Sociologist Zeynep Tufekci on the Key to this Pandemic

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told CNN Sunday that the
U.S. is “not going to control the pandemic,” because “it is a
contagious virus just like the flu.” But thinking of COVID-19 like
the flu and employing a flu-pandemic playbook is not an effective
response, according to sociologist Zeynep Tufekci. In her latest
piece for The Atlantic, Tufekci highlights a factor she says is key
to this pandemic: COVID-19 is an "overdispersed" virus, which means
it tends to spread in clusters. When dealing with overdispersion,
she writes "identifying transmission events (someone infected
someone else) is more important than identifying infected
individuals." Tufekci outlines how countries like South Korea and
Japan have used aggressive contact-tracing approaches that include
backwards tracing to the original contact, as well as clamping down
on potential super-spreader events, to slow the spread. That's in
stark contrast to the U.S., where the federal response has been the
idea of creating "herd immunity" and where the White House itself
became the source of a super-spreader event earlier this month.
Tufekci, who the New York Times has called "perhaps the only good
amateur epidemiologist,” joins us to talk about the rising cases
across the country, prospects for getting the pandemic under
control and feelings of "pandemic fatigue." We also get a fire
update from Captain Jason Fairchild, public information officer for
Orange County Fire Authority.