April 28, 2021 • 38 mins
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, confusion and misinformation surfaced online about the virus and the vaccines, leaving the American people unsure of what to trust. In this episode, we hear from two sisters who were influenced by a viral video that promoted wildly false conspiracy theories which made them second guess the vaccines. Then, host Robin Roberts chats with Dr. Anthony Fauci from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). At the intersection of what feels good to believe and what's actually true, we’ll uncover the science that is ultimately leading to people getting vaccinated.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to COVID nineteen Immunity in Our Community. Before we
kick off the show, here's the latest COVID nineteen vaccination
news at the time of this recording. On Monday, ap
after reviewing all available safety data, the CDC and f
d A lifted the pause to resume the use of
Johnson and Johnson's Jansen COVID nineteen vaccine. At the start
(00:24):
of this week, over two hundred thirty million vaccines have
been administered in the US and more than half of
eligible Americans have received at least a first dose. Also
this week, CDC Director Rochelle Wilenski recommended that pregnant women
receive a COVID nineteen vaccine. That's it for now, enjoy
the show. Well, Hello everyone, I'm Robin Roberts of ABC IS.
(00:50):
Good Morning, America. Welcome to COVID nineteen Immunity and Our Community,
an innovative new podcast series brought to you by the
U S Department of Health and Human Services. COVID nineteen
(01:11):
Immunity in Our Community has been created to provide you
with the groundbreaking science, honest facts, unvarnished truth about the
deadly coronavirus and the revolutionary vaccines that could put this
pandemic behind us and bring back a bit of normalcy
for all of us. And in this third episode, we're
talking about how plenty of misinformation has surfaced online as
(01:36):
the COVID nineteen vaccines are being manufactured and distributed, leaving
people unsure about what is true and who to trust. First,
we're going to hear from Tasha French Lemley and Kim Cannon.
(01:57):
They are sisters with very different view points on the vaccine.
The night before Tasha was scheduled for her first vaccine appointment,
Kim had forwarded her a YouTube video of a doctor
with advice that contradicted that of the vast majority of
medical professionals. We're gonna hear how this social media share
affected Tasha's decision to get vaccinated and her relationship with
(02:20):
her sister after that. Stay tuned as we get answers
from infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Faucci. Yes, President Biden's
chief science advisor and a leader who many have come
to trust as a straight shooter during the course of
the pandemic. I have the pleasure of speaking with Dr
Faucci myself and getting the facts about these new vaccines,
(02:44):
how they work exactly, and what you can do to
weed out misinformation about them in the future. We've all
heard the myths, the conspiracy theories, and the outright lies
(03:04):
about the COVID nineteen vaccine that have spread all over
social media and the Internet since this pandemic started. You know,
such misinformation isn't just extremely misleading, it can be deadly.
Some folks are turning down a vaccine that can protect
them from illness, hospitalization, and death. And when we doubt
that the vaccine is indeed safe and effective and decide
(03:28):
not to get vaccinated, we may also put everyone around
us at risk of succumbing to the virus and continuing
the pandemic. Tasha French Limley and Kim Cannon are two
sisters in Tennessee and Arkansas, respectively, who found themselves in
the crosshairs of some of the misinformation surrounding the COVID
nineteen vaccine. Now. Just prior to her appointment to get vaccinated,
(03:52):
Tasha's sister Kim forwarded her a video making some false
claims about how the vaccine can affect people's gene Now
we know the vaccines trigger your body to create immunity
against the COVID virus, but it does not interfere with
your genetic code. But with that deceptive presentation of pseudoscience, Tasha,
(04:12):
who didn't yet know many people who had been vaccinated,
started to feel scared, stressed, and worried. The video not
only had an effect on Tasha, it affected her relationship
with her sister too. Here now are Tasha and Kim
telling their stories about how they each reached their own
conclusions on vaccination and the impact their decisions have had
(04:35):
on their lives. Sense My name is Tasha French Lemley,
and I am a media professional and social entrepreneur in Nashville, Tennessee.
My name is Kim Cannon. I live in northwest Arkansas
(04:56):
work for community college here. Tasha is my little sister.
We have the same mom and the same dad, and
she was born when I was twenty two years old,
so I think that it was the most amazing thing.
