We Don’t Have to Despair

The Twitter feed of Eric Topol, with nearly 300,000 followers, has become one of the go-to places for reliable updates on the COVID-19 pandemic. Topol is the founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, professor of molecular medicine, and executive vice president of Scripps Research. I first interviewed Topol in the early 2000s when he was chair of cardiovascular medicine at Cleveland Clinic. He made news as the one of the first and most public critics of the suppressed dangers of the painkiller, Vioxx, which its maker Merck withdrew from the market in 2004. Topol is the author, most recently, of Deep Medicine: How Artificial Medicine Can Make Healthcare Human Again, and is editor in chief of Medscape, a medical news site. In our conversation, Topol explained what we can and can’t expect from vaccines, what the communication breakdown over the pandemic has meant, and, surprisingly, why we can look on the bright side.