December 17, 2025 • 49 mins
Priyanka and Hari are joined by Dr. Neil Vora, a global health expert who has spent his career fighting infectious diseases around the world. They talk about why human health is inseparable from the health of the environment and nature, what horror movies and TV shows get right about outbreaks, how misinformation and disinformation spread just as fast as viruses, and why we need more imperfect activists. It is a hopeful, clear-eyed conversation about showing up even when we do not have all the answers, staying curious instead of fearful, and remembering that protecting each other and the planet are deeply human acts.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This podcast is for information purposes only and should not
be considered professional medical advice.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
We do not need one hundred perfect activists. We need
a million imperfect ones.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
This is very exciting to get some hot disaster gus.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Yeah, healthcare is so expensive. Har he needs his own
podcast doctor in order to stay healthy.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
I'm hurry, Condibolu.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
I'm doctor pre Uncle Wally, and this is health Stuff.
Hi everyone, Welcome to Health Stuff. I'm so excited for
you to hear the conversation today with an old friend
of mine, doctor Neil Vora. I actually went to college
with him. He's now the senior advisor for one Health
at Conservation International and a former CDC Epidemic Intelligence officer.
(00:53):
He's also a badass. He's responded to major Ebola outbreaks
around the World's led New York City's COVID nineteen contact
tracing program. This was back when COVID just started, and
he now heads the Preventing Pandemics at the Source Coalition.
He also teaches at Columbia, serves on several global health boards,
(01:14):
and writes for outlets like The New York Times in Nature.
I'm really excited to introduce him to you. We hope
you enjoy the conversation. Super super excited for today's guests,
doctor Neil Vora. Just for our listeners here, I actually
have known Neil since college and I was I think
I was a freshman when you were a senior. And
full disclosure, Neil, I was like afraid to talk to
(01:37):
you when I was an undergrad because I thought you
were the coolest person like around and you had already
met Jane Goodall by the age of thirteen. And recently
you have been named Time one hundred's most influential rising Star,
which is I'm not surprised, like very consistent with your brand,
like you make like Dosa Keith's most interesting man in
(01:59):
the world look like a square honestly. So thank you
so much for coming on the show and talking to
us about just all the really really cool things you've
worked on in the past and are going to work on.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Wow, what a kind of introduction.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
And I have to say, like your memory is amazing
that you recall that I met Jane Goodall when I
was thirteen, Like that's incredible, and yeah, I had such
a you know, it was a pleasure for me.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
To work with you back in undergrad. I think.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
I was like, you're maybe a teaching assistant type thing
for a chemistry class or something.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Yeah, I mean I was just an undergrad with an
anxiety and an IBS problem, and like I just I
just remember you had your stuff together. You were like, yeah,
I'm going to study infectious diseases. I want to like
battle ebola. And I was like, okay, well I have
a nut allergy and an EPI pen So no, you
(02:52):
were so cool, and it's been so awesome just to
see you continue that trajectory with all the amazing projects
you've been working on.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Well again, thank you, and then right back at you.
Because you are pioneering your own way. I'm really excited
to be to hurry as well. So this is gonna
be a good conversation.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
May I just also add rarely do I meet another
person whose hair I'm envious of, because I'm very partial
to my hair and I feel like I have some
damn good hair. But I look at your hair and
I'm like, man, oh man, I'm in second place to
the listeners at home can't see this, but it's glorious.
It's a glorious main it's good.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
It's evolving over the last like six months. Every two months,
I'm changing it up, so I think I might stick
with this for a while.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Kid Man, it's good.
Speaker 4 (03:41):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
It's rare that you get to meet a superhero U,
and so getting to meet you is the closest thing
I probably will get to that. Because you're a medical doctor,
an epideviiologist, a conservationist. You have been called a disease
hunter for investigating infectious disease outbreaks around the world. I
(04:03):
just want to know, just how did you get here?
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Well, thank you for that kind compliment. I'm not sure
it's true. You know that I get to follow my passions.
I have been so fortunate in my life to have
these opportunities. When I was a kid, I knew I
wanted to do public health as a future career. My dad,
who's from India, originally had smallpox when he was a child.
(04:27):
That's a disease that kills over thirty percent of people
that it infects. He had it when he was less
than five, and he still has the legacy of smallpox
to this day in the form of scars on his face.
And so when I was growing up, you know, I
could see the impact that it had on his own life,
and it inspired me to pursue a career in public health.
He made me believe that one day I could join
(04:47):
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention the CDC and
be like those people in the sixties and seventies that
eradicated smallpox. That's a gift that keeps on giving. None
of us have to worry about smallpox. But the other
thing that I've always loved are reptiles, and that since undergrad,
as pre uncle might remember, I wanted to combine health
(05:07):
and conservation, so I did med school. Had a little
bit of an existential crisis. Did I make the right choice?
Because I would look for guidance on how to combine
these careers and I wouldn't get a lot of direction.
I ended up joining the CDC and had one of
the most amazing experiences of my life. It was such
a privilege to get to do that work. I was
(05:28):
chasing infectious diseases around the world. But I found that
we weren't in the public health sector talking enough about
protecting nature to improve our health. And that's why I
left the CEC and how I work at a nonprofit
for the.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Listeners that maybe might be new to this. They might
not have an understanding of the impact of nature on
our health. Can you help us make the connection between
why does deforestation matter for our health? Why is this important?
Speaker 4 (05:57):
You know?
Speaker 2 (05:57):
For me that all came into focus during a year
off that I took from medical school. I was in
Uganda doing ATIV and malaria research, trying to figure out
my own future directions. But before I even came across
that life changing paper for me personally, I have to
give a shout out to two movies that actually had
a very big impact on me. So when I was fourteen,
I saw the movie Outbreak that was released in the
(06:18):
mid nineties, and I was like, I want to be
like Renee Russo Cuba getting jor Dustin Hoffmann and one
day where that has mass. But you'll remember in that
movie there's this monkey that was running around that they're
trying to catch before it like leads to more what
are known as zoonautic infections, right, so infections caused by
pathogens that jump from animals into people. Then another movie
(06:39):
that I watched, probably when I was maybe a junior
or a senior in college, is twenty eight Days Later.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
Yeah, and I love horror movies.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
You know that movie is all about again this like
fictitious virus, the rage virus that jumps over from animals
into people and then causes the zombie apocalypse. But again,
you know, these movies captured my imagination. They they helped
me start understanding how what we are doing to nature
and animals in particular is actually leading to more outbreaks
that affects us. And then I read that paper in
(07:10):
two thousand and eight published in the journal Nature, and
it was like an epiphany for me. I suddenly understood
how infectious diseases are increasingly emerging around the world. Most
are caused by viruses and other pathogens that jump from
animals into people. And it's because of what we're doing
cutting down rainforests, putting people in closer proximity to wildlife
(07:33):
as well as our domestic animals. We're stressing wildlife out.
So just like humans, when we're stressed, we're more likely
to get sick. The singles for wildlife, when they lose
their habitats, they're more likely to express infections and infect us.
We're sticking animals in these awful conditions in industrial forms
where there's genetically homogeneous chicken populations, for example, that don't
(07:53):
have a lot of immunity. They're not robust and resistant
to infections. We are trading wildlife around the world. Then,
you know, it really worries me that we are going
to see more and more pandemics in the coming decades
and unless we make a major change in how we
interact with nature.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Your organization One Health, you have a three pronged approach
to dealing with this. You talk with the intersection of human, animal,
environmental health. Can you talk about the importance these things
have in creating and preventing infectious disease.
Speaker 4 (08:24):
Yeah, you know. So.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
I work for this organization called Conservation International. It's a
nonprofit that was started maybe thirty forty years ago, and
our mission is to protect nature for people. Now, the
old model of conservation is that people used to get
separated from the areas being protected, which is a fundamentally
flawed approach because people are a part of.
Speaker 4 (08:44):
Nature, not apart from nature.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
And so the way we do conservation is to put
communities at the center of all of our work. And
so the way I see it is, when done right,
conservation is public health. Any intervention to protect nature is
actually improving our own health. And this gets back to
the fact that we need nature to survive. There is
(09:07):
no future for humanity without nature. But if you look
at the past fifty years, around almost seventy five percent
of wild animal populations have declined.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
Something like that.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
If you look at the mass of all mammals that
occupy the planet today, ninety six percent are humans and
our livestock like cows and pigs, and only four percent
are wild animals, wild mammals, And so we've caused this
massive decline and what's known as biodiversity, the variety of
life on this planet. And to me, that's just so scary.
(09:42):
There is no future for our species if we live
on a planet without biodiversity. Everything we get for our
survival comes from nature. We're talking about water, air, the
supplies that allow us to live in cities and villages
and on, and so we need to start taking care
of our planet to secure a better future. I'll just
(10:06):
say one more thing. You know, we have had massive
gains in human progress over the last fifty to one
hundred years thanks to our extraction of resources from nature,
such as fossil fuels, thanks to development of new technologies. Again,
made possible by resources as well as our ability to
convert natural landscapes into other forms of lands such as farms,
(10:30):
and so because of that, we've seen human well being
go up, but at the same time, the well being
of nature has been declining. But now we've arrived at
this tipping point where we have things like climate change
and this mass extinction and pandemics which are happening because
of what we've done to nature.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
So we need to correct that imbalance.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
So let's kind of double click a little bit and
slow down on what because you're hitting on some like
really really big collective oriented themes. And one of the
questions that I have for you, given all that you know,
is what can a singular, average person do who may
(11:08):
not have corporate ties, who is just like a regular person.
Because when a regular person hears all this, there's almost
a sense of like, well, this seems really a lot
bigger than me. What can I do? So what sort
of advice do you have for listeners or people just
listening going about their lives, like how can they make
(11:31):
changes in the right direction?
Speaker 2 (11:34):
I love this question because I've been in that place
myself before four and a half years ago, when I
made the move to Conservation International. I felt so much
anxiety about what is happening to the planet and that
I am not contributing to the solutions. I just felt
like I was part of the problem. I felt a
lot of anger at my own self for not doing more.
