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A Terrible Covid Christmas Special

This year was the worst. And as our staff tried to figure out what to do for our last episode of 2020, co-host Latif Nasser thought, what if we stare straight into the darkness … and make a damn Christmas special about it. Latif begins with a story about Santa, and a back-room deal he made with the Trump administration to jump to the front of the vaccine line, a tale that travels from an absurd quid-pro-quo to a deep question: who really is an essential worker?  From there, we take a whistle-stop tour through the numbers that scientists say you need to know as you wind your way (or preferably, don’t wind your way) through our COVID-infested world. Producer Sarah Qari brings us her version of the Christmas classic nobody ever dreamt they’d want to hear: The Twelve Numbers of COVID. You can check out Martin Bazant’s COVID “calculator” here. This episode was reported by Latif Nasser and Sarah Qari, and was produced by Matt Kielty, Sarah Qari, and Pat Walters. Special thanks to Anna Weggel and Brant Miller, Catherine, Rohan, and Finn Munro, Noam Osband, Amber D’Souza, Chris Zangmeister, John Volckens, Joshua Santarpia, Laurel Bristow, Michael Mina,  Mohammad Sajadi, James V. Grimaldi, Stephanie Armour, Joshuah Bearman, Brendan Nyhan And for more on the proposed Santa vaccine deal, see Julie Wernau and her colleagues' reporting at the Wall Street Journal here. Original art for this episode by Zara Stasi. Check out her work at:  www.goodforthebees.com.  Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.    
Duration
52m
Broadcast on
23 Dec 2020
Audio Format
other

This year was the worst. And as our staff tried to figure out what to do for our last episode of 2020, co-host Latif Nasser thought, what if we stare straight into the darkness … and make a damn Christmas special about it.

Latif begins with a story about Santa, and a back-room deal he made with the Trump administration to jump to the front of the vaccine line, a tale that travels from an absurd quid-pro-quo to a deep question: who really is an essential worker? 

From there, we take a whistle-stop tour through the numbers that scientists say you need to know as you wind your way (or preferably, don’t wind your way) through our COVID-infested world. Producer Sarah Qari brings us her version of the Christmas classic nobody ever dreamt they’d want to hear: The Twelve Numbers of COVID.

You can check out Martin Bazant’s COVID “calculator” here.

This episode was reported by Latif Nasser and Sarah Qari, and was produced by Matt Kielty, Sarah Qari, and Pat Walters.

Special thanks to Anna Weggel and Brant Miller, Catherine, Rohan, and Finn Munro, Noam Osband, Amber D’Souza, Chris Zangmeister, John Volckens, Joshua Santarpia, Laurel Bristow, Michael Mina,  Mohammad Sajadi, James V. Grimaldi, Stephanie Armour, Joshuah Bearman, Brendan Nyhan

And for more on the proposed Santa vaccine deal, see Julie Wernau and her colleagues' reporting at the Wall Street Journal here.

Original art for this episode by Zara Stasi. Check out her work at:  www.goodforthebees.com. 

Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.    


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So wait, you're listening to Radio Lab from WNYC. Okay. What if this is our first time doing the thing together? Yeah. Wow. In the spirit of turning over the old and bringing on the new, "Hey, I'm Jedi Moon Rod. I'm Latif Nasser. This is Radio Lab. And before we get started today, just a quick warning, this episode contains some strong language and fact-based discussions of a certain bearded man in a red suit. Who could it be? And yeah, this is our final episode of the year, which we should just get out ahead of and say, "This year has been awful." Yeah, just really sucked. It sucked hard. Not gonna rehash it all, obviously, but, uh, and I hate to use this phrase, but these are unprecedented times. Several new unwanted records. Like every day. We're seeing the 9 million mark. We're seeing new COVID numbers. 10 million. To 11 million. Total cases. 100,000 people are in the hospital. Hospitalizations. Staggering milestone. Deaths. 300,000 confirmed coronavirus-related deaths in less than a year. It's terrible. So eventually, we were just like, "You know what, 2020? Fuck you." We're gonna do a goddamn Christmas special. We're gonna have fun, whether we like it or not. We're gonna have some fun. So today, to put a cap on this God forsaken year, we have two different stories related to the pandemic, both Christmas themed stories. And we're gonna start with, uh, with me. You with you? I just wanna know, is it irony? I'm not sure if it's irony, that currently, we have two different people talking about two different aspects of Christmas, and they're both Muslim, and don't solve very Christmas. I love it. I love it. I was not only talking about, not only talking about, I was last night, it was midnight. I was texting Santa, um, I'm deep in this story. I'm deep. Okay, so I know we're talking about Santa, but that's really all I know. Okay, well, I think the important place to start is, uh, of course, as always with Dr.

Transcription truncated.

This year was the worst. And as our staff tried to figure out what to do for our last episode of 2020, co-host Latif Nasser thought, what if we stare straight into the darkness … and make a damn Christmas special about it. Latif begins with a story about Santa, and a back-room deal he made with the Trump administration to jump to the front of the vaccine line, a tale that travels from an absurd quid-pro-quo to a deep question: who really is an essential worker?  From there, we take a whistle-stop tour through the numbers that scientists say you need to know as you wind your way (or preferably, don’t wind your way) through our COVID-infested world. Producer Sarah Qari brings us her version of the Christmas classic nobody ever dreamt they’d want to hear: The Twelve Numbers of COVID. You can check out Martin Bazant’s COVID “calculator” here. This episode was reported by Latif Nasser and Sarah Qari, and was produced by Matt Kielty, Sarah Qari, and Pat Walters. Special thanks to Anna Weggel and Brant Miller, Catherine, Rohan, and Finn Munro, Noam Osband, Amber D’Souza, Chris Zangmeister, John Volckens, Joshua Santarpia, Laurel Bristow, Michael Mina,  Mohammad Sajadi, James V. Grimaldi, Stephanie Armour, Joshuah Bearman, Brendan Nyhan And for more on the proposed Santa vaccine deal, see Julie Wernau and her colleagues' reporting at the Wall Street Journal here. Original art for this episode by Zara Stasi. Check out her work at:  www.goodforthebees.com.  Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.