Going Viral - The Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

As the UK’s independent public inquiry into Covid-19 gets underway, members of the Covid bereaved complain that they are not being given an opportunity to testify.

Today, in the second part of our two-part special, Mark speaks to the parents of Susan Sullivan, a woman with Down's Syndrome who died of Covid-19 at Barnet General Hospital on March 28, 2020, after being deemed “not for resuscitation” and he reveals the findings of a confidential investigation by the Royal Free NHS Hospital Trust into her death. The report, which makes for shocking reading, found that Susan was not seen by a consultant until 20 hours after admission to Barnet’s Accident and Emergency department and that the fact that she had Down’s Syndrome and had been fitted with a pacemaker should not have excluded her from intensive care.

Mark also speaks to Kamran Mallick, the CEO of Disability Rights UK, about what the Sullivan case reveals about the pattern of discrimination experienced by people with learning disabilities across the NHS, and to Dominic Wilkinson, a medical ethicist, who explains the challenge to doctors of weighing the harms and benefits of invasive procedures to patients.

Presented by Mark Honigsbaum @honigsbaum

With:

John and Ida Sullivan

 www.covidfamiliesforjustice.org / @CovidJusticeuk 

Kamran Mallick, CEO of Disability Rights UK.

www.disabilityrights.uk  / @KamranMallick

Professor Dominic Wilkinson

@NeonatalEthics

Professor of Medical Ethics and Director of Medical Ethics at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. Dominic is also a Consultant Neonatologist at the John Radcliffe Hospital and a Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College. 

www.jesus.ox.ac.uk/about-jesus-college/our-community/people/professor-dominic-wilkinson/ 

Series Producer: Melissa FitzGerald @Melissafitzg

Cover art by Patrick Blower  www.blowercartoons.com

Follow us on Twitter: @GoingViral_pod    

Follow us on Instagram: goingviral_thepodcast 

Blog: markhonigsbaum.substack.com 

This episode of Going Viral has been produced with the support of a grant from the Higher Education Innovation Fund at City, University of London. It is part of the project, “Commemorating Covid, Remembering Pandemics”, www.rememberingpandemics.com

If you enjoy our podcast - please leave us a rating or review.  Thank you!

As the UK’s independent public inquiry into Covid-19 gets underway, members of the Covid bereaved complain that they are not being given an opportunity to testify.

Today, Mark speaks to the parents of Susan Sullivan, a woman with Down's Syndrome who died of Covid-19 at Barnet General Hospital on March 28, 2020, after being deemed “not for resuscitation” and being denied access to intensive care. The Sullivans have long suspected that their daughter was the victim of medical bias and may have survived if the hospital had granted her statutory right to have a family member at her bedside. Determined to be Susan’s voice, John and Ida Sullivan launched their own investigation into Susan’s death and uncovered a catalogue of medical errors in the process. We also hear from Baroness Heather Hallet, the chair of the UK public inquiry, and from Fran Hall and other members of Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK.

Presented by Mark Honigsbaum @honigsbaum

With:

Fran Hall @FranFD1

John and Ida Sullivan

 www.covidfamiliesforjustice.org / @CovidJusticeuk 

Series Producer: Melissa FitzGerald @Melissafitzg

Cover art by Patrick Blower  www.blowercartoons.com

Follow us on Twitter: @GoingViral_pod    

Follow us on Instagram: goingviral_thepodcast 

Blog: markhonigsbaum.substack.com 

This episode of Going Viral has been produced with the support of a grant from the Higher Education Innovation Fund at City, University of London. It is part of the project, “Commemorating Covid, Remembering Pandemics”,

www.rememberingpandemics.com

If you enjoy our podcast - please leave us a rating or review.  Thank you!

Pandemics don’t tend to register in collective memory and there are almost no memorials to the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, but Covid-19 looks set to be different.  Today Mark and Hannah visit the ‘National Covid Memorial Wall’ on the South Bank of the Thames in London, opposite the Houses of Parliament.  Stretching 500 metres along Albert Embankment, the wall is an audacious work of guerrilla art, comprising of 150,000 hand-drawn hearts – one for every British victim of the coronavirus.  To find out more, Mark speaks to the founders of the group ‘Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice’ - Jo Goodman, Matt Fowler and Nathan Oswin, who dreamt up the people's memorial.

