“Hammer and Dance”: Prof. Kent Kirshenbaum on the Pandemic (Part 2)

Dr. Kent Kirshenbaum is a Professor of Chemistry at New York University and a co-founder of NYU’s Biomedical Chemistry Institute. His research focuses on molecular pharmacology and bio-organic chemistry, including new technology for detecting specific virus particles. His studies are supported by the National Science Foundation.

In the first part of our interview, Prof. Kirshenbaum discussed the abdication of leadership at the national level regarding the pandemic, why states can’t take up the slack, cooking the numbers, the path to a vaccine, and how the US is screwing itself, among other topics.

For the second part of our conversation, we spoke after he arrived in his hometown of San Francisco following a solo cross-country drive from New York.

WHO’S GOT THE PAIN WHEN THEY DO THE MAMBO?

KENT KIRSHENBAUM: I’ve got some super good news for you, Bob. I’ll get to that in a second. First, there are a couple of things that I just wanted to fill in from your previous questions.

You asked me at the very outset how I would characterize the federal response. So that’s been going through my head, and now that I’ve had the chance to mull it over, the words that came to me were: incoherent, inconsistent, inexplicable, and infuriating.