(11:55):
So it's almost paralyzing. And then I had this amazing
opportunity in early twenty twenty one to move over to
this nonprofit and it was nine and day for me.
Suddenly I was surrounded by people who are committed to
protecting nature for their lives. Right, They've made that their
their life's purpose, and I see those solutions all around me. Right,
(12:16):
there are so many incredible things happening every day, so
many people who go unrecognize, but who are committed to
planting trees or doing whatever they can. Now, I'm not
saying that everyone needs to you know, if you care
about nature, that you need to drop your you know,
whatever you're doing and find a job full time and
conservation or you know, become you know, among you know
(12:37):
and renownced like the material world. But there is something
that each of us can do. One of my favorite
climate activists, Clover Hogan, has this quote where she says,
we do not need a hundred perfect activists, We need
a million imperfect ones. And I really love that because
none of us are perfect. We don't we should not
be holding ourselves to this unattainable stand Rather, each of
(13:01):
us can choose to do something that's within our grasp
and do it really well and have impact in that
area and then inspire others to take action in their
own way. Right, So, you don't need to have this
massive change in your life or you know, renounce everything
that you have right now in your life. You just
really need to find where it is that you can
have an impact in your own life and just start
(13:23):
doing that. So, identify what it is that you care about,
identify what your strengths are, and then move forward on that.
Maybe it's about reducing uses of certain materials in your work,
or maybe it's about eating less meat in your diet. Again,
we don't have to be perfect, but just choose an
area and start making progress.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
What does success look like to you? And do you
feel like success is possible?
Speaker 2 (13:47):
One of my favorite authors, Ianna Elizabeth Johnson, has this
book What If I Get It Right? And so your
question reminds me of that wonderful book, and I do
believe a better world is possible.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Right.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
We're not in you, I hope here right now. We
will never be in utopia. There's always room to do
better and continually improve.
Speaker 4 (14:05):
But I see so much progress.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Right if you compare how people are doing today compared
to how we were fifty years ago. Right, so many
more people are living above the poverty line around the world.
That is incredible progress. That gives me hope. I see
so much action in terms of the private sector, governments
around the world taking action to reduce carbon emissions. A
(14:29):
few years ago, out of the Convention on Biological Diversity,
which is the UN arm that deals with protecting biodiversity,
over one hundred and ninety countries signed on to this
Global Biodiversity Framework to protect thirty percent of land and
oceans by twenty thirty. Right, these are all incredible landmark achievements.
Of course, we need to move beyond talk, but I
(14:52):
believe in a continual improvement process.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
Right.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
So I don't know if there is a clear definition
of success for me, other than I firmly believe that
we need an awakening. We need to and I say
this as a scientist and someone who's currency of work
are data in facts. But that alone is not enough
to inspire action. Right, we have decades upon decades of
(15:17):
data that the climate is changing, yet we do not
have sufficient action to date. But what I think is
really critical are you know the people like YouTube who
have like this fun approach to gathering information and like
using comedy to inspire people. People who are artists, writers, actors, right,
(15:37):
all types of people to inspire us to think of
a better future that I think is possible. Again, if
you think back to the nineteen forties and you lived
in in Europe when when the Nazis were taking over, right,
this seemed like the world was about to end, but
people rose up to the challenge and change the world.
And I think that a better future is possible. More
(16:02):
to come on health stuff.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
So I mean, it's very interesting because you've been studying
pandemics like way before COVID, and I feel like the world,
let's say the United States, like didn't really think about
pandemics until it actually affected our lives and now we're
all pandemic aware. But I am so curious when COVID happened,
(16:30):
were you like already over it before it even started
because of the work that you do. Or were you
just as sort of frazzled as the rest of us,
or was it more like, oh yeah, like I told
you so, guys, what was your experience of COVID given
your background?
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Yeah, you know, my partner often says that I can
be this is before COVID, right like, and she would
say that I'm a party proper. We were like in
twenty nineteen at this campfire. We met the random people
around this campfire, right like, they were at the same
hotel as us, and we just started talking. Then I
go on and say, look, we are at this really
difficult point in history where there's the convergence of five
(17:12):
existential threats climate change, loss of bio diversity, artificial intelligence,
nuclear war, the war on truth.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
Right Like, I just like rattled off these things, and.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
I'm like they were like, man, we're just at a rave.
Speaker 4 (17:23):
Dude, Yeah exactly. And then the next year the pandemic struck. Right.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
And the reason I'm emphasizing this is because many people
in the public health space have been saying for decades
it's not a question of if a pandemic is going
to occur, it's a matter of when And if you
look at the last one hundred and seven years, right,
since nineteen eighteen, there have been six viral pandemics at
(17:48):
least depending on how you count it, you could even
say there's more. But there's been four flu pandemics, there's
been an HIV pandemic, and then there's COVID. In total
these it killed over ninety million PEO. So pandemics claim
a lot of wise and because of what we are
doing to nature, we are going to see the pace
of pandemics increasing several fold in the coming decades. So
(18:12):
I think it's very likely in the next ten years
we will see another pandemic, and I think it could
be far worse than COVID. Right, seven million plus people
died from COVID. It was awful, but in many ways
we dodged a bullet, right, because there are even more
deadly pathogens out there, such as some of the novel
influenza viruses. And on top of that, we are worse
(18:34):
off today in certain ways than we were back in
twenty nineteen because there's been a collapse of public health
infrastructures all over the world. There's less trust in public
agencies in general. Beyond health institutions and healthcare workers are tired.
Many of my closest friends are emergency room and infectious
(18:55):
disease doctors who were working in New York City hospitals
back in and I just when I hear what they
went through, it breaks my heart. It was so hard,
and that was the experience for healthcare workers all around
the world, and so I'm very concerned about this. In
twenty twenty, Mayror Bill de Blasio in New York City
(19:16):
tapped me to lead the city's COVID contact tracing program.
It was the hardest thing I've ever done professionally. You know,
I've been to Western Central Africa for the two biggest
e Bowl outbreaks ever. I was in Haiti after the
twenty ten earthquake. You know, I've seen awful, awful things,
but nothing like the response in New York City. And
(19:37):
that's heartbreaking, right, Like the number of people that died,
suffered so much, the isolation, right beyond just the debts,
but we all know this, right, people just felt socially isolated.
Speaker 4 (19:47):
Yeah, so it worries me.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
What did you learn from leading the contact tracing program
in New York?
Speaker 4 (19:54):
Like, were there lessons learned from that. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
I mean the lessons I learned was I guess, like,
on a personal level, surround yourself with good people. I
had the most amazing team. It wouldn't have been possible
without this team I had. Like, these are people who
already were so impacted by the pandemic, but they stood
up in the face of all that adversity, worked the
(20:18):
craziest hours, and they did this because they believe in
public service. And I just am so grateful to them.
I think that mission matters right when you people are
inspired by mission, And so often I think we lose
sight in the modern world of like purpose because we've
(20:40):
become so disconnected from each other. But when we start
connecting again personally, I think it can reinspire us to
work towards a better world.
Speaker 4 (20:50):
Now.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
In terms of like the public health lessons that I learned,
it's just a lot of what we already knew before
the pandemic, which is that we have to invest in
public health infrastructure. Public health services are a public utility.
As late David Lee used to say that it's a
public utility that goes unrecognized when public health is working
(21:12):
well because you're not having outbreaks of diarrheal disease from
your water supply that you're getting through your city pipes,
or because you're not dealing with, you know, outbreaks of
respiratory pathogens. You don't even know that public health is
there working in the background. It's only when things go
wrong that then you know, people become aware, but then
(21:33):
they get angry. We're asking more and more of government,
but expecting government to do provide those services with less
and less resources. So I think it's a tough situation,
but I hope that we can start reinvesting in our
public health institutions like the CDC.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
It is so I mean, speaking of the CDC, there's
been so many changes, so many cutbacks. If you could,
let's say you got the call and you know, they
were like, okay, Neil, you run the CDC, what would
be kind of the top maybe one or two things
that you would want to have in place, like PRONTO.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Data and surveillance are the backbones of public health work,
and so we need to be investing in our public
health surveillance systems that we can get good data on
which we can base decisions. Right, some of the major
killers in the country are not necessarily the ones that
we can make movies out of. Right, So, even though
I'm an infectious disease public health expert, you know, a
(22:32):
lot of the public health work needs to happen on
chronic diseases like cardiovascular disease, you know, bring you know
all about like access to better foods, and there are
food deserts around the country and around the world. So
I think there's a lot of basic public health work
that needs to get done. But what concerns me is
(22:53):
that we don't again talk about that connection to nature,
which is the focus of my work now. A lot
of the bad things that we're already seeing and that
we're going to increasingly see in the coming decades are
a result of our broken relationship with nature. So for me,
we have to start correcting that imbalance, protecting what's left
of nature so that we can actually secure our own future.
(23:15):
I mentioned before, we're losing biodiversity at this astonishing pace.
We are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction.
Right The last one before this was around sixty five
million years ago when the dinosaurs disappeared after an asteroid
collided with our planet. But this sixth one, right now,
this is the only one that's because of a single species,
(23:37):
and that's us humans. We are destroying landscapes, we are
causing climate change, and as a result, all these animals,
all these plants, fungi, these species are disappearing. And you know,
beyond the obvious ways that this impacts our health, like
for example, you know, providing clean water to whole cities
(24:00):
or giving us clean air. Beyond those obvious examples, as
this web of life unravels, there are so many surprising
ways that it begins to impact our health. I'll give
you an example. This researcher, I think it was last
year he published this incredible work. There's this fungal infection
spreading in bats in North America. Came from somewhere, probably
(24:20):
in the Eastern hemisphere, but this fungal infection was introduced.
Over a million bats have died across the US and Canada.
Now that might not sound like a big deal, but
what this researcher showed is that as bats have declined,
farmers have had to use more and more pesticides because
bats off any insects, and as pasticide uses increase, there
(24:43):
is a correlation to increased infant mortality. Right, So basically,
the loss of these bats is leading to infants dying. Now,
I have to be very caveat this by saying, we
don't know for sure that the loss of bats is
causing those infint debts, but there is this strong correlation
and there's other examples of this. Right, So we need
to start protecting what's left on this planet because if
(25:05):
at the end of the day, all we have left
our humans cows, pigs, and chickens, that's going to lead
to a lot of bad things. We need that biodiversity
for our own resilience.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
I mean related question like what policies should nations put
in to play enact in order to reach these goals?