Hosted by Mark Honigsbaum @honigsbaum

With

Hannah Mawdsley @HannahMawdsley

Jo Goodman

Matt Fowler

Nathan Oswin

@CovidJusticeUK / @CovidMemorialUK

For more information about the National Covid Memorial Wall, visit:

www.covidfamiliesforjustice.org

Series Producer: Melissa FitzGerald @Melissafitzg

Cover art by Patrick Blower www.blowercartoons.com

Follow us on Twitter @GoingViral_pod     

Follow us on Instagram: goingviral_thepodcast

If you enjoy our podcast – please leave us a rating or review. Thank you!

In this special episode, supported by the Department of Journalism at City, University of London, Mark speaks to three UK-based health and science reporters about the highs and lows of covering the Covid-19 pandemic: Sarah Boseley, The Guardian’s Health Editor; Victoria Macdonald, Health and Social Care Editor at Channel 4 News and Shaun Lintern, the Independent’s Health Correspondent.  What’s it been like being on the front line of the story of the century?  And looking back, what do they wish they had known earlier or done differently?

Hosted by Mark Honigsbaum @honigsbaum

With

Sarah Boseley, The Health Editor of The Guardian @sarahboseley

www.theguardian.com/profile/sarahboseley

Victoria Macdonald, Health and Social Care Editor, Channel 4 News @vsmacdonald

www.channel4.com/news/by/victoria-macdonald

Shaun Lintern, Health Correspondent, Independent @ShaunLintern

www.independent.co.uk/author/shaun-lintern

This episode is supported by the Department of Journalism, City, University of London

www.city.ac.uk/about/schools/arts-social-sciences/journalism

Series Producer: Melissa FitzGerald @Melissafitzg

Cover art by Patrick Blower www.blowercartoons.com

Follow us on Twitter @GoingViral_Pod   

Follow us on Instagram: goingviral_thepodcast

Today Mark explores the discovery of the first vaccine, against Smallpox in 1796, by the English country doctor Edward Jenner.  With Owen Gower, General Manager of Dr. Jenner’s House Museum.  Meanwhile, Melissa catches up with Mark’s progress in the Novavax Covid-19 vaccine trial, the very latest in vaccine science.  From Smallpox to Covid-19: this is the house that Jenner built.

Hosted by Mark Honigsbaum @honigsbaum

With

Owen Gower, General Manager, Dr. Jenner’s House, Museum and Garden, The home of vaccination. @owentg

jennermuseum.com / @DrJennersHouse

Series Producer: Melissa FitzGerald @Melissafitzg

Cover art by Patrick Blower blowercartoons.com

Follow us on Twitter @GoingViral_pod     

Follow us on Instagram: goingviral_thepodcast

If you enjoy our podcast please leave us a rating or review - thank you! 

This is not the first time scientists have raced to develop vaccines against a new disease.  In the 1960s, scientists faced a similar crisis over rubella, also known as German measles.  Today Mark explores the race to create the rubella vaccine with Dr. Stanley Plotkin, dubbed ‘The Godfather of Vaccines’.  In 1964, working in his Wistar Institute laboratory in Philadelphia, Stanley developed the rubella vaccine — the “R” in MMR— that’s now used across the world.  And Melissa speaks to science writer Meredith Wadman about the ethics of creating the rubella vaccine.

Hosted by Mark Honigsbaum @honigsbaum

With

Dr. Stanley Plotkin, Professor Emeritus at the Wistar Institute and University of Pennsylvania, and consultant to the vaccine industry.

vaccinestoday.eu/stories/author/splotkin/

Meredith Wadman @meredithwadman, Reporter @ScienceMagazine, Author of "The Vaccine Race: Science, Politics and the Human Costs of Defeating Disease”.

meredithwadman.com  

sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/physician-whose-1964-vaccine-beat-back-rubella-working-defeat-new-coronavirus

Series Producer: Melissa FitzGerald @Melissafitzg

Cover art by Patrick Blower www.blowercartoons.com

Follow us on Twitter @GoingViral_pod     

Follow us on Instagram: goingviral_thepodcast

If you are enjoying our series do leave us a rating or review! Thank you

It’s the science story of the century - how successful vaccines against Covid-19 have been created in under a year. Mark explores the back-story on how they did it so quickly with Dr Anthony Fauci, Director of the NIAID and Sarah Gilbert from the Jenner Institute, Oxford. He gets the low down on the vaccine science from scientist Rob Swanda and he talks vaccines vs. variants with Wendy Barclay from Imperial College London.

