Welcome to Econ Talk conversations for the curious part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
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Today is May 8, 2024.
My guest is oncologist and professor of epidemiology Vinay Prasad of the University of California, San Francisco.
This is Vinay's fifth appearance on Econ Talk.
He was last year in August of 2023, talking about cancer screening.
Both of his 2023 appearances made the top ten of your favorite episodes of last year, Vinay.
Welcome back to Econ Talk.
Russ, thank you for having me.
And it's such a treat to hear that the listeners like those episodes.
Yeah, they were awesome.
Our topic for today is the COVID vaccine, and in particular a recent paper of yours in the Monash Bioethical Review, co written with Alison Aslam, that we will link to titled that paper is Covid-19 vaccines, history of the pandemic's great scientific success and flawed and policy implementation.
Before we dive in, I want to observe that it remains surreal to me that the very issue of vaccines has somehow become a huge area of discussion, a lightning rod.
Much of it seems to be, if not fact free, cherry picked by lots of average people, not experts, but some experts, too.
And somehow it's become such a big issue.
Does this seem strange to you?