3.47 COVID-19 Vaccine Results, Messaging on a Patient Level, & Schools with Dr. Monica Gandhi
Today we interview Dr. Monica Gandhi, Associate Division Chief of the Division of HIV, Infectious Diseases, and Global Medicine at UCSF/ San Francisco General Hospital, and medical director of the HIV Clinic at SFGH, on COVID-19 interventions. We talk about results from the vaccine studies and how vaccination is perceived by the public. We talk about her new paper out now in The Lancet Infectious Disease on the importance of non-pharmaceutical interventions (masking, social distancing, ventilation, hand-washing) in controlling COVID-19. We also talk about the stark difference between messaging created from the point of view of an epidemiologist vs the public health messaging that frontline health care workers deliver directly to patients. We end the interview by talking about schools and the need to re-open them.