Should the ‘pause’ in Johnson & Johnson vaccine worry us? Also, Jim got his first shot! But with so many people experiencing strong reactions to their second doses, what should he — and maybe you — expect? 

Atlantic staff writer Katherine Wu joins to explain (and stays to talk cicadas!)

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Children may have been largely spared the worst of COVID-19, but many kids have still gotten seriously ill and died. Despite promising news this week, most likely won’t have access to the vaccines for months. So as adults get vaccinated, how high are the stakes for kids? And how high are the stakes for everyone waiting on herd immunity?

Jim and Maeve ask Dr. Jill Foster, a professor and pediatric-infectious-disease specialist at the University of Minnesota Medical School. Also, with a pediatrician on the show, they take the opportunity to ask a few listener questions from parents.

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Vaccine passports are almost certainly in our near future. But what are they exactly? And with concerns about vaccine equity now complicated by partisan fearmongering, how should they be implemented?

Art Caplan, a bioethicist with NYU’s Grossman School of Medicine who’s spent years thinking about vaccine ethics, joins Jim and Maeve to explain.

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The recent shootings in Atlanta highlighted a surge of anti-Asian violence in the United States throughout the pandemic. Disease stigma and racism have together shaped pandemic response and policy for centuries.

And so to better understand this history, Jim and Maeve speak with Alexandre White, a sociologist and medical historian at Johns Hopkins University. He shares his views on how a legacy of prejudice tied to disease should lead us to reexamine how we respond when outbreaks occur.

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Jim and Maeve answer listener vaccine questions and are joined by Alexis Madrigal, who explains the apparent plateau in cases (and why he’s begun to worry despite his longer-term optimism). With the COVID Tracking Project winding down, Madrigal also offers insight about where to get the best data.

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Jim and Katherine look back on a year of this pandemic podcast to what we’ve learned, what we haven’t, and what we can look forward to. (Also, Jim talks with Anthony Fauci!)

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With three vaccines now approved and news that the U.S. will have enough shots for every adult by the end of May, it feels like the country is turning a corner. But, even after getting vaccinated, Americans still have to mask and distance. Why is that? Can you still spread it? And with lots of efficacy numbers out there, is one vaccine ‘better’ than another?

James Hamblin and Maeve Higgins ask virologist Angela Rasmussen.

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Listeners with mild COVID-19 cases call with their questions. Jim explains why he thinks the summer could be wonderful. And Maeve shares nun news from Ireland.

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Nearly a year ago, The Atlantic staff writer Helen Lewis predicted the pandemic would be “a disaster for feminism” and far too many of her predictions have proven true. With women leaving the workforce at unprecedented rates, why has the pandemic’s burden fallen so much harder on them? And what can we, as a society, do about it?

Also: Jim and Maeve answer listener questions about the virus (and discuss chickens).

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Vaccines are a public good. And if we don’t make a lot more of them, COVID-19 may never really go away. 

Gregg Gonsalves, an epidemiology professor at Yale’s School of Public Health who joined the show in May to talk about his career as an AIDS activist, explains to Jim and Maeve how our moral failure to help vaccinate the rest of the world may come back to haunt us — and what big steps we’d need to take to prevent that.

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