Episode 41: Dr Eric Feigl-Ding – Epidemiologist and Public Health Scientist

Dr Eric Feigl-Ding has been assessing the science and analysing the data on pandemics for many years. His work on public health programmes has ranged from cancer to Ebola, developing contact tracing apps and whistle-blowing on drug safety.

In January 2020 Dr Eric Feigl-Ding was one of the first leading health scientists to warn the world of the impending COVID-19 pandemic. Criticised for inciting public alarm, it took the western world a further two months to wake up to the reality of what was about to hit us. Two and a half years into the pandemic Feigl-Ding talks us through his views on Long Covid, and the prognosis should be cause for alarm.

Throughout this wide-ranging interview –  from Zero-COVID policy to monkeypox - two main themes recur: the likelihood of Long Covid being an immunocompromised state, and our societies’ inability to work for the greater good. Once again comparisons are drawn between Long Covid and the immunocompromised state caused by HIV, and Feigl-Ding suggests that the global handling of Long Covid, which is not dissimilar to our handling of climate change, will come down, simply, to economics.

Don’t be put off, thinking this will be an entirely depressing conversation - it is thought-provoking, awash with excellent analogies and pulls together various threads that have been arising in recent weeks. The key to action is raising awareness, and Feigl-Ding is certainly someone who knows how to raise the alarm.