The unlikely heroes of the coronavirus era
Lesson summary
Hi everyone, Jeff here, and thanks for joining us for Plain English lesson number 260. JR is our producer, hard at work producing two version of every lesson! One for the web site you know, and one for the new one we have under development. Just a few more lessons left doing double duty, JR! Hang in there.
Coming up today: The virologists and epidemiologists who are now the public face of the coronavirus. After toiling in obscurity for so long, they’re now the national face of the crisis in so many countries. We’ll check in on the public face of the coronavirus response in Germany, Italy, Greece, and the United States. The expression is “rise to the occasion.” And we have a video lesson as well. The video lesson is about how to use “almost since” when you’re talking about when something started. All that is available on the web site at PlainEnglish.com/260.
Scientists are the stars of the coronavirus show
The world’s newest hot celebrities aren’t reality TV stars, movie producers, sports stars, populist politicians, Instagram influencers, or anything else that dominated our media world in 2019 and earlier. They are, instead, scientists who have risen to the occasion. They calm our nerves, impart information, and give sage advice in this time of crisis.
Part lab scientist, part spokesman, part therapist—they wear many hats, but they all insist on not being politicians and not bending to political will. For that, they have been rewarded with the trust of their anxious populations.
Who are some of these new celebrities? Let’s start in Germany with Christian Drosten, the 48-year-old director of the Institute of Virology at a Berlin hospital. He is an expert on coronaviruses and was front-and-center during the SARS epidemic in 2003. He was on television then, but was frustrated with the way his comments were chopped up and packaged for TV. So he started working with Germany’s public radio network, NDR, on producing a daily podcast where he could frame the message in his own terms.
It has been a huge hit. The show has been the number-one podcast in Germany almost since its debut. The show has a question-and-answer format, where a science journalist interviews Dr. Drosten and then facilitates a question-and-answer session with members of the public. The format resonates with the audience because Dr. Drosten can answer the kinds of questions that are on people’s minds. In one recent show, he addressed why young, fit people were suffering so much from COVID-19. In other shows, he debunks popular myths about coronavirus cures.
Dr. Drosten advises the German government on the pandemic, but is not part of the government. In that respect, he is like Dr. Massimo Galli, a professor of infectious diseases in Milan. Dr. Galli swapped his lab coat for a suit jacket and has made frequent appearances on television, helping to keep the public informed and shape behavior. He calls social distancing “the mother of all battles.” He has called Milan a time bomb as it prepares to open up before, in Dr. Galli’s opinion, it is ready. Italy was the first country to have a severe, nationwide outbreak, so Dr. Galli was one of the first of the new breed of celebrity-scientists. He was warning neighboring countries about what was coming when the virus was still new to Italy.
Some of the new celebrities are part of the official government response. In Greece, where there hasn’t been an intense outbreak, citizens nonetheless tune in every day at 6:00 p.m. to hear Professor Sotirios Tsiodras. The plain-spoken professor usually sticks to the facts, frequently referring to his notes, and dispensing useful advice. He offers the occasional personal message, as well. His empathy and authenticity are what people like about him most.
In the United States, we have Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. The diminutive 79-year-old has about half a century of experience working in public health and built his career studying HIV, AIDS, and other infectious diseases. He has the difficult job of sharing a stage with fellow New Yorker Donald Trump, gently correcting the President’s mistakes, and trying to stay out of the politics. Dr. Fauci has his critics, mostly from Trump’s own party, but is generally seen as a no-nonsense scientist. People turn to Trump for political saber-rattling and entertainment; they turn to Fauci to know what’s really going on. His watch words are, “You stay completely apolitical and non-ideological, and you stick to what it is that you do.”
Some of the coronavirus celebrities have more than just a scientific knowledge of the disease. Spain’s Dr. Fernando Simón tested positive for coronavirus in March. He is the director of Spain’s health emergency center and gave frequent public comments on the coronavirus and answered anxious citizens’ questions. Britain’s Neil Ferguson, a mathematician who modeled the spread of the outbreak, also tested positive.
The remarkable thing about these scientist-celebrities is that they worked in labs and government offices, with only occasional media exposure, for so long. Public health is as much messaging as it is health care, so they do have training in media and messaging. They are sometimes on TV and radio when there are outbreaks, such as SARS. Dr. Fauci was the public face of the government’s response to HIV/AIDS in the 1980s.
However, this is out of all proportion to what they’ve had to do before. Prior to this, they’d be fighting to get their message across in the media. Now, they are communicating daily with their entire countries.
Enjoy the sticky audio player!
This is a long lesson already, so here is a brief update on the new web site. A feature that is sure to be a fan-favorite. Right now, if you want to listen to the program on the web site and read the transcript as you listen, you find the audio player at the top of the page and then you scroll down the page as you read. But many of you like to pause the audio so you can take a closer look at the transcript. And that means you have to scroll all the way up to the top of the page, press pause, and then find your place again.
No longer. On the new web site, which is going to be released on June 1, 2020, the player will be in a sidebar and it will stay with you as you scroll down the page. So when you want to pause the audio for any reason, there is no need to scroll up and down. That was probably the number-one feature request and we are pleased to offer it on the new site starting June 1. So keep your eye out for that.
(Note: The site you are on now is the new site. Welcome!)
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