Dr. Aartik Sarma, UCSF pulmonologist, on the $500M bet to cure the common cold

About this episode

Aartik Sarma, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine at UCSF, joins Christina Farr for a short special edition on Intercept, a new $500 million initiative from a coalition of tech companies including Stripe, OpenAI, and Anthropic aimed at finally cracking the common cold and flu. They dig into why a "cold" is actually a huge, constantly mutating spectrum of viruses rather than one thing, why existing treatments like Tamiflu barely move the needle, and where Sarma thinks the money should go, from indoor air filtration to nasal sprays to longer-term vaccine research targeting the parts of viruses that don't mutate as often.

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SPONSOR: Baker Health
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LINKS:
Intercept: https://www.interceptfund.com/ 

Chrissy Farr on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LiferswithChristinaFarr 
Subscribe to the Second Opinion Newsletter: https://secondopinion.media/ 
Chrissy’s Book: The Storyteller's Advantage: https://www.chrissyfarr.com/books 

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FOLLOW:
Aartik:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/aartiksarma 
https://x.com/AartikSarma 

Chrissy:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinafarr/ 
https://x.com/chrissyfarr 
https://www.instagram.com/cfarr/ 

Second Opinion Media:
https://www.instagram.com/second.opinion.media/ 
https://x.com/second_op_media 
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TIMESTAMPS:
(00:00) Intro
(00:46) Why companies care
(02:20) Post-COVID work culture
(04:39) Why colds persist
(06:56) Who gets hit hard
(08:42) Intercepting transmission
(12:16) Sponsor: Baker Health
(13:32) Better diagnostics
(16:30) Vaccines tradeoffs
(18:44) Is it worth 500M
(21:03) Wrap