Public Health is Dead

How a mixup about airborne transmission led to one of the biggest public health errors in history. 5 years since the COVID pandemic began, public health has yet to clearly address it. A lot of disease spread happens through the air we share. And most people don’t know.

Over the last century, our growing understanding of pathogens and the ways they spread allowed public health to mitigate, eliminate, and even eradicate diseases in many parts of the world. We thought we knew it all. But pride comes before a fall. Public health has been missing a big part of how diseases like COVID spread and it's cost us a lot.

Join your host, Daniella, to learn how a group of aerosol scientists teamed up with Dr. Katie Randall, a medical rhetorician and historian, and toppled the house of cards holding up the idea that sprayed droplets are the main route of respiratory disease transmission. Small aerosols that we constantly breathe out can be suspended in the air and carry pathogens that cause disease. This is airborne transmission.

How did public health leaders dismiss airborne transmission for so long even though we've known about it for TB, measles, and SARS for decades? And, now that scientists understand much more about how diseases spread, how can public health adapt to protect us? Dr. Al Haddrell, an aerosol scientist, walks us through how aerosol works and how we can interrupt disease transmission with new knowledge. Something’s in the air... and it might be a paradigm shift.

RESOURCES

• WIRED article by Megan Molteni: "How a 60-year-old screwup helped COVID kill" (archived version)
• Learn more about aerosol on Dr. Al Haddrell's YouTube channel (some ft. Transformers. IYKYK). I like this 5-minute video he made about why we can see cigarette smoke but not exhaled aerosol.
• Ambient carbon dioxide concentration correlates with SARS-CoV-2 aerostability and infection risk. A. Haddrell et al (2024)
• How did we get here: what are droplets and aerosols and how far do they go? A historical perspective on the transmission of respiratory infectious diseases. K. Randall et. al (2021)
• Dr. Katie Randall's TEDx talk The tiny COVID mistake with deadly implications
• Get your free respirators from the global directory of MaskBlocs

CREDITS
Public Health is Dead is created, hosted, produced, written, and edited by Daniella Barreto.
Music, mixing, and sound design by Alexandria Maillot.
Fact checking, guest booking, and production support from Anika S.
Content editing support from Kevin Ball, Sophie Kohn, Anika S and Lauren M.
Thank you to Tom J. for the archive of COVID press conference footage.
Episode art created by Daniella from Hendrik Goltzius, after Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem: Icarus, from "The Four Disgracers" (1588) and CDC image of H5N1.
Thank you to all Public Health is Dead supporters!
N.B. It’s a bad idea for you to take medical advice from podcasts. Good thing this show does not offer medical advice! The point of Public Health is Dead is to share experiences and information that might help public health as a field and increase our collective knowledge.

This is an independent, listener-supported show. If you like what you hear, and you'd like to support production costs for more of Public Health is Dead, visit publichealthisdead.com!

A field trip to the Orpheum Theatre in Vancouver to learn more about their ventilation system, built after the 1918 flu pandemic.

Ladies and Gentlethems, the show you’ve all been waiting for, the show that will keep you glued to your seat! A show all about preventing diseases and pathogens and, sometimes, things that go bump in the night.

Join Daniella on a journey through the belly of an old vaudeville venue, the Orpheum Theatre, in Vancouver, Canada, to learn a bit about how it keeps pathogens in the air at bay. We've known that fresh air is good for us for a very long time but it doesn't always translate to the air we breathe indoors. We also meet a savvy Twitter/X user who measured the carbon dioxide levels in the theatre and, to the surprise of many, revealed that the Orpheum had excellent ventilation. How does a building so old get such good numbers? And what could it mean for disease control in other places?
Transcript HERE

RESOURCES
Photos from the Orpheum tour HERE
Much more information and detail about ventilation, viral viability, and why it's important to reduce C02 from the Clean Air Crew and Dr. Al Haddrell.
ASHRAE

CREDITS
Public Health is Dead is created, hosted, produced, written and edited by Daniella Barreto.
Fact checking support from Anika S.
Additional content editing by Lauren M.

MUSIC
Follies.wav by daveincamas -- https://freesound.org/s/44074 -- License: Attribution 4.0
Epidemic Sound | Sound Effect | Cow Moo https://www.epidemicsound.com/sound-effects/tracks/6ea040bf-546d-463b-9980-8bee0026117d/\
Epidemic Sound | Music | You Set My Soul on Fire (Instrumental Version) Sture Zetterberg
https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/HTd1XBrnkk/
Epidemic Sound | Sound Effect | Concert Cheering
https://www.epidemicsound.com/sound-effects/tracks/040d94db-b30b-4dc2-aab5-11723b7fbe02/
Epidemic Sound | Sound Effect | Interior, Medium, Cough
https://www.epidemicsound.com/sound-effects/tracks/8f30418c-e238-46be-8b72-a5f91fe7fb7d/
Epidemic Sound | Sound Effect | Male, with Bad Flu or Cold, Chesty
https://www.epidemicsound.com/sound-effects/tracks/329de734-e1a0-4136-b398-58c3c682f627/

This is an independent, listener-supported show. If you like what you hear, and you'd like to support production costs for more of Public Health is Dead, visit publichealthisdead.com!

What is public health? A quick intro to the show, your host, and what to expect. Public health may be dead but we're not dead yet!

