How To Trust That A COVID-19 Vaccine Is Safe

11/21/20 • 21 min

PODCAST-19: FiveThirtyEight on the Novel Coronavirus

It feels like a cure for this pandemic may be in sight. But for many people, injecting a brand-new scientific discovery into their body won't sit well. So, how are scientists making sure that a COVID-19 vaccine won’t cause more damage than the disease? How do regulators decide what an acceptable side effect is? And what would happen if someone did have a serious reaction to the COVID vaccine after it was released? This week, we’re devoting our whole show to vaccine safety.

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There's No Longterm Plan For Long COVID

Our producer, Sinduja Srinivasan, reports on long COVID, and how our health care system might cope with so many patients with ongoing symptoms.

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Why Emily Oster Made Her Own COVID-19 Database

Data has been such a valuable commodity during the pandemic. Unfortunately, at times data has been in short supply, because US government agencies haven’t always undertaken national data collection efforts. So what happens when individuals citizens try to collect data themselves? We talk to Professor Emily Oster, who developed a national COVID-19 School Response Dashboard, to find out what she’s learned about COVID in schools, the implications of volunteers developing their own public health trackers, and how she thinks the Biden administration will approach pandemic data collection.