COVID-19

The study also found that the virus can survive and grow inside the cells that form plaque—the buildup of fat-filled cells that narrow and stiffen the arteries leading to atherosclerosis. If the plaque breaks, it can block blood flow and cause a heart attack or a stroke. The SARS-CoV-2 infection makes the situation worse by inflaming the plaque and increasing the chance that it breaks free.

This can explain long-term cardiovascular effects seen in some, if not all, COVID-19 patients.

How a mixup about airborne transmission led to one of the biggest public health errors in history. 5 years since the COVID pandemic began, public health has yet to clearly address it. A lot of disease spread happens through the air we share. And most people don’t know. Over the last century, our growing understanding of pathogens and the ways they spread allowed public health to mitigate, eliminate, and even eradicate diseases in many parts of the world. We thought we knew it all. But pride comes before a fall. Public health has been missing a big part of how diseases like COVID spread and it's cost us a lot.

Join your host, Daniella, to learn how a group of aerosol scientists teamed up with Dr. Katie Randall, a medical rhetorician and historian, and toppled the house of cards holding up the idea that sprayed droplets are the main route of respiratory disease transmission. Small aerosols that we constantly breathe out can be suspended in the air and carry pathogens that cause disease. This is airborne transmission.

How did public health leaders dismiss airborne transmission for so long even though we've known about it for TB, measles, and SARS for decades? And, now that scientists understand much more about how diseases spread, how can public health adapt to protect us? Dr. Al Haddrell, an aerosol scientist, walks us through how aerosol works and how we can interrupt disease transmission with new knowledge. Something’s in the air... and it might be a paradigm shift.