Arturo Casadevall joins TWiV to discuss the use of convalescent plasma to treat COVID-19, including a history of the process, how plasma is prepared and tested, why it is difficult to conduct randomized clinical trials, how this treatment has fared and his hopes for the future.
Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, Rich Condit, and Brianne Barker
Guest: Arturo Casadevall
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Download TWiV 739 (68 MB .mp3, 113 min)
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Links for this episode
- Victory for Scientific Pragmatism (New Atlantis) 50:11
- Convalescent plasma levels and risk of COVID-19 death (NEJM) 15:29, 23:08
- COVID-19 convalescent plasma safety indicators (JCI)
- COVID-19 convalescent plasma reduces mortality (medRxiv) 39:11
- Pfizer mRNA vaccine in 12-15 year olds (Pfizer) 1:10:12
- NIDO 2021 Symposium 1:07:11
- ASV hosts free COVID-19 Vaccine Education Town Halls (register here) 1:07:33
- Lab tech position in Kathy Spindler’s lab (on ASV jobs site) 1:09:16
- Letters read on TWiV 739
- Timestamps by Jolene. Thanks!
Weekly Picks 1:42:35
Brianne – The Ocean’s Youngest Monsters Are Ready for Glamour Shots
Alan – 7 Billion Humans
Rich – 15 Fascinating Animal X-Rays From the Oregon Zoo
Vincent – Respiratory pathogen trends
Intro music is by Ronald Jenkees
Send your virology questions and comments to twiv@microbe.tv
Hi Everyone,
Great discussion on TWIV 739 as always and most informative, particularly as this was a subject I knew next to nothing about. But I think you might have given an acknowledgment to the part played by Brianne’s kitten, whose antics certainly kept me thoroughly entertained as I listened and learned. I do n’t think that Rich Condit lecturing while rowing a boat would have the same mesmerising effect. As always, looking forward to the next show.
Best Wishes
Chris Payne
(From Kenilworth, Warwickshire, England).
Hi, the link in ‘Download TWiV 739 (68 MB .mp3, 113 min)’ actually points to http://traffic.libsyn.com/twiv/TWiV736.mp3 rather than TwiV739.mp3 (which doesn’t seem to exist). Would it be possible to have the link point to the correct file? For me, the most reliable way to listen to podcasts appears to be to download the .mp3 file and listen to that. It would be great to be able to do this, since from the 10 minutes that I did manage to hear by clicking the ‘play episode’ arrow, after which the transmission got interrupted, this week’s guest Arturo Casadevall sounded absolutely delightful.
It’s now trying to download as an M4A file, which then fails.
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Sorry, the m4a doesn’t actually fail – I just can’t move it onto my portable music player so it won’t work for me. Please stick with mp3. Thank you.