02/21/2022

Friends of Franz Podcast S1 E10: The Pandemic Solution with Dr. Stacy De-Lin and Dr. Purvi Parikh

On December 12, 2019, a group of patients in Wuhan, the capital city of the province of Hubei in China, began experiencing shortness of breath and fever. Little did the world know that these clandestine occurrences of "pneumonia of unknown etiology" in that 3,280 mi² area would affect the whole globe up to this day almost three years later. Having declared this novel coronavirus, "SARS-CoV-2," as a public health emergency back on January 31, 2020, and the formalized name "COVID-19" as a pandemic that March 11, the virus has a current global death toll of more than 5 million people.

Though devastating the deaths that this pandemic has imbued on our world, its effects have truly transcended the medical aspect of societies: people lost jobs, many lost hope, and many were isolated from their loved ones. With the powers of medical technology, research, and science, we arrived at these departments' byproduct, which seemed to be the "hope" that the world was waiting for: vaccines. However, despite the anticipation and yearning for this hope, the reception towards this "light at the end of the tunnel" was met with resistance and hesitancy spurned by myths and misinformation by anti-vaccine movements, especially on the virtual platform.

It was, therefore, a no-brainer to look to those whose mission was to disseminate information that was sound, evidence-based, and backed by peer-reviewed science. And that is who I brought on for this episode, COVID-19 science and vaccine communicators that I personally trust (and two people who send me the best memes ever): Dr. Stacy de-Lin (board-certified Family Medicine physician and Gynecology & Family Planning Specialist) and Dr. Purvi Parikh (double board-certified in Internal Medicine and Allergy and Immunology, vaccine trials researcher, and NYU School of Medicine clinical professor).

Join us in our conversational journey about all things medicine (from medical school to the weirdest objects they pulled out of a person during residency), the pandemic (how they and their practice changed throughout), and what they truly believe is the solution to this pandemic.