Tuberculosis, or consumption as it was once known, might conjure up images of huge sanitoriums or writers and artists from the late 1800s (Moulin Rouge, anyone?). But this deadly disease is far from an illness of the past. In many parts of the world, tuberculosis remains an insidious killer, despite the fact that we’ve had effective drugs to treat the infection for decades. In this week’s TPWKY book club episode, we’re thrilled to be joined by the one-and-only John Green to chat about his latest book, Everything Is Tuberculosis. Tune in for a fascinating conversation that tours the past, present, and uncertain future of this devastating illness.

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After last week’s episode, we all know about each of the diseases that we’re protected against thanks to our childhood vaccine schedule here in the US. And after this week’s episode, we’ll understand more about the schedule itself - why it might look different from other schedules around the world, how it gets made, and who makes the recommendations. We’ll also review some of the current outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases before leaving you with some of our thoughts on how to talk about vaccines and vaccine hesitancy.

Updates:

At the time of recording, the ACIP meeting originally scheduled in Feb 2025 had not been rescheduled. It is now rescheduled for April 15-16 and the agenda is posted here: https://www.cdc.gov/acip/meetings/index.html

Additionally, the case numbers of current measles outbreaks in the US have grown substantially since the time of our recording. Updated case numbers are reported every Friday here: https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html and at the time of episode release there have been 712 cases reported in the US and 3 deaths.

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We’re already back with our first episode of season 8! This week and next, we’re exploring childhood vaccine schedules - what diseases they protect us from, how the schedule is arranged, and who decides on the vaccines to include and the timing of vaccinations. In this first episode, we start with a refresher on how vaccines work before running through the entire schedule we have here in the US, vaccine by vaccine, comparing pre- and post-vaccine mortality rates. We close out the episode by discussing why vaccination is so important, not just for personal protection but for our communities. Stay tuned for more childhood vaccine schedule talk next week!

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