Speaker 4 (25:22):
You know.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
So there's that Convention on Biological Diversity out of the
United Nations that I mentioned, right, So there are nations
committed to protecting thirty percent of their lands and marine
ecosystems by twenty thirty. The problem is, you know, despite
this commitment, there has not been the resources to necessarily
follow up on that, and so we need more resources
(25:44):
getting invested in this area. The challenge is that, you know,
when we talk about protecting nature, quite often the money,
the profit incentive is not necessarily there. Right now, an
acre of forest is worth more chopped down than it
is worthstanding, and we have to reassess our incentive structures.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
So I just want to take a minute to pause
a little bit because you're naming huge, huge topics and
it's palpable, Like I can feel it in my body
when you talk about it, just the passion you know,
you're it's almost like you're speaking on behalf of mother nature,
Like I'm the representative for this and it's a lot.
(26:29):
It seems like it's a lot to receive, it's a
lot to carry, especially like in your body. And so
I'm so curious Neil, about how do you keep yourself
regulated on a day to day basis when you know
all of this stuff, you have, all of these concerns,
(26:49):
you're naming these really really big issues. It's a lot
to digest. What do you do to keep yourself not
like crying in a ball several hours a day or
maybe maybe you do do that, Maybe that is what
you do. Like I'd love to understand, like what is
your self care practice to do work on this level?
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Yeah, it's tough, right, like when you're constantly dealing with
you know, the possibility of you know, the next species
dying out.
Speaker 4 (27:18):
It's hard.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
I remember, and I think it was twenty twenty two
a report came out that said one in five reptiles
are threatened with extinction or something like that, and reptiles
are like my, my, my thing. And I just remember
crying when I when I heard about that. But I
would say that there's four things that keep me going.
Number one, personal relationships, particularly to my partner who's meeting
(27:40):
her was the best thing to ever happen to me.
I'm so lucky I have her in my life. I
have an amazing family, right, so, an amazing family and friends,
and so personal relationships. Number Two is Brazilian jiu jitsu.
Speaker 4 (27:53):
I like going at it.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Yeah, yeah, you know, which has been a really interesting
experience for me. If any one is following like the
Ultimate fighting damage that maybe not. But like next year,
President Trump is talking about having a UFC match on
like the grounds of the White House.
Speaker 4 (28:13):
I love UFC.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
I'm not sure I'm necessarily a big fan of doing
UFC at the White House, but Brazilian jiu jitsu is
key to mixed martial arts, which is what UFC is
all about. And for me when I go train, I
started training around maybe six years ago. I stumbled upon this,
but it's just been life changing because when I am
training for that hour hour and a half that I'm
(28:35):
at the gym, like I don't think about anything else.
It's my way to disconnect and it just puts me
in a state of flow. Then I can come back
to my work with charge. But the other really cool
thing is I used to live in New York City
and I used to train in New York City. Last
year I moved to upstate New York. And you know,
when I trained in the city, I was training with
a lot of people who were left leaning liberal like me.
But now upstate here in the Hudson Valley where I
(28:58):
train at, there's a lot of people who are on
the op as the end of the political spectrum. And
you know, when we're at this gym, though we are
all together, we are finding community. We trust each other,
right like in jiu jitsu, you're literally trying to rip
each other's arms and legs off, and so you know,
there's so much trust that comes with that. And for me,
it's a beautiful thing that in this neutral third space
(29:19):
of this martial arts gym. We're able to come together
and find community, and that actually gives me hope. I
think we need to start reconnecting more. Item number three
is spirituality. When you do conservation and you're thinking about nature,
you're necessarily thinking about things bigger than you, and you
see the interconnectedness of all life, and so it's just
(29:40):
it's been humbling.
Speaker 4 (29:41):
You know.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
I recognize my insignificance in the grand scheme of the universe,
but I'm also so grateful that I'm on this planet,
that I have this brief moment of time to pursue
my purpose. I feel so grateful for that every day.
And the fourth thing I'll just mention is horror. I
love vampires and zombies and things like that. And you know,
a lot of when you think about horror and like
(30:03):
scary stories, a lot of this has inspired those stories
by things we do not understand in the world. So
back in the seventeen hundreds, all that people were talking
about in Europe was vampires. They were so scared of vampires.
And this was before the germ theory of disease was
really popularized, and so you had common diseases like rabies
and tuberculosis that didn't have an explanation, and vampires was
(30:25):
one way that people tried to understand and comprehend those
types of public health threats. And you know, in the
current age, what we're grappling with is climate change and like,
you know, a world that's rapidly changing, you know, not
just from climate change, but from other factors as well.
And that's why I think we've seen a rise in
you know, zombie movies and shows in recent years. But
(30:46):
it provides this sandbox through which I can explore some
of my worst fears and it helps me deal with
the reality that were now living in.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
I'm really curious as to because you were involved in
fighting the to ebola outbreaks in Central and West Africa,
how do you do work like that and not constantly
fear your own like your own death because it's such
a there's so many workers who are exposed to ebola
and died from it pretty quickly. Like knowing that even
(31:19):
with hazmat suits and the rest of it, like there
is this high risk, Like how do you put that
aside to do the work you need to do?
Speaker 2 (31:25):
You know, honestly, as a CDC employee, when you get
deployed to deal with an outbreak. You actually tend to
know what you're dealing with by the time you get there,
so you know what precautions to take. The people who
I think are at more risk and the real heroes
are those frontline healthcare workers who are seeing people often
(31:47):
without a lot of resources, and then they have to
manage these people with unknown illnesses and then they can
themselves get sick. So we saw in Ebola outbreak after
Ebola outbreak, healthcare workers are at such high risk. I
remember when I was in like the Congo. This is
in twenty nineteen. I was in the Congo for the
second biggest e bullet outbreak ever, and we were visiting
(32:08):
this this hospital and there was these surgical masks that
were strung up along the side of the building of
a hospital because they were being washed and reused in
the middle.
Speaker 4 (32:19):
Of an a Bola outbreak. And I was like so
struck by that.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
So I took pictures and when I came back, I
used them in presentations saying like this is how dire
the circumstances are.
Speaker 4 (32:27):
Or when I was in Liberia, you know, in.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
The biggest e bullet outbreak ever, overnight the community care
center affiliated with the community hospital I was working out of.
They just ran out of gloves overnight. Right, how do
you take care of your bullet patients without gloves? My god,
it was appalling, but you know, you fast forward to
spring of twenty twenty, COVID is now happening. I'm in
(32:49):
New York City. My closest friend from residency calls me
one day because she's working out of a New York
City hospital and she has to, you know, be working
in the emergency room to deal with COVID patients. And
the hospital was running out of N ninety five respirators
and masks, and she was asking me whether I had
any spare respirators that she could borrow. And I still
(33:11):
had a stack of N ninety fives from my prior
Ebola deployment that I could then give to her. But
underscores infectious diseases are equalizers. It does not matter where
you are in the world. Right when an emergency happens,
it'll strain any system after a certain point, including a
resource rich place like the United States. So how do
(33:32):
I stay safe? I mean, you use science and you
make educated decisions. I think generally, you know, again, the
work is generally pretty safe, but of course there's there's
a risk every time I you know, I even crossed
the street in New York City just walking to go
to a restaurant. Right, you can get hit by a car.
So you just you make decisions in life and you
just have to try to be smart about them.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
We'll be back with more health stuff after this break.
There's so many things that I want to like double
click on. Firstly, can we just go back to the
jiu jitsu? So, like, are you so what I'm imagining
is like, okay, we get liberals and conservatives and we
(34:16):
just get them to wrestle with each other, and like this,
this is this the solution to our country right now,
Like let's just get on the mat and like get
it all out.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
I mean, this is just amazing how much camaraderie is
built in that setting, right, Like you have people who
are just there to pursue this. I mean some people
are trying to go pro but most of us are there,
like and you know, we're just there at the end
of the day or on the morning before work or
after work.
Speaker 4 (34:44):
To get a little blow off, a little steam.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Yeah, you're just there to like work through your stuff.
Speaker 4 (34:49):
Yeah right, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
But it's just like jiu jitsu in particular, Like you said,
it's kind of like wrestling. It's a grappling based art,
and it's pretty great in that, Like you're on these masks,
especially with my hair is like a mop and the
math's literally after a session like have puddles of sweat,
and you know, sometimes you're below someone in there like
(35:11):
a real sweater and they're just dripping sweat into your
eyes and your face and your nose and mouth, and
I'm just like closing my eyes and trying to not
get that in my orifices. But it builds this camaraderie.
And I right, I'm not sure jiu jitsus for everyone.
You know, it's something, you know. The point, though, is
that we need to refine these third spaces schools, places
(35:34):
of faith, libraries, right and in a lot of ways,
these neutral third spaces have been eliminated, and we are
then losing our connection to other people and our ability
to see each other's humanity.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
I think we certainly need to start thinking outside of
the box and getting really creative about solutions towards working
through our differences and maybe it is time to bring
in the absurd and the magical. Maybe that is the answer.
We just need to wrestle it out and sweat on
(36:07):
each other and get our pharaoams mixed up, and we
may not agree with each other, but at least we
can hold each other in humanity.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
Or we could watch the fun TV.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Yeah. Speaking of which, so did you watch Last of Us?
Because that, to me is like the latest sort of
like disaster film invoking climate change and like mold, which
you know, I definitely have experienced treating people who have
gotten mold sickness and whatnot. So I mean, have you
(36:38):
checked out the show, and if so, like, what are
your thoughts on that?
