Prognosis: Misconception

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Virus hunters around the globe are already bracing for the next contagion which they fear could prove even more destructive than Covid. These scientists and doctors, drawing from hard-learned lessons from the past, are determined to stop future pandemics even as the current one continues to rage.

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Covid-19 is just the beginning for messenger RNA vaccines. Researchers are testing shots across a range of diseases, from cancer to malaria, HIV or even multiple sclerosis. There’s no guarantee the technology will work beyond infectious diseases, but if it does, it could transform medicine.

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Two biotech companies, Germany’s BioNTech and the U.S.’s Moderna, decided in January 2020 to wager their futures on developing a messenger RNA shot to fight Covid-19. What ensued was a head-spinning race to bring a vaccine to market quicker than ever before.

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The messenger RNA vaccines against Covid-19 seem to have emerged out of nowhere. But they’re based on decades of painstaking work, done in relative obscurity, by researchers who believed in the promise of the technology even if few others did.

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On the outside, city hospitals look just as they always have: big glass and steel buildings, an ER entrance with ambulances coming and going. But on the inside, Covid has completely transformed the hospital experience for patients, their families -- and for doctors and hospital staff. Once held in high esteem as the place where doctors performed miracles, hospitals have become more sombre places under the staggering weight of illness and death even as communities increasingly view them through the lens of vaccine misinformation and mistrust.

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The loss of the sense of smell affects almost one in every two people who get Covid-19. Usually it resolves within a week or two. But for some, like Dr. Alex McCutchan, smell and taste distortions persist for a year, leaving an invisible illness that disrupts daily life. Scientists like Leah Beauchamp are learning that its significance doesn’t end there. In this episode, Bloomberg’s Jason Gale meets two best friends who are exploring long Covid’s potentially scary, lifelong consequences. 

Story has been updated to correct Alex McCutchan's name.

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Neuroscientist David Putrino doesn’t profess to understand why some Covid-19 survivors suffer persistent symptoms or how to cure them, but he’s finding ways to help “long haulers” take control of their symptoms. In this episode, Bloomberg’s Jason Gale takes a virtual tour of Putrino’s Manhattan long Covid rehab clinic to chronicle patients’ journey to recovery.

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In a secure air-locked chamber in the world’s largest research hospital, Dan Chertow and a half-dozen other scientists in astronaut-inspired protective gear are carrying out a microscopic search inside Covid-19 victims to try to unlock one of the pandemic’s biggest and most disturbing mysteries.

On this episode, Bloomberg’s Jason Gale joins the critical-care physician on his exhaustive hunt for the coronavirus in the body and brain of fatal cases. By looking for clues in the deceased, Chertow aims to understand how to treat and prevent the disease in the living, including the lingering symptoms wracking millions of Covid “long haulers.” 

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With a loss of smell and a high fever, New Yorker Fiona Lowenstein had a classic case of Covid-19 before she knew what a classic Covid case was. But there was more she didn't know: she was also about to join a burgeoning group we now know as “long haulers.” On the first episode of “Breakthrough,” a new series from the Prognosis podcast, Bloomberg’s Jason Gale traces the early origins of a patient-led movement that drew lessons from AIDS activism to demand that the medical establishment listen.

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