Hosted by Mark Honigsbaum @honigsbaum

With

Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., NIAID Director

www.niaid.nih.gov/about/director

Professor Sarah Gilbert, Saïd Professorship of Vaccinology, Jenner Institute & Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine

www.jenner.ac.uk/team/sarah-gilbert

Rob Swanda

@ScientistSwanda / Youtube: www.youtube.com/channel/UClU56Y1m8J9w82itIEXEHFQ?view_as=subscriber

Professor Wendy Barclay, Action Medical Research Chair Virology, Imperial College London.

www.imperial.ac.uk/people/w.barclay

Series Producer: Melissa FitzGerald @Melissafitzg

Cover art by Patrick Blower www.blowercartoons.com

Follow us on Twitter @GoingViral_pod     

Follow us on Instagram: goingviral_thepodcast

If you enjoy these podcasts, please leave us a rating or review.  Thank you.

On New Year’s Eve 2020, Mark took his mum to St Charles’s Hospital in London’s North Kensington to get a shot of the new Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, almost a year after the coronavirus had emerged in Wuhan. It’s the science story of the century - how successful vaccines against Covid-19 have been created in under a year. Mark explores how they did it so quickly with Adrian Hill, Director of the Jenner Institute in Oxford behind the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. And against the backdrop of global vaccine hesitancy, and as Covid-19 cases surge in Britain’s second wave, Mark speaks to Peter Openshaw from Imperial College London about the magic of vaccines.

Hosted by Mark Honigsbaum @honigsbaum

With

Professor Adrian Hill, Lakshmi Mittal and Family Professorship of Vaccinology; Director of the Jenner Institute; Co-Director, Oxford Martin Programme on Vaccines; Fellow of Magdalen College.

www.ox.ac.uk/news-and-events/find-an-expert/professor-adrian-hill

Peter Openshaw Professor of Experimental Medicine at Imperial College at Imperial College, London.

www.imperial.ac.uk/people/p.openshaw / @p_openshaw

Series Producer: Melissa FitzGerald @Melissafitzg

Cover art by Patrick Blower www.blowercartoons.com

Follow us on Twitter @GoingViral_pod     

Follow us on Instagram: goingviral_thepodcast

If you enjoy these podcasts please leave us a rating or review - thank you.

Disease ecologist Peter Daszak speaks to Mark down the line from his hotel room in Wuhan, China, on day 4 of his quarantine. He’s a member of the World Health Organisation team currently investigating the origins of SARS-CoV-2. 

Hosted by Mark Honigsbaum @honigsbaum

With

@PeterDaszak the President of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to understanding the connections between human, animal, and environmental health.

Facebook @EcoHealthNYC

Twitter @EcoHealthNYC

Instagram @ecohealth_alliance

Series Producer: Melissa FitzGerald @Melissafitzg

Cover art by Patrick Blower www.blowercartoons.com

Follow us on Twitter @GoingViral_pod     

Follow us on Instagram: goingviral_thepodcast

Mark returns to a subject close to his heart: the Spanish Flu of 1918/19 and asks what can we learn from that pandemic of 100 years ago? With Wendy Moore and Hannah Mawdsley.

Presented by Mark Honigsbaum @honigsbaum

With

Wendy Moore, author of The Knife Man; Wedlock; How to Create the Perfect Wife; and The Mesmerist. Her new book is ENDELL STREET: The Trailblazing Women who ran World War One’s Most Remarkable Military Hospital (Atlantic, UK). Published in the US (Basic Books) as NO MAN’S LAND: The Trailblazing Women who ran Britain’s most extraordinary Military Hospital during World War 1.

You can hear ENDELL STREET adapted for BBC Radio 4 here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000jmpp

Twitter @wendymoore99

www.wendymoore.org 

Hannah Mawdsley, Twitter: @HannahMawdsley

Series Producer Melissa FitzGerald @Melissafitzg

Cover art by Patrick Blower www.blowercartoons.com

Follow us on Twitter @GoingViral_pod     

Follow us on Instagram goingviral_thepodcast