Speaker 4 (36:41):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (36:41):
I even had an op ed in the New York
Times about the Last of Us. It's definitely something that Look,
it's a fantastic show. I will say that it's more
of a show about relationships than it is about horror,
but I didn't think it does that very well. And
I do love how they open up with this amazing
TV interview the scientists and talking about changing climate. You know,
(37:02):
let's take a step back and talk about fungal infections, right,
and preamplely you've treated them before. Fungal infections can be
really tough to treat because fungal cells can be very
similar to human cells, and so then the medicines used
to treat those infections can be very toxic to our
own bodies. But like, if you have an invasive fungal infection,
it can be tough to treat. But if you look
(37:24):
at fungal diseases in other organisms, right, we have things
like tritomycosis that has caused extinction of entire species of amphibians. Right,
you have things like we talked about white nose syndrome
before that's caused a depth of over a million bats
across the United States and Canada. Right, Fungal infections can
(37:45):
be so pervasive because if they're environmentally spread, they're just
releasing their spores in the air. We're always we're constantly
breathing in these spores, and if the fungus is capable
of infecting us, then it can lead to bad things. Now,
the thing that the List of Us show does really
well is it makes this point that as climate is changing,
(38:05):
as the world is getting on average warmer and warmer,
it's creating an evolutionary pressure where fungi are basically being
selected for those that can live at higher temperatures. But
many of the fungal species right now that are already
around the world are ones that live at temperatures They
thrive at temperatures lower than the human body temperature. So
(38:26):
if we are selecting for fungal species that can live
at warmer and warmer temperatures, we might be seeing more
and more fungal outbreaks in the future. And there's already
one cannibal species that at least one of the leading
theories for how it evolved is because of climate change,
and this causes devastating infections in people. But like, what
else is there out there that where we currently don't
(38:49):
recognize as a human pathogen, that in the coming decades
will be considered a human pathogen because of climate change?
Speaker 3 (38:55):
This is very exciting to get some hot disaster gus.
Speaker 4 (38:59):
Yeah, this is.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
What I've been waiting for exactly.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
It's worrisome right, Like, and again, you're the spores are
all around us, so how do you protect yourself in
that setting? So what we need to be doing right
investing more in prevention, you know, to your earlier question,
what would I do if I had more control of
public health.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Decision, if you were the king of the CDC, what
would you do?
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Yeah, we need to be investing in prevention, right We
need to go upstream, take care of nature, you know,
start keeping forest protected, start fighting climate change more aggressively
than we are right now. We are going to blow
past our climate goals because we're not taking enough action
right now.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
You know the other thing that that resonates with me
with what you're saying as a physician, it sort of
also makes me acutely aware of how much I need
to continuously be on top of the data to stay
on top of this, because you're essentially talking about emerging
diseases of climate change, you know, novel diseases as a
(40:00):
result of the changing environment. As a physician, like I
can't just rely on like the stuff they taught me
in med school and residency. I need to be up
to date right now and tomorrow and the next day.
And so you know, it's it's also a call to
action to any healthcare professionals who are listening that it's
in your best incentive to stay on top of this
(40:20):
and don't be like a year behind because a year
from now we could be in a very different situation
like covid. It happened overnight.
Speaker 4 (40:28):
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
You know, the medical world is changing very fast, particularly
from infectious diseases. If you look at just like the
last fifteen years, we've had ebola, zeica. You know, massive
measles operate, COVID, mpox, avian flu is on the horizon,
right like, these things are popping up. Who would have
thought that a mosquito born virus like the Zica virus
(40:53):
would cause birth defects. You know, before two thousand and seven,
there had only ever been less than twenty reports cases
of zica in humans, right, it was considered a very
minor infection. Two thousand and seven, the first ever recognized
outbreak of Zica happened. I was in this island in
the Pacific Ocean called yap On that during that outbreak,
(41:13):
over seventy percent of the entire population is estimated to
have become infected.
Speaker 4 (41:19):
Over seventy percent.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (41:21):
And even then, in this setting of an outbreak like that,
the birth defects of zica were not recognized. So not
until twenty and sixteen, when Zica made its way to
the Western hemisphere when it started spreading at these massive
epidemic levels that people started to recognize that. But it
gets back to what you were saying, Prianca will always
(41:42):
be astute clinicians that recognize that, hey, what I'm seeing
in front of me in this patient is a little
bit weird, and let me work with the health department,
let me work with the CDC to do additional testing
to find out what's going on here. And that's why
I've let you know so much respect for clinicians who
do this work. It is so hard to do this work.
You're working such long hours, there's so much to learn.
(42:04):
There's so much pressure on our doctors and nurses and
physician assistance and beyond to do all this work to
take good care of patients. And on top of that,
there's always this personal risk. We're living in the pandemic
scene right where pandemics are just a part of the
world we now live in because of what we've done
to the world, and there's a risk adherent to that
(42:25):
for those clinicians doing that work.
Speaker 3 (42:28):
You talked about the influence of like outbreak in your
childhood and how that made you want to do the
work that you do.
Speaker 4 (42:36):
How accurate.
Speaker 3 (42:36):
Are those films.
Speaker 4 (42:38):
I think they do a great job. You know, this
is what I mean Like horror and these thrillers.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
They take a particular aspect of reality and maybe the
you know, they fictionalize it, they dramatize it, make it interesting.
They're rooted in some level of reality of evidence. But
then they take leeways right again to make it entertaining.
But I think that actually has a really important role
because as again we've seen with Ebola, zeka ebola just
(43:02):
in the last ten to fifteen years, when these real
outbreaks happen, they defy conventional clinical and public health wisdom.
We have to have humility, those of us who are
scientists and you know, doctors or whatever, epidemiologists, we have
to have humility. And that's what I think Horror gets right.
They're taking these fears to their worst extreme. But I
would say that COVID in many ways was a nightmare.
You know, whether or not you believe in the COVID vaccine,
(43:24):
it was a nightmare because we were isolated and people
were dying and whatever else. So I think that these
fictitious depictions of infectious diseases are very important, even for
an expert like me for me to like imagine what
is going on and how things are getting worse or
what directions the world can go in. So yeah, they
(43:46):
take you know.
Speaker 4 (43:47):
I don't think zombies are real, but with that being said,
I think, like again, there's validity to those films.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
We live in a time of just so much false information,
and especially coming from the White House and various agencies.
How do people find their way to the truth when
you're getting all this false information.
Speaker 4 (44:11):
That's one of my greatest concerns.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
And I you know, of all the existential threats out there,
from the mass extinction to pandemics, to the risk of
nuclear war and artificial intelligence, to me, the one that
worries me the most is misinformation and disinformation because we have,
for example, decades upon decades of evidence that the climate
(44:34):
is changing. But there's also been a very concerted campaign,
in part by fossil fuel companies and others with vested
interests that have spread all this misinformation such that people
are still debating, including in the United States, whether climate
change is real or whether humans are the cause of it.
Right like now, it's shifted in people are saying that
climate change is real, but humans aren't the cause of
(44:54):
it is what some people are saying. The reality is
that we know that the climate is changing and that's
because of human activities, particularly the combustion of fossil fuels.
And we're seeing this on the public outside with anti
vaccine rhetoric. It's all the same thing, right, And so
ultimately science has been a victim of its own success.
We have longer lifespans than ever before on average in
(45:16):
recent years, fewer children are dying under five, There's more
access to energy, food, right, we live better lives. None
of us would want to give this up. This has
been made possible by science and technological developments, and yet
you have entities that are purposely spreading misinformation and disinformation
to undermine progress. And so it really worries me. A
(45:38):
life spreads faster than the truth, you know, in the
age of social media gets harder and harder, and then
you have deep fakes where fake videos are being created.
So it's just it's very complex, and I think we
need to combat that miss and disinformation with accurate information.
But this gets back to what I was saying before.
You know, we need to not just have scientists, the
(46:00):
communicators and ambassadors for science. We need to be teaming
up in creative ways. And Pranco, you were saying I
think something like this before as well. But we need
to be teaming up in creative ways across different expertise, right,
and getting information out there, and I guess meeting people
where they're at, right, Like, we all prefer to receive
information in different ways, So let's make sure that information
(46:21):
gets packaged in different ways and delivered effectively.
Speaker 1 (46:25):
Yeah, and a little jiu jitsu doesn't hurt either while
you're at.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
Actually like, oh look, I'll give you an example though.
One of the people in my gym, you know, one
of the really experienced people who can just kick my butt.
But like you know, early on when I first met
him and he would like find out that I'm a doctor,
and then we started to build trust. You know, he
asked me like, what is your view on the COVID
vaccine because he had never received it before. And then
after we had built that trust, he said, you know,
(46:49):
now that you're saying it, I guess it makes sense, right,
And so is that personal connection, that trust that had
been built. I think in a lot of ways, our
healthcare institutions and our public health in structure in the
United States has failed the population of this country. And
you know, healthcare premiums are about to go up, and
we're going to continue to fail people. And to me,
that's heartbreaking. So people have lost trust in the institutions
(47:14):
that can help them.
Speaker 1 (47:16):
Yeah, I mean healthcare is so expensive. Har he needs
his own podcast doctor in order to like stay healthy.
Speaker 3 (47:23):
Yeah, this has nothing to do with the podcast. I'm
being paid with health advice.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
So Neil, thank you so much for your time today
and just really truly educating us about so much that's
going on. And what I'm also taking is that like
you're you're still hopeful, like you you don't like we're
not screwed, right, like you tell tell me we're not screwed.
Speaker 2 (47:48):
Right, Well, we aren't screwed. There's solutions all around us.
And like I'm living proof that action is the best
antidote to despair. I've never been more hopeful for the world,
you know, even to spy, like so many things that
I'm used to that this country is used to suddenly
falling apart. The future is right the as MLK would say,
(48:08):
the moral arc of the universe is long, but it
bends towards justice, but it's up to us to make
it bend in that way. And so let's all do
something that we can to create a better.
Speaker 1 (48:18):
World, Doctor Neil Vora, everyone, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (48:22):
Yes, oh, thank you all so much. It's been a
pleasure to be here.
Speaker 4 (48:25):
Yeah, that was great.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
Health Stuff is a production of iHeart Podcasts. The show
is hosted by me Harico Debolu and doctor Prianco Wally.
