Speaker 1: I had no idea that long COVID existed. The family
Speaker 1: and friends that I would talk to, they had no
Speaker 1: idea that a smell component was going to be a
Speaker 1: long term feature of my illness. Symptoms like a loss
Speaker 1: of smell can persist for months in some COVID survivors.
Speaker 1: Others described debilitating brain fog and memory problems that turned
Speaker 1: their life upside down. Is it ever going to be
Speaker 1: normal again? Am I ever going to be able to
Speaker 1: be me? And I don't feel like me? Solve and
Speaker 1: I don't cry, but I don't feel like me anymore.
Speaker 1: It appears long COVID will be with us, well beyond
Speaker 1: the pandemic itself. It's just one of the ways in
Speaker 1: which the coronavirus has reshaped our world. On Breakthrough, a
Speaker 1: new series from the Prognosis podcast, we're exploring the legacy
Speaker 1: of COVID and the medical mysteries baffling scientists. I'm Jason Gale,
Speaker 1: a senior editor at Bloomberg News, and I'm Naomi Kraski,
Speaker 1: health reporter at Bloomberg. COVID has also reshaped medical science
Speaker 1: and opened the door to revolutionary technology. In this series,
Speaker 1: will look at how the pandemic is changing healthcare, the
Speaker 1: ways in which experts are preparing for future outbreaks, and
Speaker 1: what scientists and patients are doing to get answers to
Speaker 1: medical problems in real time. If anyone tells you that
Speaker 1: they know what's going on, they're lying to you, like,
Speaker 1: don't trust that person. That's the one person you can't
Speaker 1: trust is the person who tells you categorically they know
Speaker 1: what's going on, and I've certainly seen a lot of
Speaker 1: clinicians doing that. In the second half of Breakthrough, we'll
Speaker 1: tell you the story of how messenger RNA vaccines were
Speaker 1: created and how they could be used in the future
Speaker 1: to help treat other diseases like malaria and cancer. This
Speaker 1: technology could never have proven itself so quickly outside the
Speaker 1: crucible of that first pandemic year. It may well win
Speaker 1: some researchers a Nobel Prize. It will almost so only
Speaker 1: have big implications for the future of medicine. Looking back,
Speaker 1: it's easy to forget that none of this was a given.
Speaker 1: I was worried that the that the human vaccine might
Speaker 1: be effective and we wouldn't know why. You'll hear from
Speaker 1: the people who raced to make the vaccine at the
Speaker 1: moment they found out how well it would work. So
Speaker 1: I was incredible. Yeah, this was just Baith taking at that.
Speaker 1: In this moment they understood, hey, there's a vaccine for
Speaker 1: mankind and what it could mean for the future. Wherever
Speaker 1: protein is needed, it can be applied. That could be
Speaker 1: six thousand genetic diseases. Breakthrough launches on October nine. Subscribe
Speaker 1: to Prognosis Today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts.