TEDMED launches "Plain Talk Reports," A Free Online Monthly Publication Serving Public Health

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The TEDMED Foundation

Jun 17, 2022, 09:00 ET

"Plain Talk Reports" identifies dangerous myths about serious medical topics.  

It then presents the current evidence in an easy, quick-read or short-video format.

STAMFORD, Conn., June 17, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The TEDMED Foundation, owners of the independent, non-profit TEDMED conference focused on health and medicine, is today launching a free monthly online publication called "Plain Talk Reports."

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Plain Talk Reports reviews current widespread, potentially "dangerous beliefs" about serious medical topics. It then compares those dangerous beliefs to the latest scientific evidence in an effort to reduce the harm that misinformation can cause to people and their communities. Each issue of The Report takes the latest publicly-available scientific evidence and synthesizes it in plain English for the average curious reader. This allows Plain Talk Reports to speak to non-experts of all ages as well as scientists, journalists and public health professionals.

Issues of the Report are built around "50 Dangerous Beliefs" starting with a monthly report on COVID-19. The Editor-in-Chief of Plain Talk Reports is former WHO official Dr. Edward Kelley, PhD. (See background on Dr. Kelley below.)

"One of the reasons we created regularly updated Plain Talk Reports," said Dr. Kelley, "was because TEDMED felt the public was being ill-served by the lack of understandable, useful reporting on the current COVID-19 research and what it means to them and their loved ones." He continued, "Science is important, and it is constantly being discovered and updated, but what people need most in a rapidly evolving crisis such as COVID is a common-sense understanding of how our current best knowledge informs the decisions they make. Our goal at Plain Talk Reports is to use neutral, jargon-free, reputable information to help people make better decisions."

Excerpts from 50 Dangerous Beliefs About COVID-19 – U.S. Edition



Dangerous Belief

Current Evidence

COVID has now reached the stage where
Omicron is under control and COVID is
no longer an emergency in the U.S. and
Europe

COVID is not under control, since new Omicron variants
are regularly appearing—especially BA.4 and BA.5 in South
Africa and BA.2.12.01 in North America. Some variants
have evaded the vaccines, leading to breakthrough
infections. Omicron has killed 40,000 more people than
Delta in the U.S. As of early May, it is still killing nearly
2,000 Americans every week



Dangerous Belief

Current Evidence

Hospitalizations and death rates are
dropping rapidly in highly vaccinated
countries, so we can finally relax and
ease up a bit

U.S. total COVID hospitalizations dropped from 154,000 in
mid-January to 10,000 in mid-April, but they climbed back
up to 13,000 in early May, 2022. Though death rates have
fallen, they remain high. Omicron killed over 209,000
Americans from March 1 thru early May. Hospitalizations
are climbing in certain cities and states and could climb
more broadly if a growing percentage of the U.S. population
becomes infected with future variants such as the Omicron
BA.2 variant (in Europe and Asia) and potential spread of
BA.4 and BA.5 from South Africa

All dangerous beliefs, their current evidence, and related footnotes and citations are available for free online in the full report.

No Cost Download
To download the first issue of the full Global and U.S.-centric versions of Plain Talk Reports for free, please visit www.plaintalkreports.com.

One-minute videos on each of the 50 current Dangerous COVID Beliefs and the current evidence regarding those beliefs, are also available for viewing free on YouTube.

Beginning this fall, Plain Talk Reports will begin to launch, dedicated to other medical topics such as Long COVID, heart disease, cancer, immune system disorders, obesity, and others. In addition, premium content for both general readers as well as experts will be available in the coming months. This premium content will take a deeper look into each dangerous belief, including its history and how the evidence related to it has evolved.

All Plain Talk Reports content is vetted by a publicly named team of non-commercial expert reviewers. Dr. Kelley, the Editor in Chief, has spent his career in public health, most recently serving as Director of Integrated Health Services at the World Health Organization, where he also led the WHO's strategy on digital health. Before that, Dr. Kelley served as Director of U.S. National Healthcare Reports at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Among his many current roles, he serves as Executive Director of the ApiJect Global Initiative.

Plain Talk Reports has no commercial or political agenda. Its mission is to make good science understandable and easily accessible to more people and to enhance the public's awareness with the TEDMED Conference and its mission. For additional information, contact [email protected]. You can follow Plain Talk Reports on Twitter @plaintalkreports.

Content from in-house projects such as Plain Talk Reports help inform programming for future TEDMED conferences.

About TEDMED
For more than 20 years, TEDMED talks have appeared on TED.com and TEDMED.com, garnering tens of millions of views globally. TEDMED is an annual conference focusing on health and medicine, with a year-round web-based community. TEDMED is an independent event operating under license from the nonprofit TED conference.

Contact: Kate Scott at [email protected]

SOURCE The TEDMED Foundation