Producers are Rebecca Eisenberg, Jenna Kagel, Christina Loranger, Maya Howard,
and Katrina Norville. Our researcher is Maria Tremarki and our
intern is Katia Obeldea Yala. To send us a question,
you can email us a voicemail at health Stuff podcast
(48:53):
at gmail dot com. Thank you for listening.
This podcast is for information purposes only and should not
be considered professional medical advice.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
We do not need one hundred perfect activists. We need
a million imperfect ones.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
This is very exciting to get some hot disaster gus.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Yeah, healthcare is so expensive. Har he needs his own
podcast doctor in order to stay healthy.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
I'm hurry, Condibolu.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
I'm doctor pre Uncle Wally, and this is health Stuff.
Hi everyone, Welcome to Health Stuff. I'm so excited for
you to hear the conversation today with an old friend
of mine, doctor Neil Vora. I actually went to college
with him. He's now the senior advisor for one Health
at Conservation International and a former CDC Epidemic Intelligence officer.
(00:53):
He's also a badass. He's responded to major Ebola outbreaks
around the World's led New York City's COVID nineteen contact
tracing program. This was back when COVID just started, and
he now heads the Preventing Pandemics at the Source Coalition.
He also teaches at Columbia, serves on several global health boards,
(01:14):
and writes for outlets like The New York Times in Nature.
I'm really excited to introduce him to you. We hope
you enjoy the conversation. Super super excited for today's guests,
doctor Neil Vora. Just for our listeners here, I actually
have known Neil since college and I was I think
I was a freshman when you were a senior. And
full disclosure, Neil, I was like afraid to talk to
(01:37):
you when I was an undergrad because I thought you
were the coolest person like around and you had already
met Jane Goodall by the age of thirteen. And recently
you have been named Time one hundred's most influential rising Star,
which is I'm not surprised, like very consistent with your brand,
like you make like Dosa Keith's most interesting man in
(01:59):
the world look like a square honestly. So thank you
so much for coming on the show and talking to
us about just all the really really cool things you've
worked on in the past and are going to work on.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Wow, what a kind of introduction.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
And I have to say, like your memory is amazing
that you recall that I met Jane Goodall when I
was thirteen, Like that's incredible, and yeah, I had such
a you know, it was a pleasure for me.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
To work with you back in undergrad. I think.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
I was like, you're maybe a teaching assistant type thing
for a chemistry class or something.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Yeah, I mean I was just an undergrad with an
anxiety and an IBS problem, and like I just I
just remember you had your stuff together. You were like, yeah,
I'm going to study infectious diseases. I want to like
battle ebola. And I was like, okay, well I have
a nut allergy and an EPI pen So no, you
(02:52):
were so cool, and it's been so awesome just to
see you continue that trajectory with all the amazing projects
you've been working on.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Well again, thank you, and then right back at you.
Because you are pioneering your own way. I'm really excited
to be to hurry as well. So this is gonna
be a good conversation.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
May I just also add rarely do I meet another
person whose hair I'm envious of, because I'm very partial
to my hair and I feel like I have some
damn good hair. But I look at your hair and
I'm like, man, oh man, I'm in second place to
the listeners at home can't see this, but it's glorious.
It's a glorious main it's good.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
It's evolving over the last like six months. Every two months,
I'm changing it up, so I think I might stick
with this for a while.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Kid Man, it's good.
Speaker 4 (03:41):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
It's rare that you get to meet a superhero U,
and so getting to meet you is the closest thing
I probably will get to that. Because you're a medical doctor,
an epideviiologist, a conservationist. You have been called a disease
hunter for investigating infectious disease outbreaks around the world. I
(04:03):
just want to know, just how did you get here?
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Well, thank you for that kind compliment. I'm not sure
it's true. You know that I get to follow my passions.
I have been so fortunate in my life to have
these opportunities. When I was a kid, I knew I
wanted to do public health as a future career. My dad,
who's from India, originally had smallpox when he was a child.
(04:27):
That's a disease that kills over thirty percent of people
that it infects. He had it when he was less
than five, and he still has the legacy of smallpox
to this day in the form of scars on his face.
And so when I was growing up, you know, I
could see the impact that it had on his own life,
and it inspired me to pursue a career in public health.
He made me believe that one day I could join
(04:47):
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention the CDC and
be like those people in the sixties and seventies that
eradicated smallpox. That's a gift that keeps on giving. None
of us have to worry about smallpox. But the other
thing that I've always loved are reptiles, and that since undergrad,
as pre uncle might remember, I wanted to combine health
(05:07):
and conservation, so I did med school. Had a little
bit of an existential crisis. Did I make the right choice?
Because I would look for guidance on how to combine
these careers and I wouldn't get a lot of direction.
I ended up joining the CDC and had one of
the most amazing experiences of my life. It was such
a privilege to get to do that work. I was
(05:28):
chasing infectious diseases around the world. But I found that
we weren't in the public health sector talking enough about
protecting nature to improve our health. And that's why I
left the CEC and how I work at a nonprofit
for the.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Listeners that maybe might be new to this. They might
not have an understanding of the impact of nature on
our health. Can you help us make the connection between
why does deforestation matter for our health? Why is this important?
Speaker 4 (05:57):
You know?
Speaker 2 (05:57):
For me that all came into focus during a year
off that I took from medical school. I was in
Uganda doing ATIV and malaria research, trying to figure out
my own future directions. But before I even came across
that life changing paper for me personally, I have to
give a shout out to two movies that actually had
a very big impact on me. So when I was fourteen,
I saw the movie Outbreak that was released in the
(06:18):
mid nineties, and I was like, I want to be
like Renee Russo Cuba getting jor Dustin Hoffmann and one
day where that has mass. But you'll remember in that
movie there's this monkey that was running around that they're
trying to catch before it like leads to more what
are known as zoonautic infections, right, so infections caused by
pathogens that jump from animals into people. Then another movie
(06:39):
that I watched, probably when I was maybe a junior
or a senior in college, is twenty eight Days Later.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
Yeah, and I love horror movies.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
You know that movie is all about again this like
fictitious virus, the rage virus that jumps over from animals
into people and then causes the zombie apocalypse. But again,
you know, these movies captured my imagination. They they helped
me start understanding how what we are doing to nature
and animals in particular is actually leading to more outbreaks
that affects us. And then I read that paper in
(07:10):
two thousand and eight published in the journal Nature, and
it was like an epiphany for me. I suddenly understood
how infectious diseases are increasingly emerging around the world. Most
are caused by viruses and other pathogens that jump from
animals into people. And it's because of what we're doing
cutting down rainforests, putting people in closer proximity to wildlife
(07:33):
as well as our domestic animals. We're stressing wildlife out.
So just like humans, when we're stressed, we're more likely
to get sick. The singles for wildlife, when they lose
their habitats, they're more likely to express infections and infect us.
We're sticking animals in these awful conditions in industrial forms
where there's genetically homogeneous chicken populations, for example, that don't
(07:53):
have a lot of immunity. They're not robust and resistant
to infections. We are trading wildlife around the world. Then,
you know, it really worries me that we are going
to see more and more pandemics in the coming decades
and unless we make a major change in how we
interact with nature.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Your organization One Health, you have a three pronged approach
to dealing with this. You talk with the intersection of human, animal,
environmental health. Can you talk about the importance these things
have in creating and preventing infectious disease.
Speaker 4 (08:24):
Yeah, you know. So.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
I work for this organization called Conservation International. It's a
nonprofit that was started maybe thirty forty years ago, and
our mission is to protect nature for people. Now, the
old model of conservation is that people used to get
separated from the areas being protected, which is a fundamentally
flawed approach because people are a part of.
Speaker 4 (08:44):
Nature, not apart from nature.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
And so the way we do conservation is to put
communities at the center of all of our work. And
so the way I see it is, when done right,
conservation is public health. Any intervention to protect nature is
actually improving our own health. And this gets back to
the fact that we need nature to survive. There is
(09:07):
no future for humanity without nature. But if you look
at the past fifty years, around almost seventy five percent
of wild animal populations have declined.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
Something like that.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
If you look at the mass of all mammals that
occupy the planet today, ninety six percent are humans and
our livestock like cows and pigs, and only four percent
are wild animals, wild mammals, And so we've caused this
massive decline and what's known as biodiversity, the variety of
life on this planet. And to me, that's just so scary.
(09:42):
There is no future for our species if we live
on a planet without biodiversity. Everything we get for our
survival comes from nature. We're talking about water, air, the
supplies that allow us to live in cities and villages
and on, and so we need to start taking care
of our planet to secure a better future. I'll just
(10:06):
say one more thing. You know, we have had massive
gains in human progress over the last fifty to one
hundred years thanks to our extraction of resources from nature,
such as fossil fuels, thanks to development of new technologies. Again,
made possible by resources as well as our ability to
convert natural landscapes into other forms of lands such as farms,
(10:30):
and so because of that, we've seen human well being
go up, but at the same time, the well being
of nature has been declining. But now we've arrived at
this tipping point where we have things like climate change
and this mass extinction and pandemics which are happening because
of what we've done to nature.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
So we need to correct that imbalance.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
So let's kind of double click a little bit and
slow down on what because you're hitting on some like
really really big collective oriented themes. And one of the
questions that I have for you, given all that you know,
is what can a singular, average person do who may
(11:08):
not have corporate ties, who is just like a regular person.
Because when a regular person hears all this, there's almost
a sense of like, well, this seems really a lot
bigger than me. What can I do? So what sort
of advice do you have for listeners or people just
listening going about their lives, like how can they make
(11:31):
changes in the right direction?
Speaker 2 (11:34):
I love this question because I've been in that place
myself before four and a half years ago, when I
made the move to Conservation International. I felt so much
anxiety about what is happening to the planet and that
I am not contributing to the solutions. I just felt
like I was part of the problem. I felt a
lot of anger at my own self for not doing more.
(11:55):
So it's almost paralyzing. And then I had this amazing
opportunity in early twenty twenty one to move over to
this nonprofit and it was nine and day for me.
