full disclosure: the company i work for (the MIT Press) published a book of his ("Plagues and the Paradox of Progress: Why the World Is Getting Healthier in Worrisome Ways") last year.

edit: also, i don't this article is alarmist; it's a useful and measured piece by the former director of the CDC.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2002032

It's...sobering.

That should be pretty alarming. I understand that a 20-something-year-old with no medical conditions may not give a damn about this sort of thing, but as a public health problem, this one is incredibly serious.

As you can imagine, their main topic over the past few weeks has been the new coronavirus. They're very sober and rational about the new virus, but they're pretty clear that it's an extremely serious issue.

One issue that they raised in this week's podcast was that work on a SARS vaccine ended years ago. After the virus disappeared, there was no more commercial interest in developing a vaccine against it. Governments should have stepped in and continued research into coronavirus vaccines, but this sort of research is underfunded. The podcast hosts obviously have an interest in saying this, but given the current situation, I don't think anyone can really claim they're wrong!

COVID-19 is roughly 20x more lethal than the flu, and we have no therapies or vaccines.

Fortunately (contrary to my prior understanding) it does not spread as efficiently as the flu, and there are measures that can be taken to help contain the spread.