In December 2019, the first cases of the coronavirus were identified in Wuhan, China. As the number of infections and subsequent patient deaths has continued to rise, the struggle to treat and contain the spread of the virus has become a worldwide concern for both medical professionals and world leaders.  

For this episode I am joined by Richard Larson, post-tenure professor in the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology, whose recently published article with the INFORMS magazine OR/MS Today, “The 2019-nCoV Coronavirus: Are there two routes to infection?” looks at the possible reasons this virus is spreading so rapidly.