Suddenly I was surrounded by people who are committed to
protecting nature for their lives. Right, They've made that their
their life's purpose, and I see those solutions all around me. Right,
(12:16):
there are so many incredible things happening every day, so
many people who go unrecognize, but who are committed to
planting trees or doing whatever they can. Now, I'm not
saying that everyone needs to you know, if you care
about nature, that you need to drop your you know,
whatever you're doing and find a job full time and
conservation or you know, become you know, among you know
(12:37):
and renownced like the material world. But there is something
that each of us can do. One of my favorite
climate activists, Clover Hogan, has this quote where she says,
we do not need a hundred perfect activists, We need
a million imperfect ones. And I really love that because
none of us are perfect. We don't we should not
be holding ourselves to this unattainable stand Rather, each of
(13:01):
us can choose to do something that's within our grasp
and do it really well and have impact in that
area and then inspire others to take action in their
own way. Right, So, you don't need to have this
massive change in your life or you know, renounce everything
that you have right now in your life. You just
really need to find where it is that you can
have an impact in your own life and just start
(13:23):
doing that. So, identify what it is that you care about,
identify what your strengths are, and then move forward on that.
Maybe it's about reducing uses of certain materials in your work,
or maybe it's about eating less meat in your diet. Again,
we don't have to be perfect, but just choose an
area and start making progress.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
What does success look like to you? And do you
feel like success is possible?
Speaker 2 (13:47):
One of my favorite authors, Ianna Elizabeth Johnson, has this
book What If I Get It Right? And so your
question reminds me of that wonderful book, and I do
believe a better world is possible.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Right.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
We're not in you, I hope here right now. We
will never be in utopia. There's always room to do
better and continually improve.
Speaker 4 (14:05):
But I see so much progress.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Right if you compare how people are doing today compared
to how we were fifty years ago. Right, so many
more people are living above the poverty line around the world.
That is incredible progress. That gives me hope. I see
so much action in terms of the private sector, governments
around the world taking action to reduce carbon emissions. A
(14:29):
few years ago, out of the Convention on Biological Diversity,
which is the UN arm that deals with protecting biodiversity,
over one hundred and ninety countries signed on to this
Global Biodiversity Framework to protect thirty percent of land and
oceans by twenty thirty. Right, these are all incredible landmark achievements.
Of course, we need to move beyond talk, but I
(14:52):
believe in a continual improvement process.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
Right.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
So I don't know if there is a clear definition
of success for me, other than I firmly believe that
we need an awakening. We need to and I say
this as a scientist and someone who's currency of work
are data in facts. But that alone is not enough
to inspire action. Right, we have decades upon decades of
(15:17):
data that the climate is changing, yet we do not
have sufficient action to date. But what I think is
really critical are you know the people like YouTube who
have like this fun approach to gathering information and like
using comedy to inspire people. People who are artists, writers, actors, right,
(15:37):
all types of people to inspire us to think of
a better future that I think is possible. Again, if
you think back to the nineteen forties and you lived
in in Europe when when the Nazis were taking over, right,
this seemed like the world was about to end, but
people rose up to the challenge and change the world.
And I think that a better future is possible. More
(16:02):
to come on health stuff.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
So I mean, it's very interesting because you've been studying
pandemics like way before COVID, and I feel like the world,
let's say the United States, like didn't really think about
pandemics until it actually affected our lives and now we're
all pandemic aware. But I am so curious when COVID happened,
(16:30):
were you like already over it before it even started
because of the work that you do. Or were you
just as sort of frazzled as the rest of us,
or was it more like, oh yeah, like I told
you so, guys, what was your experience of COVID given
your background?
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Yeah, you know, my partner often says that I can
be this is before COVID, right like, and she would
say that I'm a party proper. We were like in
twenty nineteen at this campfire. We met the random people
around this campfire, right like, they were at the same
hotel as us, and we just started talking. Then I
go on and say, look, we are at this really
difficult point in history where there's the convergence of five
(17:12):
existential threats climate change, loss of bio diversity, artificial intelligence,
nuclear war, the war on truth.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
Right Like, I just like rattled off these things, and.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
I'm like they were like, man, we're just at a rave.
Speaker 4 (17:23):
Dude, Yeah exactly. And then the next year the pandemic struck. Right.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
And the reason I'm emphasizing this is because many people
in the public health space have been saying for decades
it's not a question of if a pandemic is going
to occur, it's a matter of when And if you
look at the last one hundred and seven years, right,
since nineteen eighteen, there have been six viral pandemics at
(17:48):
least depending on how you count it, you could even
say there's more. But there's been four flu pandemics, there's
been an HIV pandemic, and then there's COVID. In total
these it killed over ninety million PEO. So pandemics claim
a lot of wise and because of what we are
doing to nature, we are going to see the pace
of pandemics increasing several fold in the coming decades. So
(18:12):
I think it's very likely in the next ten years
we will see another pandemic, and I think it could
be far worse than COVID. Right, seven million plus people
died from COVID. It was awful, but in many ways
we dodged a bullet, right, because there are even more
deadly pathogens out there, such as some of the novel
influenza viruses. And on top of that, we are worse
(18:34):
off today in certain ways than we were back in
twenty nineteen because there's been a collapse of public health
infrastructures all over the world. There's less trust in public
agencies in general. Beyond health institutions and healthcare workers are tired.
Many of my closest friends are emergency room and infectious
(18:55):
disease doctors who were working in New York City hospitals
back in and I just when I hear what they
went through, it breaks my heart. It was so hard,
and that was the experience for healthcare workers all around
the world, and so I'm very concerned about this. In
twenty twenty, Mayror Bill de Blasio in New York City
(19:16):
tapped me to lead the city's COVID contact tracing program.
It was the hardest thing I've ever done professionally. You know,
I've been to Western Central Africa for the two biggest
e Bowl outbreaks ever. I was in Haiti after the
twenty ten earthquake. You know, I've seen awful, awful things,
but nothing like the response in New York City. And
(19:37):
that's heartbreaking, right, Like the number of people that died,
suffered so much, the isolation, right beyond just the debts,
but we all know this, right, people just felt socially isolated.
Speaker 4 (19:47):
Yeah, so it worries me.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
What did you learn from leading the contact tracing program
in New York?
Speaker 4 (19:54):
Like, were there lessons learned from that. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
I mean the lessons I learned was I guess, like,
on a personal level, surround yourself with good people. I
had the most amazing team. It wouldn't have been possible
without this team I had. Like, these are people who
already were so impacted by the pandemic, but they stood
up in the face of all that adversity, worked the
(20:18):
craziest hours, and they did this because they believe in
public service. And I just am so grateful to them.
I think that mission matters right when you people are
inspired by mission, And so often I think we lose
sight in the modern world of like purpose because we've
(20:40):
become so disconnected from each other. But when we start
connecting again personally, I think it can reinspire us to
work towards a better world.
Speaker 4 (20:50):
Now.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
In terms of like the public health lessons that I learned,
it's just a lot of what we already knew before
the pandemic, which is that we have to invest in
public health infrastructure. Public health services are a public utility.
As late David Lee used to say that it's a
public utility that goes unrecognized when public health is working
(21:12):
well because you're not having outbreaks of diarrheal disease from
your water supply that you're getting through your city pipes,
or because you're not dealing with, you know, outbreaks of
respiratory pathogens. You don't even know that public health is
there working in the background. It's only when things go
wrong that then you know, people become aware, but then
(21:33):
they get angry. We're asking more and more of government,
but expecting government to do provide those services with less
and less resources. So I think it's a tough situation,
but I hope that we can start reinvesting in our
public health institutions like the CDC.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
It is so I mean, speaking of the CDC, there's
been so many changes, so many cutbacks. If you could,
let's say you got the call and you know, they
were like, okay, Neil, you run the CDC, what would
be kind of the top maybe one or two things
that you would want to have in place, like PRONTO.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Data and surveillance are the backbones of public health work,
and so we need to be investing in our public
health surveillance systems that we can get good data on
which we can base decisions. Right, some of the major
killers in the country are not necessarily the ones that
we can make movies out of. Right, So, even though
I'm an infectious disease public health expert, you know, a
(22:32):
lot of the public health work needs to happen on
chronic diseases like cardiovascular disease, you know, bring you know
all about like access to better foods, and there are
food deserts around the country and around the world. So
I think there's a lot of basic public health work
that needs to get done. But what concerns me is
(22:53):
that we don't again talk about that connection to nature,
which is the focus of my work now. A lot
of the bad things that we're already seeing and that
we're going to increasingly see in the coming decades are
a result of our broken relationship with nature. So for me,
we have to start correcting that imbalance, protecting what's left
of nature so that we can actually secure our own future.
(23:15):
I mentioned before, we're losing biodiversity at this astonishing pace.
We are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction.
Right The last one before this was around sixty five
million years ago when the dinosaurs disappeared after an asteroid
collided with our planet. But this sixth one, right now,
this is the only one that's because of a single species,
(23:37):
and that's us humans. We are destroying landscapes, we are
causing climate change, and as a result, all these animals,
all these plants, fungi, these species are disappearing. And you know,
beyond the obvious ways that this impacts our health, like
for example, you know, providing clean water to whole cities
(24:00):
or giving us clean air. Beyond those obvious examples, as
this web of life unravels, there are so many surprising
ways that it begins to impact our health. I'll give
you an example. This researcher, I think it was last
year he published this incredible work. There's this fungal infection
spreading in bats in North America. Came from somewhere, probably
(24:20):
in the Eastern hemisphere, but this fungal infection was introduced.
Over a million bats have died across the US and Canada.
Now that might not sound like a big deal, but
what this researcher showed is that as bats have declined,
farmers have had to use more and more pesticides because
bats off any insects, and as pasticide uses increase, there
(24:43):
is a correlation to increased infant mortality. Right, So basically,
the loss of these bats is leading to infants dying. Now,
I have to be very caveat this by saying, we
don't know for sure that the loss of bats is
causing those infint debts, but there is this strong correlation
and there's other examples of this. Right, So we need
to start protecting what's left on this planet because if
(25:05):
at the end of the day, all we have left
our humans cows, pigs, and chickens, that's going to lead
to a lot of bad things. We need that biodiversity
for our own resilience.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
I mean related question like what policies should nations put
in to play enact in order to reach these goals?