When she was about eighteen Before then, she had just
been a child, my little sister, and she actually was
(05:18):
friends with my children. We reconnected over a holiday kind
of suddenly and kind of intensely, like all of a sudden,
I had grown up enough to where we could speak
the same language. She is my go to person. If
I have a problem, she helps me think through it.
We're just very close. I feel like she's my soul mate.
(05:42):
I can't remember what I first thought about COVID. I
guess I felt the same as I did about a
lot of the scares, like stars, like Ebola. You know,
I mean, there was some terrifying ones out there, and
I disregarded it. I thought, you know, it's sad and
it's scary for the people that are going through this,
but it probably won't come here. I remember feeling very nervous,
(06:04):
watching the news a lot and getting a lot of
mixed messages. When I first found out about the vaccine,
I latched onto the m RNA and thought, this thing
is going to change people's biology. I'm not into it,
and she was pretty aligned. We were like, I don't
know what this means. You know, we have a layman's
(06:25):
understanding of the other kinds of vaccines with the weekend
or killed virus and how that might kind of work
in the body. But I think this mRNA stuff blew
my mind and and scared me. I had no intention
of being one of the first people to get this vaccine,
and neither did she. When people asked me if I
(06:46):
would take the vaccine, I didn't know. I continue to
listen and hear about it and wonder, and a lot
of people are nervous because they say that it's just
such a quick vaccine, that they've come up with this
so fast. Over the months that we've heard about this
MR and A vaccines and they've been running trials, I
started to soften to it a little. I started listening
(07:08):
to these people who know more than me and started going, Okay,
you know what can I understand about this again? I'm
still not first in line. I'm relatively young, middle age,
and generally pretty healthy, and so I didn't think it
was going to have to be a decision I made quickly.
One of my part time jobs sent out an email
(07:30):
to the entire staff and said, anybody who was a
staff of this company is eligible to get the vaccine.
I look over at my husband and I'm like, and
I start shaking. I'm like, I could do this like
three days from now. What in the world? And and
in the end we've we felt like this is a gift,
and so I decided to accept that I had listened
(07:54):
to a video from Dr Christiane Northrop. She's a doctor
and she's on NPR and public TV, and she's written
many books and I've read some of them, and on
this particular one, she was very cautious about the vaccine.
In fact, discouraged her listeners from taking the vaccine. And
because Tasha was getting her vaccine that very day, this
(08:16):
was about two in the morning, I sent the video
to her so that she could see that perspective. I'm
in a vulnerable position, but I decided to kind of
kick myself in the balls. I decided to watch the video.
So it's a ten minute video, and I'm mortified. She says,
I know a lot of you are grieving about loved
(08:38):
ones who are going to be taking the and she
won't use the word vaccine. She holds up two fingers
in the letter V and she says, this is not
actually a vaccine. This is to genetically reprogram us. That's
basically what's going to happen to all of us. We
are no longer going to be living organisms. I have
(09:02):
a personality that when someone is very passionate about something,
it's not that I believe them, but something can rattle
me about it that someone is so passionate and believes
this so hard. What if they're right. I guess it
was just a really bad time to send it to her.
But if I had decided in my heart of hearts
that I thought it was a dangerous thing to do,
(09:22):
then of course I had to send it. I love
my sister just about more than anybody in the world,
and I was so hurt and so angry that she
would take this seriously enough to potentially stand in the
way of doing me doing something really healthy for myself.
And um, I wanted to throw my computer into a wall.
(09:47):
I think she was angry about the video, and maybe
I understand that now, you know, I I really do.
So that morning, I'm sitting here and I've got on
one hand all of this fear and conspiracy and misinformation
and a lot of emotion. And I'm an emotional person.
I can be swayed by fear. And then on the
(10:10):
other hand, I've got these scientists who have dedicated their
entire lives to these technologies. You know, it wasn't just
the video that made Tasha nervous. Her lack of understanding
of the new m r N, a technology in the
vaccines produced by Fiser and Maderna had initially given her pause.
(10:32):
Tasha was ultimately reassured by the ways in which Dr Collins,
director of the National Institutes of Health, could speak to
science while keeping the importance of faith in mind. Kim
was similarly comforted after during further research and speaking to
a medical professional. We come from a Church of Christ background,
(10:52):
so as my poor husband leaving for work and I'm
a mess in the bed, he says. Francis Collins used
to be really big in the Church of Christ. He
said he would go around and talk to churches about
science and try to help congregations understand how these scientific
things work. He goes, he's really compassionate. You might want
to listen to him. So I looked up France's Collins.
