Vaccine But Not Herd Immunity
What A Day
What A Day
4.6 • 12.6K Ratings
🗓️ 4 May 2021
⏱️ 18 minutes
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Summary
Four mothers who had been separated from their children at the border by the Trump administration will finally be reunited with them this week, according to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas yesterday. These are the first families to be brought together as a result of a task force President Biden created shortly after taking office, and over the next few weeks, an additional 32 families from across Mexico and Central America are set to be reunited.
Public health experts think it's unlikely we'll ever reach herd immunity in the U.S., at least not anytime in the foreseeable future, because of factors like more contagious virus variants and vaccine hesitancy.
And in headlines: Biden's EPA to cut hydrofluorocarbons, CVS and Walgreens were responsible for the bulk of discarded vaccines, and Bill and Melinda Gates announce their divorce.
Show Notes:
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's Tuesday, May 4th. I'm Akila Hughes. |
| 0:09.0 | And I'm getting a rest of the time. This is what a day where we are pulling a Chubaka |
| 0:12.3 | for Star Wars Day and letting our dog drive the car. |
| 0:15.0 | Yeah, don't tell anybody, but I've been letting Fats you do that for a while now. He hasn't |
| 0:18.6 | gotten into any accidents. |
| 0:20.0 | Thankfully, nobody will know now. |
| 0:23.0 | So on today's show, some migrant family separated at the border years ago will finally be reunited |
| 0:36.8 | plus we'll have headlines. But first the latest. |
| 0:39.8 | So you probably saw that horrifying headline yesterday that the US likely won't reach |
| 0:43.6 | herd immunity against COVID anytime soon. That's percentage of people who need vaccines |
| 0:48.0 | and antibodies so that all the people who can't get them because they're really young |
| 0:51.8 | or sick or whatever are still protected in public. I'd say this news gave us all pandemic |
| 0:57.2 | flashbacks, but we're still in this horrible shit. So really it was just more bad news |
| 1:00.9 | on top of bad news. But I want to help listeners put that into perspective. The herd immunity |
| 1:05.9 | threshold has bounced around a little bit, but because of the variance, it's estimated |
| 1:10.0 | to be about 80% of the population. And that number is important because for a lot of epidemiologists, |
| 1:15.6 | they think it's the benchmark for truly returning to so-called normalcy. But with the endless |
| 1:20.2 | politicization, a lack of true patriotism and reluctance for other reasons, there's about |
| 1:25.1 | 30% of Americans who aren't getting vaccinated. And so obviously that's too high a number |
| 1:29.6 | to truly reach herd immunity. Right. And hopefully that number |
| 1:33.1 | budgets with time will see. So that seems like mostly bad news still though. Is there |
| 1:38.6 | another way out of this whole scape then? Truly out of it? No, not really, but the goal |
... |
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