Speaker 4 (25:22):
You know.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
So there's that Convention on Biological Diversity out of the
United Nations that I mentioned, right, So there are nations
committed to protecting thirty percent of their lands and marine
ecosystems by twenty thirty. The problem is, you know, despite
this commitment, there has not been the resources to necessarily
follow up on that, and so we need more resources
(25:44):
getting invested in this area. The challenge is that, you know,
when we talk about protecting nature, quite often the money,
the profit incentive is not necessarily there. Right now, an
acre of forest is worth more chopped down than it
is worthstanding, and we have to reassess our incentive structures.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
So I just want to take a minute to pause
a little bit because you're naming huge, huge topics and
it's palpable, Like I can feel it in my body
when you talk about it, just the passion you know,
you're it's almost like you're speaking on behalf of mother nature,
Like I'm the representative for this and it's a lot.
(26:29):
It seems like it's a lot to receive, it's a
lot to carry, especially like in your body. And so
I'm so curious Neil, about how do you keep yourself
regulated on a day to day basis when you know
all of this stuff, you have, all of these concerns,
(26:49):
you're naming these really really big issues. It's a lot
to digest. What do you do to keep yourself not
like crying in a ball several hours a day or
maybe maybe you do do that, Maybe that is what
you do. Like I'd love to understand, like what is
your self care practice to do work on this level?
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Yeah, it's tough, right, like when you're constantly dealing with
you know, the possibility of you know, the next species
dying out.
Speaker 4 (27:18):
It's hard.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
I remember, and I think it was twenty twenty two
a report came out that said one in five reptiles
are threatened with extinction or something like that, and reptiles
are like my, my, my thing. And I just remember
crying when I when I heard about that. But I
would say that there's four things that keep me going.
Number one, personal relationships, particularly to my partner who's meeting
(27:40):
her was the best thing to ever happen to me.
I'm so lucky I have her in my life. I
have an amazing family, right, so, an amazing family and friends,
and so personal relationships. Number Two is Brazilian jiu jitsu.
Speaker 4 (27:53):
I like going at it.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Yeah, yeah, you know, which has been a really interesting
experience for me. If any one is following like the
Ultimate fighting damage that maybe not. But like next year,
President Trump is talking about having a UFC match on
like the grounds of the White House.
Speaker 4 (28:13):
I love UFC.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
I'm not sure I'm necessarily a big fan of doing
UFC at the White House, but Brazilian jiu jitsu is
key to mixed martial arts, which is what UFC is
all about. And for me when I go train, I
started training around maybe six years ago. I stumbled upon this,
but it's just been life changing because when I am
training for that hour hour and a half that I'm
(28:35):
at the gym, like I don't think about anything else.
It's my way to disconnect and it just puts me
in a state of flow. Then I can come back
to my work with charge. But the other really cool
thing is I used to live in New York City
and I used to train in New York City. Last
year I moved to upstate New York. And you know,
when I trained in the city, I was training with
a lot of people who were left leaning liberal like me.
But now upstate here in the Hudson Valley where I
(28:58):
train at, there's a lot of people who are on
the op as the end of the political spectrum. And
you know, when we're at this gym, though we are
all together, we are finding community. We trust each other,
right like in jiu jitsu, you're literally trying to rip
each other's arms and legs off, and so you know,
there's so much trust that comes with that. And for me,
it's a beautiful thing that in this neutral third space
(29:19):
of this martial arts gym. We're able to come together
and find community, and that actually gives me hope. I
think we need to start reconnecting more. Item number three
is spirituality. When you do conservation and you're thinking about nature,
you're necessarily thinking about things bigger than you, and you
see the interconnectedness of all life, and so it's just
(29:40):
it's been humbling.
Speaker 4 (29:41):
You know.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
I recognize my insignificance in the grand scheme of the universe,
but I'm also so grateful that I'm on this planet,
that I have this brief moment of time to pursue
my purpose. I feel so grateful for that every day.
And the fourth thing I'll just mention is horror. I
love vampires and zombies and things like that. And you know,
a lot of when you think about horror and like
(30:03):
scary stories, a lot of this has inspired those stories
by things we do not understand in the world. So
back in the seventeen hundreds, all that people were talking
about in Europe was vampires. They were so scared of vampires.
And this was before the germ theory of disease was
really popularized, and so you had common diseases like rabies
and tuberculosis that didn't have an explanation, and vampires was
(30:25):
one way that people tried to understand and comprehend those
types of public health threats. And you know, in the
current age, what we're grappling with is climate change and like,
you know, a world that's rapidly changing, you know, not
just from climate change, but from other factors as well.
And that's why I think we've seen a rise in
you know, zombie movies and shows in recent years. But
(30:46):
it provides this sandbox through which I can explore some
of my worst fears and it helps me deal with
the reality that were now living in.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
I'm really curious as to because you were involved in
fighting the to ebola outbreaks in Central and West Africa,
how do you do work like that and not constantly
fear your own like your own death because it's such
a there's so many workers who are exposed to ebola
and died from it pretty quickly. Like knowing that even
(31:19):
with hazmat suits and the rest of it, like there
is this high risk, Like how do you put that
aside to do the work you need to do?
Speaker 2 (31:25):
You know, honestly, as a CDC employee, when you get
deployed to deal with an outbreak. You actually tend to
know what you're dealing with by the time you get there,
so you know what precautions to take. The people who
I think are at more risk and the real heroes
are those frontline healthcare workers who are seeing people often
(31:47):
without a lot of resources, and then they have to
manage these people with unknown illnesses and then they can
themselves get sick. So we saw in Ebola outbreak after
Ebola outbreak, healthcare workers are at such high risk. I
remember when I was in like the Congo. This is
in twenty nineteen. I was in the Congo for the
second biggest e bullet outbreak ever, and we were visiting
(32:08):
this this hospital and there was these surgical masks that
were strung up along the side of the building of
a hospital because they were being washed and reused in
the middle.
Speaker 4 (32:19):
Of an a Bola outbreak. And I was like so
struck by that.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
So I took pictures and when I came back, I
used them in presentations saying like this is how dire
the circumstances are.
Speaker 4 (32:27):
Or when I was in Liberia, you know, in.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
The biggest e bullet outbreak ever, overnight the community care
center affiliated with the community hospital I was working out of.
They just ran out of gloves overnight. Right, how do
you take care of your bullet patients without gloves? My god,
it was appalling, but you know, you fast forward to
spring of twenty twenty, COVID is now happening. I'm in
(32:49):
New York City. My closest friend from residency calls me
one day because she's working out of a New York
City hospital and she has to, you know, be working
in the emergency room to deal with COVID patients. And
the hospital was running out of N ninety five respirators
and masks, and she was asking me whether I had
any spare respirators that she could borrow. And I still
(33:11):
had a stack of N ninety fives from my prior
Ebola deployment that I could then give to her. But
underscores infectious diseases are equalizers. It does not matter where
you are in the world. Right when an emergency happens,
it'll strain any system after a certain point, including a
resource rich place like the United States. So how do
(33:32):
I stay safe? I mean, you use science and you
make educated decisions. I think generally, you know, again, the
work is generally pretty safe, but of course there's there's
a risk every time I you know, I even crossed
the street in New York City just walking to go
to a restaurant. Right, you can get hit by a car.
So you just you make decisions in life and you
just have to try to be smart about them.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
We'll be back with more health stuff after this break.
There's so many things that I want to like double
click on. Firstly, can we just go back to the
jiu jitsu? So, like, are you so what I'm imagining
is like, okay, we get liberals and conservatives and we
(34:16):
just get them to wrestle with each other, and like this,
this is this the solution to our country right now,
Like let's just get on the mat and like get
it all out.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
I mean, this is just amazing how much camaraderie is
built in that setting, right, Like you have people who
are just there to pursue this. I mean some people
are trying to go pro but most of us are there,
like and you know, we're just there at the end
of the day or on the morning before work or
after work.
Speaker 4 (34:44):
To get a little blow off, a little steam.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Yeah, you're just there to like work through your stuff.
Speaker 4 (34:49):
Yeah right, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
But it's just like jiu jitsu in particular, Like you said,
it's kind of like wrestling. It's a grappling based art,
and it's pretty great in that, Like you're on these masks,
especially with my hair is like a mop and the
math's literally after a session like have puddles of sweat,
and you know, sometimes you're below someone in there like
(35:11):
a real sweater and they're just dripping sweat into your
eyes and your face and your nose and mouth, and
I'm just like closing my eyes and trying to not
get that in my orifices. But it builds this camaraderie.
And I right, I'm not sure jiu jitsus for everyone.
You know, it's something, you know. The point, though, is
that we need to refine these third spaces schools, places
(35:34):
of faith, libraries, right and in a lot of ways,
these neutral third spaces have been eliminated, and we are
then losing our connection to other people and our ability
to see each other's humanity.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
I think we certainly need to start thinking outside of
the box and getting really creative about solutions towards working
through our differences and maybe it is time to bring
in the absurd and the magical. Maybe that is the answer.
We just need to wrestle it out and sweat on
(36:07):
each other and get our pharaoams mixed up, and we
may not agree with each other, but at least we
can hold each other in humanity.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
Or we could watch the fun TV.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Yeah. Speaking of which, so did you watch Last of Us?
Because that, to me is like the latest sort of
like disaster film invoking climate change and like mold, which
you know, I definitely have experienced treating people who have
gotten mold sickness and whatnot. So I mean, have you
(36:38):
checked out the show, and if so, like, what are
your thoughts on that?
