Vaccines Work and Twice Over
This week I am talking to Dr. Richard Pan, MD, MPH, (@DrPanMD) a pediatrician and California State Senator. He has been a leading advocate of increasing the health of everyone and raising California’s vaccination rates, sadly making him a target for online harassment and in-person assaults by conspiracy theorists and anti-vaccine groups. He found his way into politics via his passion for education and community health taking the position that just complaining about politics and nothing getting done was not good enough and needed people ot stand up and actively participate
Dr. Pan, like myself, is a believer of science and as we navigate the waters of COVID-19 and its spread through our countries and communities he has been working to cut through the partisan lens of politics for the good of the community.
We discuss the COVID19 outbreak in the context of reopening schools and what that will require and the importance of making everyone feel safe with the return to in-person education which we agree is desperately needed for many reasons.
Hint -the decision to wear a mask or practicing physical distancing based on science is a central part of re-opening safely but requires we all come together to pull in the same direction.
We talk about the importance of a robust widespread vaccination program and the fact that vaccines that stimulate your own immune system to defend against disease and importantly vaccines protect us twice over including the essential “Community Immunity”. And we spend time diving into the anti-science and anti-vaccine movement and some fo the drivers to the anti-vaccine crowd, some of whom are driven by purely financial reasons to drive the sale of their snake-oil products but the sad fact that the weaponization of social media and the complete disregard of the social media companies of protecting the community over their profit motives. For those of you struggling with concerted attacks by well-organized minority anti-science anti-vaccine crowd you can call in the calvary, the ShotsHeard (@ShotsHeard) team.
Listen live at 4:00 AM, 12:00 Noon or 8:00 PM ET, Monday through Friday for the next week at HealthcareNOW Radio. After that, you can listen on demand (See podcast information below.) Join the conversation on Twitter at #TheIncrementalist.
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