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WWTN's Phil Valentine.

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Ah Valentine. I remember the days when he was carried by Westwood nationally but only D-list stations carried his show. Sounds as if he is a goner now from his own ignorance. Tragic really.
 
b-turner, thanks for that thoughtful reply.

One thing I'd point out: the number of people who get a flu shot regularly is not that high. Around 40-45% in a normal year, with seniors 65+ being roughly double the rate of those age 18-49. CDC Data on this for 2010-19: Flu Vaccination Coverage, United States, 2018–19 Influenza Season | FluVaxView | Seasonal Influenza (Flu) | CDC

I think one of my colleagues at the radio station falls into the category of "doesn't do things proactively". He and his wife have not yet been vaccinated for covid. The latest reason he told me is because "people keep getting sick from the vaccine." I suspect he'll get vaccinated if his wife wants to, and not before.
 
The latest reason he told me is because "people keep getting sick from the vaccine."

The ones who do have pre-existing conditions, mainly heart disease. That's why if you have any questions, you should ask your doctor, rather than just avoid the vaccine. I had my annual physical 2 months after I received the vaccine, and the doctor specifically looked at my heart for any side effects. Before I got the vaccine, I was asked multiple times about any possible allergies. They won't give it to you if they perceive any potential problems. So if you're careful, and ask your doctor, you have very little to fear from the vaccine.
 
I have no problems with the small group of people who have religious objections to vaccine. I have no problems with the other small group of people who have medical reasons. I know someone who had a lung removed with cancer, and the vaccine causes him medical problems. I get all that. They are exempt. They also are a very small percentage of people. What is not excusable is the group of people who claim they have a right to get other people sick. Those who believe their personal freedom is more important than anyone else's life. They're wrong about that.

Right now the government isn't mandating the vaccine to the general public. So if the issue is government over-reach, it's not happening. The government is trusting people to do the right thing. And as we've learned, there's always going to be a group who won't do the right thing.
Also I get the idea that some people are vaccine hesitant due to fears of another medical abuse issue.

Here are two examples the opioid abuse scandal and the Tuskegee medical abuse scandal. I can understand why one would end up voting for anti-vax politicians in office and it's due to medical abuse of the past and these people who end up as anti-vaxxers had legit fears if one got the COVID-19 shot then another abuse would pop up on their side.



 
This is going to be interesting: the right for an employer to require vaccination for employment versus individual rights. The can of worms, in my opinion, lies more in the folks who choose for 'religious' reasons not to be vaccinated.

Employers have the right, and we're seeing a big move toward vaccination requirements by private businesses which are doing it to protect themselves.

Job applicants can say they have a religious exemption during the hiring process, and technically the employer shouldn't count that against them when making their hiring decision but honestly, what employer is going to want to deal with that if there's another vaccinated applicant that 's just as qualified.

Ultimately it may not be government mandates that push most unvaccinated people to get a shot, it's that they soon won't be able to get jobs, travel, dine in restaurants, etc., without it.

Corporations shape the direction of America as much as politicians do, and this is just turning out to be more proof of that. The United States is effectively a corporatocracy.
 
Also I get the idea that some people are vaccine hesitant due to fears of another medical abuse issue.

All of that is fine, but there is no evidence of such a thing. There are several different vaccines that were developed at several different companies. So the chance that there's some kind of planned use of the vaccine is pretty far fetched. If you're afraid of one developed in the US, there were a couple that were developed in Europe. Take your pick.
 
Corporations shape the direction of America as much as politicians do, and this is just turning out to be more proof of that. The United States is effectively a corporatocracy.

Again, it's one of those city vs country things. If you work in the big city, chances are your company will require vaccine. If you work for a sole prop or some small business out in the country, it's very likely he won't require anything, and he is anti-vax himself.
 
Religious exemptions shouldn't cover anyone who isn't in a religion or branch of a religion that is against medicine in general. There's no such thing as a religion that's OK with every vaccine except this one, or "my megachurch pastor said not to get one"
 
All of that is fine, but there is no evidence of such a thing.

