Conversation 63, Part 5: Delta Means Change (August 24, 2021)

This episode contains the fifth part of our conversation about COVID-19, the Delta variant, and the territory we’re all lost in. In this part, Grace and I talk about how Delta is forcing a change in the narrative, and worse, a dishonest retelling of previous versions of the pandemic public health narrative. With broken air conditioning, we attempt a speed run through several articles. Delta is the predominant variant in Michigan now. An expert from Veterans Affairs writes about how Delta is different and why non-pharmaceutical interventions are more important than ever. A Slate writer argues that things won’t be returning to normal. And a Vox writer slips us a delicious poisoned apple as she downplays the risks of Delta in the service of the reassuring lie.

Show Notes

The MLive article “Delta predominant in Michigan; 99% of specimens identified as variant in last 4 weeks” can be found here.

The Tampa Bay Times opinion column “What we now know about how to fight the delta variant of COVID” by J. Stacey Klutts can be found here.

Lucian Truscott’s article in Salon, “Will things ever return to normal? It doesn’t look that way right now” can be found here.

German Lopez’s article from Vox, “We have to accept some risk of Covid-19,” can be found here.

The music clips are from the song “Changing” by The Fixx from the album Reach the Beach, released in 1983.

How to Listen

You can find the MP3 file here.

The Podcast feed is here.

Note that I recently changed our server to support HTTPS. All future podcast links will use HTTPS, and HTTP requests to our server should be automatically redirected to use HTTPS.

This episode is also on YouTube here. It is audio-only. Note that because I often use brief clips of copyrighted music, YouTube may insert ads or block viewing in some locations (for example, some episodes can’t be viewed in Cuba). Even if a video can be played now, there is no guarantee YouTube won’t change these permissions in the future.

The Podcast channel on YouTube is here.