What Had Happened Was: A Podcast For Dayton

A Skyhawk helped develop the national strategy credited with slowing the spread of coronavirus. Dr. Rajeev Venkayya, a 1985 Fairborn High School grad, was the director for biodefense under President George W. Bush. He helped lead a team of doctors and researchers that developed the pandemic response policy that has Americans practicing social distancing today. Venkayya, the principal author of the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza, discussed the coronavirus pandemic and the extreme action taken to slow it with “What Had Happened Was” host Amelia Robinson. “The types of things that are being done now are very similar to what we envisioned in 2007, but they go much further than we expected at the time. We did envision at the time that we would have a situation in which everybody in a community was being encouraged to just stay at home. Everybody,” he said. Now the president of the global vaccine business unit for the Japan-based pharmaceutical company Takeda, the physician is championing a global cause