Listen: Why Do Some People Get Sicker?

As we understand more about the role that the immune system plays in COVID-19, we may learn why some patients have much worse outcomes. James Hamblin discusses his recent story with Katherine Wells on the podcast Social Distance.

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What follows is an edited and condensed transcript of their conversation.

Katherine Wells: We keep looking for patterns in who is most affected by this coronavirus and why. It seems like the reports are constantly changing: At first it was supposedly only older people who were severely affected, and then it was people with underlying conditions. Are there other diseases that have such a wide range of manifestations, from asymptomatic to deadly?

There are other diseases that can manifest in a wide variety of ways,