Epidemiologists don’t often hang out with rock stars,  and not many of them can say they’ve played a part in eradicating a disease as deadly as smallpox.  But Larry Brilliant isn’t your run of the mill public health official.  He’s been warning about the dangers of a pandemic for years, and now that one is upon us, Tim Harford sat down to talk with him about how the world has handled the pandemic of 2020 and what we can hope for in 2021.  
Producer: Sandra Kanthal

Larry Brilliant

Scientists are racing to create a vaccine to end the Covid-19 pandemic.But creating a workable vaccine is just the start. Tim Harford is your guide to this epic global undertaking.

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For the final instalment of this series we are turning over the programme to you, our listeners.  Over the past four months we’ve asked you to send us your questions, and you have obliged. But we haven’t always managed to reciprocate by answering them.  In this episode, Tim Harford talks with a panel of experts who will try to answer as many questions as we can fit into a half an hour.   Guests include Professor Beate Kampmann from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine,  Professor Melinda Mills of Oxford University, and the GP Dr Helen Salisbury. 
Producers:  Sandra Kanthal and Beth Sagar-Fenton
Editor: Richard Vadon

Listeners' Questions

Way back in the distant past that was last November, we rushed to produce the first episode of How To Vaccinate The World. Those were heady days. Pfizer and BioNTech seemed to be able to produce a stunningly effective vaccine using a brand new technology faster than we could learn how to pronounce BioNTech. 
Ever since then the vaccines, and the headlines about vaccines, have kept coming. So in the penultimate programme in the series, Tim Harford asks Rasmus Bech Hansen,CEO of Airfinity, Natasha Loder Health Policy Editor of the Economist and Dr Paul Offit Director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia what we have learned in the past four months.  Producers: Sandra Kanthal and Beth Sagar-Fenton Listener questions can be sent to: vaccine@bbc.co.uk

What We Have Learned

Tim Harford is an economist not an immunologist, so he's on solid ground with this week’s programme which is all about numbers. Some of them are small but significant: 7 reported cases of cerebral venous thrombosis in Germany. Others are huge: 400 million doses of Covid 19 vaccine administered around the world.
Then there are the numbers that we’d love to know but don’t - about the effectiveness of a single dose, or whether we are getting closer to herd immunity.  We find out what the numbers can tell us about Covid 19 vaccinations with this week's panel of guests: Professor Sheena Cruickshank, of the University of Manchester, Professor Susan Ellenberg, from the University of Pennsylvania and  Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter of the  University of Cambridge Producers:  Sandra Kanthal and Beth Sagar-Fenton Listener questions can be sent to: vaccine@bbc.co.uk

What The Numbers Tell Us

More than 300 million doses of Covid 19 vaccines have been administered - that’s nearly three times the number of official Covid cases. But, the novelist William Gibson once said: the future is already here, it’s just not very evenly distributed and that’s certainly true for Covid 19 vaccines. Some countries are the haves, and others the have nots. So, where do we go from here if we are going to bring this pandemic to an end? That's the question Tim Harford asks this week's panel of guests: Gian Gandhi of UNICEF, Hannah Kuchler from the Financial Times and Prashant Yadav from Center for Global Development. 
Producers: Sandra Kanthal and Beth Sagar-Fenton Listener questions can be sent to: vaccine@bbc.co.uk

The Global Roll Out

In the UK alone, more than 20 million people have had a first dose of a Covid 19 vaccine, and the government hopes to speed up the roll out by offering every adult a first dose by the end of July. But the word “offering” may be doing a lot of work in that sentence.  Not everyone is taking up that offer - and there is a lot of talk about lower take-up rates of people in who are not both British and white - sometimes lumped together with the acronym BAME - Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic. 
In this week's How To Vaccinate The World, Tim Harford ask what is behind this trend, and what can be done to correct it with his guests Imam Qari Muhammad Asim, Chair, Mosques & Imams National Advisory Board, Dr Habib Naqvi -  Director, NHS Race and Health Observatory and Dr Onyi Okonkwo, GP and clinical lead for BAME  network at Birmingham and Solihull CCG, Producers: Sandra Kanthal and Beth Sagar- Fenton Listener questions can be sent to: vaccine@bbc.co.uk What Are Vaccines and Why Do They Work? Produced by Hip Hop Public Health

Larry Brilliant

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