We Need To Talk About Bird Flu

We (Quinn) has been avoiding this question for quite a while.

I even wrote a few thousand words about it a couple months ago and didn't publish it because it was a bit of a downer.

But that's kind of malpractice in a way because we promised we don't shy away from the hard stuff even if the goal is to help you understand what you can do about it.

Just like there's never really an optimal time in your life to get married, or have a baby, or get arrested, there's never a good time to talk about bird flu, which means it's always the right time to talk about bird flu, and especially when you've got the best of the best on the line.

What can I do about bird flu?

That's today's big question and my returning guest is the wonderful Dr. Nahid Bhadelia.

Dr. Bhadelia is the founding director of the BU Center on Emerging Infectious Diseases. She's a board certified infectious diseases physician and an associate professor at the BU School of Medicine.

She served as the Senior Policy Advisor for Global COVID 19 Response for the White House COVID 19 Response Team in 2022 and 2023, where she coordinated the interagency programs for global COVID 19 vaccine donations from the United States.

Nahid was also the policy lead for Project NextGen, a 5 billion dollar health and human services program aimed at developing next generation vaccines and treatments for pandemic prone coronaviruses. 

She also served as the interim testing coordinator for the White House mpox response team and is the Director and Co-founder of Biothreats Emergence Analysis and Communications Network, or BEACON, an open source outbreak surveillance program. 

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Links:

• Keep up with Dr. Bhadelia's work at BU
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