NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate provides the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Saturday, July 31st, 2021

PNWcurrents Episode II is live: This month, we look at our region’s response to COVID-19

A month ago, most of the COVID-19 relat­ed restric­tions imposed in the Pacif­ic North­west were lift­ed, in what was dubbed a “grand reopening”.

Restau­rants began open­ing at one hun­dred per­cent capac­i­ty, stores dropped mask require­ments, con­certs resumed, and sta­di­ums began wel­com­ing fans back to the stands with­out any phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing. For many peo­ple, the end of the emer­gency mea­sures came as a very wel­come development.

How­ev­er, the pan­dem­ic isn’t over.

Across the nation, and in our own Pacif­ic North­west, vac­ci­na­tion efforts are lag­ging, cas­es are ris­ing, and the spread of the high­ly infec­tious delta vari­ant of COVID-19 is alarm­ing sci­en­tists and health experts.

Our region’s response to COVID-19 is the top­ic of this mon­th’s episode of PNWcur­rents, NPI’s unique­ly region­al pod­cast, which I am hon­ored to host.

You can lis­ten to it on demand using the play­er below. You can also down­load it to lis­ten any­where using your favorite pod­cast­ing app or service.

Want to read the tran­script and get more details on the episode’s production?

Just launch the ded­i­cat­ed page for Episode II!

Episode II: Eval­u­at­ing Our Region’s Response to COVID-19

Pre­sent­ed in a pan­el for­mat, PNWcur­rents brings togeth­er thinkers, activists, elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives, and top­i­cal experts to have con­struc­tive con­ver­sa­tions about local and region­al pol­i­tics, pol­i­cy, major issues, and ideas that impact the Pacif­ic North­west. It’s a forum for per­cep­tive dis­course like no other.

Join­ing me for Episode II are:

  • Dr. Hilary God­win, Dean of the UW School of Pub­lic Health and pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal & Occu­pa­tion­al Health Sci­ences, rep­re­sent­ing Wash­ing­ton. Over the last year, Hilary has host­ed a series of webi­na­rs cov­er­ing the lat­est news around the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, and has offered her exper­tise to sev­er­al local publications.
  • Dr. Chun­huei Chi, Direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Glob­al Health at Ore­gon State Uni­ver­si­ty, rep­re­sent­ing Ore­gon. Chun­huei is a pro­fes­sor of health man­age­ment and pol­i­cy whose work focus­es on com­par­a­tive health sys­tems, and who has been study­ing SARS-CoV­‑2, the virus that caus­es coro­n­avirus dis­ease 2019, since it began spread­ing in late 2019.
  • Dr. David Pate, for­mer Pres­i­dent and CEO of St. Luke’s Health Sys­tems, rep­re­sent­ing Ida­ho. David has played a crit­i­cal role as an advis­er on Gov­er­nor Brad Little’s Coro­n­avirus Response Group, estab­lish­ing him­self as a lead­ing expert on pub­lic health in Ida­ho. He has also co-authored an upcom­ing book “Prepar­ing for the Next Pan­dem­ic: Lessons, Sto­ries and Rec­om­men­da­tions,” to be pub­lished by Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty Press.

Because PNWcur­rents is a pod­cast avail­able on demand, you can lis­ten to episodes any­time: while gar­den­ing, while jog­ging, while run­ning errands, while work­ing on a home improve­ment project, or (one of my favorites) fix­ing the bro­ken strings on your mask. The choice is yours!

Pro­duc­ing PNWcur­rents requires mon­ey as well as time and energy.

We think it’s worth it, and we hope you will, too.

We invite you to sup­port the pro­duc­tion of PNWcur­rents by becom­ing a mem­ber of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute if you aren’t already!

You can donate month­ly as a Com­mon­wealth Bond­hold­er, or annually.

Thank you for lis­ten­ing, and I hope you enjoy Episode II!

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  1. […] and pri­vate schools. (For a more in-depth dis­cus­sion of these events, check out our first and sec­ond PNWcur­rents episodes, which can be played on […]

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