In this episode of “To Health and Back,” we’ll hear from Pat Thomas — a journalist and the author of “Big Shot: Passion, Politics, and the Struggle for an AIDS Vaccine” — to evaluate the politicization of the HIV epidemic and the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic has been similarly politicized.

In this episode of “To Health and Back,” we’ll hear from Dr. René F. Najera — an epidemiologist and editor of the History of Vaccines site, an online project by the College of Physicians of Philadelphia — to see explore the history of vaccines and vaccine skepticism, and how that same skepticism exists...