Macro N Cheese

When asked to talk about public health needs during the current coronavirus pandemic, Fadhel Kaboub immediately brings up climate change and expands the concept of public health to a degree that some will find surprising. After giving it a moment’s thought you can’t help but agree. Even if COVID-19 isn’t related to climate change, the effects of the climate crisis will accelerate in the coming years and we’ll see more pandemics and other disasters. We were caught flat-footed this time, but our inexcusable lack of preparedness cannot happen again. As Fadhel warns, there can be no “return to normal.” This pandemic illustrates why it’s impossible to think of public health needs in narrow medical terms. This kind of crisis requires massive intervention early on. Clearly we need the infrastructure and medical capabilities to handle screening, testing, treatment, and hospitalization of huge numbers of patients all over the world. To slow the spread of the virus requires decreasing the intensity of human contact