proposals, which he argues are far from fantastical.