Man Up

A COVID-19 Survivor Warns Other Men

Data shows that men are more likely than women to downplay the virus—and also to die from it.

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Episode Notes

This week on the show, Aymann tries to make sense of polling data that shows men tend to downplay the threat of COVID-19 compared to women. First he talks to David Vega, a medical student who contracted the virus in early March after attending multiple parties and gatherings on a trip to Florida. He urges other men to learn from his mistakes. Then Aymann talks to Michael Smith, an internal medicine doctor and the chief medical editor of WebMD, who says the problem of men not taking health care seriously has deep roots.

Podcast production by Cameron Drews.

About the Show

On Man Up, host Aymann Ismail invites men and women to tell embarrassing, funny, and sometimes disturbing stories about their lives as they try to figure out what they still have to learn—and unlearn—about being a man. They’ll talk relationships, family, sex, and identity, trying to understand their experiences to help listeners make more sense of their own.

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