The battle between fear and boredom in El Paso

Post Reports

The Washington Post

Daily News, Politics, News

4.4 • 5.1K Ratings

🗓️ 3 December 2020

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Pandemic fatigue permeates even the cities hit hardest by the virus: In El Paso the death toll is staggering, but the community is struggling to come together to fight it. Plus, how a group advising the CDC is deciding who should get vaccines first.

El Paso was still grieving when the coronavirus arrived. Now, death has overwhelmed it. Arelis Hernández says the city pulled together after 23 people were killed in an attack at a Walmart last year, but El Paso is now struggling to summon solidarity as scores die of covid-19.

How do you decide who gets a vaccine first? Health reporter Lena H. Sun explains the complicated factors the committee advising the CDC is weighing — including how to save the most lives, how to stop the spread of the coronavirus and how to make people confident enough in the vaccine to take it in the first place.

Subscribe to The Washington Post: https://postreports.com/offer

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	From the newsroom of the Washington Post.
0:04.8	Hi, this is Vanessa Williams from The Washington Post.
0:08.4	Hey, it's Philip Rutger at The Washington Post.
0:10.9	Do you have a minute?
0:11.9	Hi, this is Dan Zagfe.
0:13.4	This is Post Reports.
0:14.9	I am routine powers.
0:17.0	It's Thursday, December 3rd.
0:24.5	Today how COVID has overwhelmed El Paso.
0:28.2	And deciding who gets a vaccine first.
0:36.7	So this back here used to be a big storage room and made it into the walk in refrigerator.
0:42.5	This walk in refrigerator can hold at least 25 loved ones that were serving.
0:48.2	I'm standing outside a mortuary refrigerator at Sunset Funeral Home with Christopher
0:53.2	Luhan, the director of this particular facility in El Paso, Texas.
1:00.7	Our release Hernandez covers Texas for the post.
1:04.3	It's a refrigerator now that's holding 12 bodies and right next to the door is a whiteboard
1:10.7	that has 12 names on it.
1:13.0	And as you can see, 90% of those names are pretty much due to COVID.
1:19.1	Luhan said he had to retrofit a storage closet into this mortuary refrigerator at great
1:25.5	cost to keep up with the body count in El Paso.
1:29.6	The first week that we added this refrigeration unit, it was full the first three days that
1:35.7	we actually had it finished.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Washington Post, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Washington Post and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.