Your Covid Vaccine Questions, Answered

Uncanny Valley | WIRED

WIRED

Technology

4.1 • 572 Ratings

🗓️ 29 January 2021

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Vaccines are here, but they’ve had a bit of a bumpy landing. In fact, the US is way behind on the distribution goals set by the federal government, and the longer the rollout drags on, the more complicated things seem to get. There are supply chain issues, confusion over how to get an appointment, and different eligibility requirements for different states. Meanwhile, new variants of the virus have raised concerns about the efficacy of the vaccines that have been approved so far.

This week on Gadget Lab, we try to shed some light on these issues. WIRED science writers Maryn McKenna and Megan Molteni join us to talk about the ins and outs of vaccinations, and answer your questions about what exactly is going on.

Show Notes:

Read Megan’s stories about new virus variants here and here. Read Maryn’s story about vaccine mass clinics here and her story about dual-dose vaccinations here. Read Uri Friedman’s story about Israel’s vaccine strategy in The Atlantic here. Follow all of WIRED’s Covid-19 coverage here.

Recommendations:

Megan recommends embracing winter. Maryn recommends sharpening knives, specifically with Misen’s sharpening stones. Mike recommends the show Freaks and Geeks, now streaming on Hulu. Lauren recommends that you get vaccinated, if you have the opportunity. Just do it.

Maryn McKenna can be found on Twitter @marynmck. Megan Molteni is @MeganMolteni. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Mike.
0:01.0	Lauren.
0:02.0	Mike, if you just happened to go to the pharmacy one day, you wanted to get a hot pocket,
0:06.9	and the line was really, really long.
0:10.0	And someone said you could skip the line, but there's a catch.
0:14.6	The hot pocket may be the difference between life and death.
0:17.8	Would you skip the line?
0:19.0	Normally I wouldn't eat hot pockets, but for this thought experiment, I'll say, yes, I would skip
0:24.3	the line. All right. I'm not sure that would be everyone's answer, but that's exactly what we're
0:28.1	going to talk about on today's gadget lab, except, of course, we're not talking about hot pockets.
0:31.7	We're talking about the COVID-19 vaccine.
0:44.9	Hi, everyone. Welcome to Gadget Lab. I'm Lauren Good. I'm a senior writer at Wired, and I'm joined remotely by my co-host, Wired Senior Editor Michael Colore. Hello. Hi. He who does not
0:51.8	eat hot pockets. All right, we have a full house today. Our science and health
0:56.0	reporting team is joining us. I'm very excited about this. First, Wired staff writer Megan Muldeni.
1:01.6	Hey, Megan. Hey, Lauren. Hey, Mike. And we're also joined by Wired contributor, Marin McKenna from Atlanta.
1:07.2	Marin, thanks so much for joining us. I think this is your first time on gadget lab. I am so excited. So COVID-19 vaccine rollouts are happening. And the information we're getting
1:17.1	about vaccine supply and who's next in line to get one seems to change pretty much every day.
1:23.1	It just hasn't been a very straightforward rollout because of the scale and complexity of the vaccination effort.
1:29.2	Different vaccines require different dosages and different states have different distribution strategies.
1:34.8	And new variants of the virus are raising questions about how effective these vaccines are at fighting all of the strains of the virus.
1:42.2	It's just, it's a lot.
1:44.2	So that's why we've invited our Wired Science Reporters on to help clarify this
	...

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