(11:13):
I looked at this guy, and I'm like, no, I
don't think this guy is lying to me. I don't
think he's trying to kill me or turn me into
a chimera. So, yeah, those were the people that helped
me that morning. And then of course, once I got
to the facility, looking at those nurses and looking at
the people in line, just I felt overwhelming gratitude for
the process that it was happening is as smoothly as
(11:33):
it was, just glad to be there. A couple of
days later, my sister says, I talked to my boss
and he says he's going to get it. He thinks
we should all get it when when we have the opportunity.
Was it a week and a half later something like
that she went and got her vaccine. I don't know.
(11:53):
I just did a lot of reading and a lot
of listening. I really think that we should be operative
with this process of trying to get rid of this stuff.
You know, it's not getting any better without the vaccine.
Listening to my boss, who was an attorney and his wife,
who was a nurse practitioner, really helped. I felt that
they gave me great advice. So when I went to
(12:19):
get the vaccine, I didn't know what to expect. Um
they kept us very distanced from each other. It seemed
very very safe. And then it was my turn and
I sat in the chair and they had me take
down my sleeve and they shot me in the arm
and it was easy, breezy. I did feel some soreness
(12:43):
in the arm, not much. And Tash actually got her
second one and didn't feel any adverse effects from her
second one. I'll have my second shot in two days,
and I'm really looking forward to it now, Kim says
she feels like her life will be much freer, and
she's looking forward to a day soon when she can
see her mother. The two of them haven't been together
(13:06):
in more than a year. I am feeling empowered having
this protection that I can get back to my normal
life sooner, not immediately. I understand that, in fact, you're
supposed to wait a full two weeks after the second
vaccine before you feel like the full effects have taken place,
but even then you're to continue to wear your mask
(13:28):
for the sake of other people. And I probably won't
be joining social circles yet either, so it's a slow process.
But I'm still feeling very fortunate to be one of
the first people to get the vaccine. I feel like
I'm going to be much freer in my life. So
I just want it for everybody. I want the whole
(13:49):
world to get through this. Kim had the best of
intentions when she sent that video to her sister, and
she and Tasha certainly aren't the only people who have
been concerned about the COVID nineteen vaccines. Plenty of folks
are worried about the apparent speed at which the pharmaceutical
(14:12):
companies and government began developing, testing and producing them. Others
are apprehensive that the vaccines could cause long term side
effects that haven't yet come to light. Some might even
wonder if they might be better off taking their chances
with COVID nineteen over getting vaccinated. But with an informed
expert on hand, we can confidently put those notions to rest.
(14:36):
If anyone knows just how long these vaccines have actually
been in the making, far longer than a year, it's
infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci, the director of the
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. You might not
have heard of Dr Fauci before the pandemic, but he
has since become a household name as someone that we've
(14:58):
come to recognize and trust. He's now serving as President
Biden's chief medical advisor and as a member of Biden's
COVID nineteen response team. Dr Faucci has been on the
front lines of the fight, watching in horror as the
COVID infections grew from just a handful of cases in
the United States more than a year ago to a
(15:18):
pandemic that has infected more than thirty million Americans and
killed more than half a million. But as of today,
three companies Bisor, Maderna and Johnson and Johnson are manufacturing
drugs that the f d A has authorized for emergency
use against COVID nineteen, and vaccinations are rolling out all
(15:39):
across the US. Dr Foulci has said publicly that he's
extremely confident that the large scale clinical trials of more
than a hundred thousand volunteers proved that these vaccines are
safe and effective. And he doesn't just talk the talk, no, no, no, no,
He walks the walk. Leads by example. He got his
first vaccine in front of a live audience on December,
(16:02):
his second on January. But he understands that not everyone
is willing to be vaccinated and knows that a lot
of people are still hesitant about the vaccine. Now, I'll
talk with him about why Tasha and Kim made the
right decision to get vaccinated, About how this vaccine went
from pharmaceutical laboratories to clinical trials to authorization and distribution
(16:27):
at unprecedented speed, and about the various misconceptions and rumors
surrounding the virus and the vaccines. Here's my conversation with
Dr Faucci. Dr Fauci, we just heard from those two
sisters who were both initially hesitant to get the vaccine
(16:50):
after they saw that that video that had so much
false information. So how can you respond to such hesitations
and address us how we might be able to combat
this false information about the vaccines that's out there. You know, Roman,
It's not easy, and it requires continual confronting distortions of
(17:13):
the fact of which there are a lot of them
out there. You've got to be out there with messages
as often as you possibly can to talk about the
facts about the vaccine. And I believe if you get
reasonable people and you talk to them in a way
that they can understand, namely about the safety, the efficacy,
(17:33):
and what vaccines do historically and the specific vaccines that
we're dealing with right now, you can get them to
change their mind and realize that this is a lot
of false information. It's not an easy task because the
the distortions of reality are really kind of pervasive out there.