Speaker 4 (36:41):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (36:41):
I even had an op ed in the New York
Times about the Last of Us. It's definitely something that Look,
it's a fantastic show. I will say that it's more
of a show about relationships than it is about horror,
but I didn't think it does that very well. And
I do love how they open up with this amazing
TV interview the scientists and talking about changing climate. You know,
(37:02):
let's take a step back and talk about fungal infections, right,
and preamplely you've treated them before. Fungal infections can be
really tough to treat because fungal cells can be very
similar to human cells, and so then the medicines used
to treat those infections can be very toxic to our
own bodies. But like, if you have an invasive fungal infection,
it can be tough to treat. But if you look
(37:24):
at fungal diseases in other organisms, right, we have things
like tritomycosis that has caused extinction of entire species of amphibians. Right,
you have things like we talked about white nose syndrome
before that's caused a depth of over a million bats
across the United States and Canada. Right, Fungal infections can
(37:45):
be so pervasive because if they're environmentally spread, they're just
releasing their spores in the air. We're always we're constantly
breathing in these spores, and if the fungus is capable
of infecting us, then it can lead to bad things. Now,
the thing that the List of Us show does really
well is it makes this point that as climate is changing,
(38:05):
as the world is getting on average warmer and warmer,
it's creating an evolutionary pressure where fungi are basically being
selected for those that can live at higher temperatures. But
many of the fungal species right now that are already
around the world are ones that live at temperatures They
thrive at temperatures lower than the human body temperature. So
(38:26):
if we are selecting for fungal species that can live
at warmer and warmer temperatures, we might be seeing more
and more fungal outbreaks in the future. And there's already
one cannibal species that at least one of the leading
theories for how it evolved is because of climate change,
and this causes devastating infections in people. But like, what
else is there out there that where we currently don't
(38:49):
recognize as a human pathogen, that in the coming decades
will be considered a human pathogen because of climate change?
Speaker 3 (38:55):
This is very exciting to get some hot disaster gus.
Speaker 4 (38:59):
Yeah, this is.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
What I've been waiting for exactly.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
It's worrisome right, Like, and again, you're the spores are
all around us, so how do you protect yourself in
that setting? So what we need to be doing right
investing more in prevention, you know, to your earlier question,
what would I do if I had more control of
public health.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Decision, if you were the king of the CDC, what
would you do?
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Yeah, we need to be investing in prevention, right We
need to go upstream, take care of nature, you know,
start keeping forest protected, start fighting climate change more aggressively
than we are right now. We are going to blow
past our climate goals because we're not taking enough action
right now.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
You know the other thing that that resonates with me
with what you're saying as a physician, it sort of
also makes me acutely aware of how much I need
to continuously be on top of the data to stay
on top of this, because you're essentially talking about emerging
diseases of climate change, you know, novel diseases as a
(40:00):
result of the changing environment. As a physician, like I
can't just rely on like the stuff they taught me
in med school and residency. I need to be up
to date right now and tomorrow and the next day.
And so you know, it's it's also a call to
action to any healthcare professionals who are listening that it's
in your best incentive to stay on top of this
(40:20):
and don't be like a year behind because a year
from now we could be in a very different situation
like covid. It happened overnight.
Speaker 4 (40:28):
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
You know, the medical world is changing very fast, particularly
from infectious diseases. If you look at just like the
last fifteen years, we've had ebola, zeica. You know, massive
measles operate, COVID, mpox, avian flu is on the horizon,
right like, these things are popping up. Who would have
thought that a mosquito born virus like the Zica virus
(40:53):
would cause birth defects. You know, before two thousand and seven,
there had only ever been less than twenty reports cases
of zica in humans, right, it was considered a very
minor infection. Two thousand and seven, the first ever recognized
outbreak of Zica happened. I was in this island in
the Pacific Ocean called yap On that during that outbreak,
(41:13):
over seventy percent of the entire population is estimated to
have become infected.
Speaker 4 (41:19):
Over seventy percent.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (41:21):
And even then, in this setting of an outbreak like that,
the birth defects of zica were not recognized. So not
until twenty and sixteen, when Zica made its way to
the Western hemisphere when it started spreading at these massive
epidemic levels that people started to recognize that. But it
gets back to what you were saying, Prianca will always
(41:42):
be astute clinicians that recognize that, hey, what I'm seeing
in front of me in this patient is a little
bit weird, and let me work with the health department,
let me work with the CDC to do additional testing
to find out what's going on here. And that's why
I've let you know so much respect for clinicians who
do this work. It is so hard to do this work.
You're working such long hours, there's so much to learn.
(42:04):
There's so much pressure on our doctors and nurses and
physician assistance and beyond to do all this work to
take good care of patients. And on top of that,
there's always this personal risk. We're living in the pandemic
scene right where pandemics are just a part of the
world we now live in because of what we've done
to the world, and there's a risk adherent to that
(42:25):
for those clinicians doing that work.
Speaker 3 (42:28):
You talked about the influence of like outbreak in your
childhood and how that made you want to do the
work that you do.
Speaker 4 (42:36):
How accurate.
Speaker 3 (42:36):
Are those films.
Speaker 4 (42:38):
I think they do a great job. You know, this
is what I mean Like horror and these thrillers.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
They take a particular aspect of reality and maybe the
you know, they fictionalize it, they dramatize it, make it interesting.
They're rooted in some level of reality of evidence. But
then they take leeways right again to make it entertaining.
But I think that actually has a really important role
because as again we've seen with Ebola, zeka ebola just
(43:02):
in the last ten to fifteen years, when these real
outbreaks happen, they defy conventional clinical and public health wisdom.
We have to have humility, those of us who are
scientists and you know, doctors or whatever, epidemiologists, we have
to have humility. And that's what I think Horror gets right.
They're taking these fears to their worst extreme. But I
would say that COVID in many ways was a nightmare.
You know, whether or not you believe in the COVID vaccine,
(43:24):
it was a nightmare because we were isolated and people
were dying and whatever else. So I think that these
fictitious depictions of infectious diseases are very important, even for
an expert like me for me to like imagine what
is going on and how things are getting worse or
what directions the world can go in. So yeah, they
(43:46):
take you know.
Speaker 4 (43:47):
I don't think zombies are real, but with that being said,
I think, like again, there's validity to those films.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
We live in a time of just so much false information,
and especially coming from the White House and various agencies.
How do people find their way to the truth when
you're getting all this false information.
Speaker 4 (44:11):
That's one of my greatest concerns.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
And I you know, of all the existential threats out there,
from the mass extinction to pandemics, to the risk of
nuclear war and artificial intelligence, to me, the one that
worries me the most is misinformation and disinformation because we have,
for example, decades upon decades of evidence that the climate
(44:34):
is changing. But there's also been a very concerted campaign,
in part by fossil fuel companies and others with vested
interests that have spread all this misinformation such that people
are still debating, including in the United States, whether climate
change is real or whether humans are the cause of it.
Right like now, it's shifted in people are saying that
climate change is real, but humans aren't the cause of
(44:54):
it is what some people are saying. The reality is
that we know that the climate is changing and that's
because of human activities, particularly the combustion of fossil fuels.
And we're seeing this on the public outside with anti
vaccine rhetoric. It's all the same thing, right, And so
ultimately science has been a victim of its own success.
We have longer lifespans than ever before on average in
(45:16):
recent years, fewer children are dying under five, There's more
access to energy, food, right, we live better lives. None
of us would want to give this up. This has
been made possible by science and technological developments, and yet
you have entities that are purposely spreading misinformation and disinformation
to undermine progress. And so it really worries me. A
(45:38):
life spreads faster than the truth, you know, in the
age of social media gets harder and harder, and then
you have deep fakes where fake videos are being created.
So it's just it's very complex, and I think we
need to combat that miss and disinformation with accurate information.
But this gets back to what I was saying before.
You know, we need to not just have scientists, the
(46:00):
communicators and ambassadors for science. We need to be teaming
up in creative ways. And Pranco, you were saying I
think something like this before as well. But we need
to be teaming up in creative ways across different expertise, right,
and getting information out there, and I guess meeting people
where they're at, right, Like, we all prefer to receive
information in different ways, So let's make sure that information
(46:21):
gets packaged in different ways and delivered effectively.
Speaker 1 (46:25):
Yeah, and a little jiu jitsu doesn't hurt either while
you're at.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
Actually like, oh look, I'll give you an example though.
One of the people in my gym, you know, one
of the really experienced people who can just kick my butt.
But like you know, early on when I first met
him and he would like find out that I'm a doctor,
and then we started to build trust. You know, he
asked me like, what is your view on the COVID
vaccine because he had never received it before. And then
after we had built that trust, he said, you know,
(46:49):
now that you're saying it, I guess it makes sense, right,
And so is that personal connection, that trust that had
been built. I think in a lot of ways, our
healthcare institutions and our public health in structure in the
United States has failed the population of this country. And
you know, healthcare premiums are about to go up, and
we're going to continue to fail people. And to me,
that's heartbreaking. So people have lost trust in the institutions
(47:14):
that can help them.
Speaker 1 (47:16):
Yeah, I mean healthcare is so expensive. Har he needs
his own podcast doctor in order to like stay healthy.
Speaker 3 (47:23):
Yeah, this has nothing to do with the podcast. I'm
being paid with health advice.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
So Neil, thank you so much for your time today
and just really truly educating us about so much that's
going on. And what I'm also taking is that like
you're you're still hopeful, like you you don't like we're
not screwed, right, like you tell tell me we're not screwed.
Speaker 2 (47:48):
Right, Well, we aren't screwed. There's solutions all around us.
And like I'm living proof that action is the best
antidote to despair. I've never been more hopeful for the world,
you know, even to spy, like so many things that
I'm used to that this country is used to suddenly
falling apart. The future is right the as MLK would say,
(48:08):
the moral arc of the universe is long, but it
bends towards justice, but it's up to us to make
it bend in that way. And so let's all do
something that we can to create a better.
Speaker 1 (48:18):
World, Doctor Neil Vora, everyone, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (48:22):
Yes, oh, thank you all so much. It's been a
pleasure to be here.
Speaker 4 (48:25):
Yeah, that was great.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
Health Stuff is a production of iHeart Podcasts. The show
is hosted by me Harico Debolu and doctor Prianco Wally.
Producers are Rebecca Eisenberg, Jenna Kagel, Christina Loranger, Maya Howard,
and Katrina Norville. Our researcher is Maria Tremarki and our
intern is Katia Obeldea Yala. To send us a question,
you can email us a voicemail at health Stuff podcast
(48:53):
at gmail dot com. Thank you for listening.
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