***
If you’ve always wanted more clarity about what public health is or how it’s meant to protect you, this episode is a short one to share a working definition, set the stage for the show and let you know a bit more about your host, Daniella, your guide on this journey towards better health for all of us!

You'll understand how everything is connected to public health, why we need this podcast now, and why it's focused on COVID. Climate change, capitalism, and constant global travel have created a feedback loop and ushered in the era of pandemics. Old-timey diseases are waking up next to new ones, the organizations and leaders that are supposed to be controlling diseases appear to have given up. So it looks like it’s up to us.

Public health may be dead but we’re not dead yet!

Public Health is Dead will gather a bunch of people resisting public health failures to share their knowledge and experiences and hopefully help us survive in these times. This show might be the very thing that helps you through the storms ahead.

TRANSCRIPT HERE

FYI It’s a bad idea for you to take medical advice from podcasts. Good thing Public Health is Dead does not offer medical advice! The point of this show is to share experiences and information that might help public health as a field and increase our collective knowledge. As always, if you have particular medical concerns of your own you should talk to your medical providers.

CREDITS
Public Health is Dead is created, hosted, written, produced and edited by Daniella Barreto
Content editing by Lauren M.
Music:
Intro/Outro music from Epidemic Sound: OTF/Black and White
Epidemic Sound: Ludvig Moulin/Bats and Rats
Effects: Healing Spell, Short, Holy, Ethereal, Video Game, JRPG 02 - Epidemic Sound
www.publichealthisdead.com

This is an independent, listener-supported show. If you like what you hear, and you'd like to support production costs for more of Public Health is Dead, visit publichealthisdead.com!

Could you have Long COVID and not know it? Possibly, according to a leading Long COVID physician-epidemiologist who explains what the condition is and how it has impacted millions of people around the world. We also meet someone living with Long COVID who shares what the experience has been like for them.

More than 400 million people (and counting) are affected by Long COVID around the world. Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly is a physician-epidemiologist and TIME 100 Health awardee in St. Louis. He is one of the world’s leading Long COVID researchers. As we approach the grim 5th anniversary of the COVID pandemic, he joins Daniella on Public Health is Dead to outline a major public health challenge of our time: If we don't die, what happens to many of us after we survive a COVID infection? Especially if we keep getting reinfected? Dr. Al-Aly explains what listening to patients allows the best researchers to do, addresses some of the common rebuttals to his team’s study data, and shares his recommendations to help turn this public health failure around.
We get to know Hazie Thompson, a former cook who has been living with Long COVID in Toronto since 2020 – they share how the condition has affected them and what they would like healthcare providers to know. The stakes of ignoring Long COVID are high.

People with Long COVID have been dismissed and ignored to everyone’s disadvantage because more people keep joining the ranks. There’s a lot of research. There are a lot of reports. But our public health leaders are pretty quiet about what Long COVID can do to us. Something’s getting lost in translation. And you deserve to know.
TRANSCRIPT HERE
RESOURCES
Experiences of Canadians with long-term symptoms following COVID-19 - Statistics Canada
BIRCH Project (founded by Hazie Thompson)
New York Times op-ed by Fiona Lowenstein and Hannah Davis
Long COVID science, research, and policy by Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly et. al. (2024)
The Sick Times & Long COVID Justice Resource Sheets
Find your nearest Maskbloc on the Worldwide Maskbloc Directory
Looking to help? If you'd like to support Hazie's Gofundme to help navigate living with Long COVID, please find it here.

CREDITS
Public Health is Dead is created, hosted, produced, written and edited by Daniella Barreto
Content editing by Lauren M.
FYI It’s a bad idea for you to take medical advice from podcasts. Good thing Public Health is Dead does not offer medical advice! The point of this show is to share information and experiences that might help public health as a field and increase our collective knowledge. As always, if you have particular medical concerns of your own you should talk to your own medical providers.
MUSIC
Outro music from Epidemic Sound: OTE/Black and White
Freesound:
bass pulse.wav by RichHeard -- https://freesound.org/s/443807/ -- License: Attribution NonCommercial 3.0
horror ambience 16.wav by klankbeeld -- https://freesound.org/s/137109/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
"CHARLIE BROWN" teacher wa-wa effect by JohnsonBrandEditing -- https://freesound.org/s/243379/ -- License: Creative Commons 0

This is an independent, listener-supported show. If you like what you hear, and you'd like to support production costs for more of Public Health is Dead, visit publichealthisdead.com!

If you have a feeling something isn’t quite right in the world of disease control...
If your kids are sick of being sick (and their teachers are too)...
If your favourite artists keep cancelling their shows because of another "mystery illness"...
Or if you’ve been suffering for years with Long COVID and can’t believe we’re still not warning people about COVID’s aftershocks...

This show is for you! Dearly Beloved, welcome to Public Health is Dead.

Public health as we know it is failing us. And you deserve to know.

Check out www.publichealthisdead.com to learn more and sign up for updates.
Trailer Credits
Written, hosted, produced by Daniella Barreto.
Music production and mixing by Alexandria Maillot. Additional sound design by James Daniel Baxter.

This is an independent, listener-supported show. If you like what you hear, and you'd like to support production costs for more of Public Health is Dead, visit publichealthisdead.com!