There were some early signs of vaccine hesitancy among minorities, but their vaccination rates, last I'd heard, were projected to eclipse the white vaccination rate within the next few days. Black and brown vaccine hesitancy can be, and largely has been, overcome. The big problem is vaccine misinformation, and the consumers of it are mostly white males.

Talk radio is entertainment, not news. Knowingly disseminated false information isn’t protected by the First Amendment. Talk radio has gotten around getting in trouble for that by not being information. Phil Valentine was never news. A large portion of the talk radio audience, however, doesn’t seem to be aware of that. I don’t know how you overcome that.
 
There were some early signs of vaccine hesitancy among minorities, but their vaccination rates, last I'd heard, were projected to eclipse the white vaccination rate within the next few days.


It has really helped that a black woman was part of the team that developed the Moderna vaccine:


Whenever she has spoken with hesitant blacks, it's helped a lot.
 
Also I get the idea that some people are vaccine hesitant due to fears of another medical abuse issue.

Here are two examples the opioid abuse scandal and the Tuskegee medical abuse scandal. I can understand why one would end up voting for anti-vax politicians in office and it's due to medical abuse of the past and these people who end up as anti-vaxxers had legit fears if one got the COVID-19 shot then another abuse would pop up on their side.



The medical community gets a lot more right than wrong.
 
Right now the government isn't mandating the vaccine to the general public. So if the issue is government over-reach, it's not happening. The government is trusting people to do the right thing. And as we've learned, there's always going to be a group who won't do the right thing.
It’s impractical to mandate a vaccine that’s still under an EUA and thus inaccessible to anyone under 12, although full FDA approval for Pfizer could be granted as early as this week. Moderna has also filed for full approval, too. By then, we’re going to see things change rather noticeably.
 
It has really helped that a black woman was part of the team that developed the Moderna vaccine:


Whenever she has spoken with hesitant blacks, it's helped a lot.

An even bigger barrier to communities of color has been access. With states managing their own vaccine rollouts, almost all of them have been focused on getting white people vaccinated. I occasionally wondered if my state's vaccine plan was specifically designed to kill Black people given how it was rolled out. The two biggest metro areas in the state only had a handful of vaccine clinics in the beginning, and almost all of them were in the suburbs. Communities of color are routinely more dependent on public transportation and have less reliable vehicles in addition to encountering additional discrimination in the suburbs. That’s not including the more rural areas of the state, which had most of the vaccine clinics early on. That also made no sense to me as the rural population here was very vaccination skeptical, but the governor here has been almost pro-COVID in his handling of the virus. At least he’s not as bad as Florida Man, though!

The medical community gets a lot more right than wrong.

True. Plus, when the scientific community gets something wrong, we admit it, try to find out why, and revise our conclusions and recommendations. I get that information changed quickly in the beginning of the pandemic and that we might have looked like bumblers, but I'm still amazed that so many people just assumed all of our doctors and scientists were a bunch of liars and idiots who were determined to hurt people. I work in IT and educational data science. So, I wasn’t directly involved in any of the actual research, though I was able to follow the data and figure how where and how they were basing their recommendations. I was disappointed, however, that almost nobody I knew ever reached out to me to ask about how all of this unfolded. A maddeningly large number of friends and acquaintances simply wrote off everything the scientific and medical community had to say because they got too much wrong at the beginning. I offered to explain what had happened to a handful of my friends, but none wanted to know.
 
All of that is fine, but there is no evidence of such a thing. There are several different vaccines that were developed at several different companies. So the chance that there's some kind of planned use of the vaccine is pretty far fetched. If you're afraid of one developed in the US, there were a couple that were developed in Europe. Take your pick.
I agree I got vaccinated myself but I am wondering how to think like a person that never took a biology class in my life how would I react if I heard about all the things surrounding vaccines.

Yes it's true the CDC, NIH and FDA had oversight over operation Warp Speed for the past 1.5 years since the emergency orders have been issued and they issued EUA for the Pfizer, Moderns and the Johnson&Johnson COVID-19 vaccines and it's been proven effective as of this EUA.
 
