Preview: NIH pandemic preparedness takedown, a Substack Live with Dr. Angela Rasmussen and Dr. Jeremy Faust.
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market
11 min read
Dr. Rasmussen's research on COVID-19 origins traces the pandemic to specific cages in the Wuhan live animal market. This Wikipedia article provides detailed context on the market's layout, the animal trade there, and its role in the pandemic's emergence.
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One Health
14 min read
Listed as one of Dr. Rasmussen's key areas of expertise, One Health is a specific public health framework connecting human, animal, and environmental health that's central to understanding pandemic preparedness and zoonotic disease spillover.
Today, Wednesday, November 19, at 6 p.m. ET, I’ll be joined in the Doctor’s Lounge on Substack Live by the brilliant virologist Dr. Angela Rasmussen to discuss the nearly 10,000-word blowtorch that we took to the NIH leadership’s recent essay on pandemic preparedness over the weekend. Since we published our rebuttal on Sunday on our respective Substacks, we’ve appreciated lots of positive feedback—including from several former HHS leaders who served during both the Biden and the first Trump administrations. (We also heard that a professor at Duke is going to assign the piece to his students, which is quite the honor.)
But we also know that our written responses were a heavy lift. So, we’re going to talk through the issues carefully today, for those who wish to consume this information in an audio/visual format. I’ll be sure to ask Dr. Rasmussen about her research, which has probably pinned the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic down to literally just a few cages in the live animal market in Wuhan. We’ll also make a summary of the main points afterward. And yes, we’ll uncork and rant just a bit, because, hello, have you met us? So, we’ll try to have some fun, while covering a serious topic.
To join us live, click this link (you can watch on any device, including the Substack app). To add it to your Google calendar, click here if that is easier for you. All Inside Medicine subscribers will receive an email with the link the moment we go live. Note: this session will also be posted on Inside Medicine afterward, and will be entirely free.
About Dr. Rasmussen
Here’s a partial bio of Dr. Angela Rasmussen, in her own words, taken from her Substack:
...I have a BA from Smith College, slung T cells at an immunotherapy startup for a few years after I graduated, got my PhD in Microbiology and Immunology from Columbia University in 2009 studying rhinovirus, did my postdoc at the University of Washington studying hepatitis C virus, and had faculty positions at UW in the Department of Microbiology, the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, and (currently) the University of Saskatchewan studying highly pathogenic emerging viruses like Ebola, bird flu, coronaviruses, and assorted other infectious threats. I have expertise in experimental virology, systems biology and computational methods (AI/machine learning/predictive modeling), One Health (the idea that human, animal,
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