The FDA fully authorized the Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.

Full authorization for the Moderna vaccine is expected soon.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration recommended 8-month COVID-19 boosters for the general public.

And Moderna begins phase 1 trials in an mRNA-based HIV vaccine.

This is America Dissected.

I'm your host, Dr. Abdul-Elsaid.

Autumn is my absolute favorite season.

As a kid, I loved going back to school, and Apple picking and sweater weather, and my birthday.

Or as the rest of you all call it, Halloween.

And in my neck of the woods, the trees treat us to a symphony of fall colors.

The vivid hues of red and orange and yellow that are the color palette of the season.

And most of all, I love football.

I played throughout middle and high school.

I still remember jogging out onto the field on the backdrop of the high school marching band.

I loved the camaraderie of working with my team to accomplish something we couldn't have

done alone.

And as an angsty teenage boy, there was something satisfying about knowing that I could run

headlong into someone else on the football field, particularly for a brown kid in post-9-11

America who was constantly told explicitly or implicitly that I didn't belong.

In the football field, it was one of the few places where I felt I did belong.

I felt free.

But to what end?

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