It's been 26 months since so many of us took our kids out of schools, downloaded an app called Zoom, and started videoconferencing our work from our kitchens and sweatpants. For many others, especially the marginalized and those working in the service industry, working from home was never an option.
It's been 12 months since groundbreaking vaccines began to roll out across the world. You've probably got at least two, maybe three.
And yet today, 39% of humans across the globe haven't received a single shot, and just 10% across low-income countries have received a single dose.
Over 3 billion humans remain not only susceptible to sickness and death, but also a vector for transmission and mutations that could affect us all.
The only way any of us is truly done with this is if we vaccinate the world. So why aren't we doing it?
Quinn's guest this week is Dr. Madhukar Pai. Dr. Pai is not only an outspoken advocate for vaccine equity, but also the Canada Research Chair of Epidemiology and Global Health at McGill University, the associate director of the McGill International Tuberculosis Centre, the Commissioner of the Lancet Commission on Diagnostics, the recipient of the Union Scientific Prize and many others.
If you want to understand how this ends, why it hasn't yet, and what you can do to get us there -- this conversation is for you.
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INI Book Club:
- "How to Fight Inequality (And Why That Fight Needs You)" by Ben Phillips
- INI Book Club: https://bookshop.org/lists/important-not-important-book-club
Links:
- Follow Dr. Pai on Twitter
- Pai Global TB Group
- Our World in Data: COVID-19 vaccination update
Connect with us:
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- Intro/outro by Tim Blane: timblane.com
- Artwork by Amrit Pal