There were some early signs of vaccine hesitancy among minorities, but their vaccination rates, last I'd heard, were projected to eclipse the white vaccination rate within the next few days. Black and brown vaccine hesitancy can be, and largely has been, overcome. The big problem is vaccine misinformation, and the consumers of it are mostly white males.
That is not true among Hispanics in general with a very important subset which I will detail, too.

First, the information available to Hispanics has been much less coordinated and effective. The campaigns have failed to focus on some of the culturally most important points and have been threatening more often than comforting. In particularly, first generation Hispanics have a huge mistrust for government, and nothing has been done to overcome that... in fact, much of the "get a vax" messaging used government representatives in the TV and online messages... exactly the worst messengers.

There is a huge U.S. subset of anywhere from 11 million to over 20 million undocumented Hispanics. Filling in forms of going to an "official" location are frightening. Not enough is being done to reassure the Hispanic community in this regard. Many of the members of this group did not participate in the Census, obviously.

If you add in the undocumented, then you have a population group that begins to approach double the size of the African American population and one which needs much more culturally focused attention.

And remember, "Hispanics" can be of any race. Many do not like being lumped into the "brown" category. Would you call Ricky Martin or Bad Bunny or José Feliciano or Eva Longoria or Sofia Vergara "brown"?
 
And remember, "Hispanics" can be of any race. Many do not like being lumped into the "brown" category. Would you call Ricky Martin or Bad Bunny or José Feliciano or Eva Longoria or Sofia Vergara "brown"?

If I was racially or otherwise culturally insensitive, I apologize. I've always been told Black and brown are acceptable when compared to or contrasted with white, and you would generally refer to races and ethnicities by their preferred names when not doing so. If that is no longer the case, I am willing to be educated.
 
All of that is fine, but there is no evidence of such a thing. There are several different vaccines that were developed at several different companies. So the chance that there's some kind of planned use of the vaccine is pretty far fetched. If you're afraid of one developed in the US, there were a couple that were developed in Europe. Take your pick.
There are Chinese jabs that are the dominant ones in much of South America (the Chinese are donating them, while the US companies want to sell them) and even a Cuban vaccine that is being distributed in Venezuela. India has one, but they cut the international distribution when domestic needs increased in the last four weeks.

And then there is the Russian vaccine, being distributed in some of Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
 
You would think this would be a great place for the church to step in.
The influence of the church in a secular leadership role is very limited in the US.

First, the immense majority of US Hispanics are Mexican or of Mexican heritage; in Mexico in the last 100 years since the Revolution the church's involvement in political and social affairs has been severely restricted. Priests can't wear religious garments in public... the church can't be involved in political movements... until very recently, religious radio of any kind was prohibited. So those with Mexican heritage are not used to secular advice from the Church.

So many Hispanics don't look to the Catholic church for non-spiritual guidance.

And then, in places like Puerto Rico, more than half the "believers" are not Catholic, with evangelistic faiths being very predominant.

That said, and with nearly nobody going to mass due to church closures in places like CA, it is hard for the Catholic church to send a message. And the proportional lack of Hispanic priests in the US is yet another issue.
 
If I was racially or otherwise culturally insensitive, I apologize. I've always been told Black and brown are acceptable when compared to or contrasted with white, and you would generally refer to races and ethnicities by their preferred names when not doing so. If that is no longer the case, I am willing to be educated.
You are not wrong... but "brown" is a generalization that has come out of politicians trying to appeal to minorities.

I apologize if I seemed denigrating or unduly critical.

"Hispanic" is, of course, not a race and that is why the Census in the US has a totally separate question on the subject. Hispanics can be racially Black, Asian, White or Indigenous or any of the millions of blends of the Census acceptable race classifications.

Up until the 1980 Census, there was no classification for "Hispanic" and, indeed, the word "Hispanic" did not have its current interpretation in the US. The term was repurposed to comply with all the new legislation from the 60's and 70's that began the still unfinished road towards real equality. Lots of Hispanics do not like the term, in fact.

From my experience in 20 or so of the largest Hispanic/Latino/Latinx markets in the US, I find that it is better to say "Black and Hispanic" rather than "Black and brown" as that gives Hispanics of all races and origins an equal position in the struggle for equality in treatment and opportunity.
 
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