Return to Normal Hesitancy: Podcast with Monica Gandhi and Ashwin Kotwal
episode
GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Podcast
40 min
4 speakers
7 chapters
transcribed 3 days ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Who are the guests and what is the focus of the episode?
The JerryPow podcast is brought to you by Artstone Foundation, improving the health and well-being of older Californians and their caregivers. Welcome to the Jerry Powell podcast. This is Eric Guidara. This is Alex Smith. And Alex, we gotta re-record this intro because I forgot to press record because I am such a huge fan of the person that we have on with us today. Who do we have on?
Once again, we are delighted to welcome to our JerryPow podcast, Monica Gandhi, who's an infectious disease doctor, professor of medicine at UCSF, and who tweets at Monica Gandhi9. Welcome to the JerryPout Podcast, Monica.
Thank you so much.
And
Alex,
who
else do we have with us?
We are also welcoming back to the Jerry Powell podcast, a geriatrician, a palliative care doc, a researcher in the UCSF Division of Geriatrics, Oshwin Coat. Well, welcome back to the Jerry Powell podcast, Oshwin.
Excited to be here.
We're racing through the intros 'cause this is the second time we've done it. So I actually heard what song Monica wants. Again, before we get into the topic about kind of reintegrating post lockdown with COVID and how to talk about this with our older adults and those with serious illness, Monica, do you have a song request for Alex?
I do I wanna get back to no restrictions with the incredible effectiveness of the vaccine. So I wanna hear get back by the beat.
All right, here we go.
Georgia was a man who thought he was aloner, but he knew it couldn't last. Dojo left his home in Tucson, Arizona for some California dress. Get back. Back. Get back to where you once belong. B Que pé Get back to where you once belonged. Get back, Jojo.
That was awesome, Alex. Thank you. Monica, um before we we dive into the topic, we always talk about uh how people got interested in this subject. Before COVID, you had a you know a focus on HIV, you're an infectious disease uh physician. Now you are a kind of an international expert on COVID-19 and a advocate for what I think is kind of evidence-based uh discussion about first advocating for things like mask use and then vaccines. Now advocating for what a new normal would look like. What motivated you to really jump into the space, which especially on social media, could be very hard to do because there's a lot of voices out there?
Um, I actually hate social media um and I didn't want to do it and I'm gonna get off as soon as I can, but it it really had to do with um kind of taking an approach from my knowledge of HIV of harm reduction. So the the the principle of harm reduction is is very simple. You actually want to decrease infections from a pathogen. But you want to do that using real world conditions, keeping in mind the real world conditions that may take make people take some risks, like they have to go to work, they have essential work, they want to see friends and families, but decreasing uh that their risk, you know, sort of within the context of humanity in a way. And that is what HIV is. Always done except at the very beginning.
At the beginning of HIV, we didn't, we said um we didn't use harm reduction. We said stay away from each other, everything's risky, oral sex is as risky as as uh as other sex. And that's not true actually. And and all of that led to kind of this abstinence-based only approach. And then we quickly realized this is not the way to face a pandemic and used harm reduction, which is I'm gonna tell you how to stay safe. Safe, but I'm not going to completely keep you away from each other because there, I'm going to tell you about mass distancing and ventilation, but there are consequences of completely keeping away from each other, which is loneliness, learning loss, closing schools, thinking about nursing homes of complete isolation.
And so instead, I'm going to tell you how to keep safe within the parameters of what we know. And since I didn't see that voice so much, at least in our state. Being out there, I wanted to talk about this approach. And that's what made me enter the dialogue.
Can I ask like what what the heck happened with that?
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
Who are the guests and what is the focus of the episode?
0:01–11:27
2
How did Monica Gandhi transition from HIV harm‑reduction to COVID‑19 advocacy?
11:27–16:46
3
What is the harm‑reduction model and why does it matter for pandemic policy?
16:46–22:17
4
Why does the host argue that a “fear‑not‑facts” approach is flawed?
22:17–27:58
5
How effective are COVID‑19 vaccines in preventing infection and transmission?
27:58–33:36
6
What are the arguments for and against continued masking after vaccination?
33:36–38:27
7
How can clinicians help address global vaccine equity and patent issues?
38:27–40:20
Speakers
4 identifiedMore from GeriPal - A Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Podcast
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