I hear and see a lot of it myself, and
(17:57):
so I want to get to some of that and
some of the myths, if you will, about about the vaccinations.
And what I appreciate about this podcast on many levels
is that we're not dismissing anybody's questions about the vaccines,
and we want to give them the knowledge to be
able to make informed decisions for themselves. But when they
see the video as the sisters did, people wonder, does
(18:18):
it alter your DNA like it was said in that
video that they watched. Sometimes there are situations where a
question that's asked has a reasonable biological basis, namely, does
this do this? And you say, well, you know it can,
but it's such a rare event. Let let me give
you an example and then we'll get back to the
(18:40):
idea about influencing your your your DNA. Someone says, can
you get an allergic reaction to the vaccine? You could say,
you know, biologically, that's possible because there may be something
in the vaccine that you happen to have hyper sensitivity
to when you get an allergic reaction. We know there
(19:01):
are allergic reactions to the vaccines, but they're extremely rare
because we've been following tens of millions of people and
it happens anywhere from two to four per million, so
you're addressing a true biological reason. What you can say
about whether it alters your DNA is that there's no
biological possibility whatsoever of that happening. Because even though the
(19:26):
two of the vaccines are m RNA vaccines, people here ARENA.
They think of genetics and they think it's going to
modify your gene and in fact, you need to explain
to them that RNA is something that gets in their
codes for a protein and the RNA kind of disappears
after a couple of days that you need to explain.
(19:48):
So there's no biological reason how could ever get into
your d NA. Let's talk about J and J. Johnson
and Johnson. People like to call it one and done,
the one and done vaccine. How does it? The viral
vector vaccine work. So when you look at the the
virus under an electron microscope, it has these spikes that
(20:10):
stick out. And that's why you get the word coronavirus
because the spikes look like the spikes of a crown,
So corona is the word for crowns, so they call
it coronavirus. So the way you protect against it the
body makes a response against these spike proteins. So one
(20:31):
way or the other, you want to get the spike
protein into the body so that when the body sees it,
the body thinks it's the virus, and it makes a
really good response against the spike protein, even though it's
harmless because it's only in a protein, it's not the virus.
It's not replicating, so that when you get exposed to
(20:52):
the real virus, the body has built up this memory
of trying to prevent that virus from coming in, so
when you get exposed, your immune system jumps all over
that virus and suppresses it. So, having said that, each
of the vaccines presents the spike protein to the body
(21:14):
in a different way. The mRNA presents it by putting
into the body a messenger the mr and A that
codes to make the protein. The body sees the protein
makes the immune response. Then you get to the J
and J, which is a harmless coal virus called ad
(21:35):
no virus. It's a virus that's inactivated, so it's not replicating,
but the body makes a pretty good response when it
sees that virus in the context of other things. So
you get the virus, you stick the gene of the
spike protein in there. When you injected into a person,
(21:56):
that gene starts coding for the protein, and the only
thing the body see ease is the spike protein, and
it responds to it the same way as it responds
to the spike protein that the m R in A
coded for. All of them have the common denominator, as
they're all making a response against the spike protein, and
(22:18):
it's just presented to the body in a different way.
With the three different types of vaccines. You know, there
are some myths out there, Dr Fauci about the vaccines.
