Introducing: Breakthrough

On Breakthrough, a new series from the Prognosis podcast, we explore how the pandemic is changing our understanding of healthcare and medicine. We start with an examination of long Covid, a mysterious new illness that has stumped doctors attempting to treat symptoms that last for months and potentially years. It has changed the way hospitals work and forced healthcare officials to prepare for the next pandemic. Covid has also opened the door to revolutionary technology: messenger RNA vaccines. It’s a technology that never could have been proven so quickly outside the crucible of that first pandemic year, 2020, and it holds big implications for the future of medicine. Breakthrough launches on Oct. 19. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I had no idea that long COVID existed. The family
and friends that I would talk to, they had no
idea that a smell component was going to be a
long term feature of my illness. Symptoms like a loss
of smell can persist for months in some COVID survivors.
Others described debilitating brain fog and memory problems that turned

(00:22):
their life upside down. Is it ever going to be
normal again? Am I ever going to be able to
be me? And I don't feel like me? Solve and
I don't cry, but I don't feel like me anymore.
It appears long COVID will be with us, well beyond
the pandemic itself. It's just one of the ways in
which the coronavirus has reshaped our world. On Breakthrough, a

(00:46):
new series from the Prognosis podcast, we're exploring the legacy
of COVID and the medical mysteries baffling scientists. I'm Jason Gale,
a senior editor at Bloomberg News, and I'm Naomi Kraski,
health reporter at Bloomberg. COVID has also reshaped medical science
and opened the door to revolutionary technology. In this series,

(01:07):
will look at how the pandemic is changing healthcare, the
ways in which experts are preparing for future outbreaks, and
what scientists and patients are doing to get answers to
medical problems in real time. If anyone tells you that
they know what's going on, they're lying to you, like,
don't trust that person. That's the one person you can't
trust is the person who tells you categorically they know

(01:29):
what's going on, and I've certainly seen a lot of
clinicians doing that. In the second half of Breakthrough, we'll
tell you the story of how messenger RNA vaccines were
created and how they could be used in the future
to help treat other diseases like malaria and cancer. This
technology could never have proven itself so quickly outside the

(01:51):
crucible of that first pandemic year. It may well win
some researchers a Nobel Prize. It will almost so only
have big implications for the future of medicine. Looking back,
it's easy to forget that none of this was a given.
I was worried that the that the human vaccine might

(02:11):
be effective and we wouldn't know why. You'll hear from
the people who raced to make the vaccine at the
moment they found out how well it would work. So
I was incredible. Yeah, this was just Baith taking at that.
In this moment they understood, hey, there's a vaccine for
mankind and what it could mean for the future. Wherever

(02:36):
protein is needed, it can be applied. That could be
six thousand genetic diseases. Breakthrough launches on October nine. Subscribe
to Prognosis Today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you
get your podcasts.