You know this, and for one, I know many experts
are thrilled about how fast we were able to get
these vaccines to the people. Some skeptic citizens, though, are
out there and they're wondering if they were rushed, and
(22:39):
if so, how can they be safe. That is not
only a good question, it is the most common question
I get, and it's understandable. The reason is we keep
saying historically that it takes years from the time you
get a new pathogen, a new virus for example, to
the time you actually get a safe and effective X
(23:00):
sing into the arms of individuals. Because of the extraordinary
advances in vaccine platform technologies that was worked, that was
done a decade or more before the actual work began
on this vaccine. That we were able to get the
genetic sequence of the virus, which was published on a
(23:22):
public database on January the ninth, or what we did
was literally within a few days, took that sequence out,
made an rn A version of it, and therefore we
started our phase one trials. About sixty or sixty five
(23:43):
days later. On July, we started to Phase three trials.
Normally on purely technical basis alone, that would have taken years.
So safety was not compromised, Scientific integrity was not compromise.
It was merely a reflection of spectacular advances in scientific technology.
(24:10):
That's all that was. So there's a very good explanation
for the speed. It isn't as if we rushed it through.
Another very important point about speed is that, unfortunately for
the people who get infected, but quite fortunate for the
vaccine development, is that when you are testing a vaccine
(24:32):
in the middle of an explosive outbreak, you can get
your answer within months rather than years. Let me give
you an example that I think you'd appreciate. You remember
back when we were making a vaccine for zica. We
made a really good vaccine Physica, but as the infection
(24:53):
rate came down because we controlled the mosquitoes. It was
years into it and we still don't have a vaccine.
You know why. They're not enough cases of zeka to
prove that the vaccine works. We have a vaccine, we
have a really good vaccine, but there were so few
(25:13):
cases of zeka it's gonna take years to prove that
the zeke of vaccine works. Whereas when you test a
vaccine in a country that was averaging two hundred thousand
infections per day, you get your answer like that, You
get your answer in months at the most. That's the
(25:36):
why it was fast, not because corners were cut, not
because safety was compromised, but a combination of scientific technology
and the unfortunate situation of having hundreds of thousands of
cases per day. So you talk about the covered nineteen
and those that have had it, well, some people want
(25:59):
to know, Okay, I've at it, so I don't need
to get vaccinated. True or false? Well, the reason the
reason it's it's false, Robin, is that we have found
now and we're getting more and more information that the
immunity that's induced by prior infection is not as powerful
or durable as the immunity that you get from a good,
(26:22):
powerful vaccine. In fact, a really really interesting observation was
made that if you get infected and recover and then
you get a single boost of either the m R
and A from PISO or Mordanna, the amount of protection
(26:42):
you get increases many, many, many many fold, so that
you get this extraordinarily robust immune response of protection. So
if you want to be the most protected, person would
likely be somebody who had a mild infection and then
got vaccinated, because the level of protection goes way way up.
(27:04):
So we do recommend that people who have been infected
and recovered ultimately get vaccinated. Okay, we have two more myths.
Can it affect women's fertility? Robin, There's no biological reason
or any possibility that you could even make up as
to why it should influence women's fertility. You could ask
(27:29):
that question forever. I mean, is it possibly that if
you invet, you inject someone with this, that it would
make them three ft taller? And the answer is, there's
no biological reason to believe that that could happen. So
you've really got to put feasibility with the question. There's
no biological reason why it should interfere with fertility. The
(27:52):
last one getting the COVID nineteen vaccine gives you COVID
nineteen true or false. That is absolutely impossible. For the
reason I mentioned just a little bit ago. You're getting
injected not with the virus itself, but with the spike protein,
which is one component of the virus that you want
(28:12):
your body to make an immune response against. How are
you feeling at this point, Dr Fauci about where we are.
We're having tens of millions of Americans that are getting vaccinated.
We've heard of the mostly mild to moderate side effects.
Some people are worried about severe long term effects. How
much time or post surveillance data would you need to
(28:34):
kind of make people feel better about those concerns that
they have. Yeah, I'm feeling comfortable now about what people
would be considering long term effects. One of the things
that went on with the with the approval emergency used
to approval of the vaccine some time ago. You might
remember when we collected data. After all the data was
(28:55):
collected and we were looking at the possibility of getting
emergency US authorization. The FDA said we have to wait
sixty days, and people were saying, well, why was that
sixty days? You want to wait until the election is over?
Remember that that was remember that very well? Okay, well,
it wasn't any arbitrary political reason. It was a public
(29:18):
health reason because if you look at the history of vaccines,
the so called longer term adverse events, almost all of
them occur between fifteen and forty five days after the
last dose. So every time you want to go for
an emergency use authorization, you have to wait sixty days
(29:41):
from the time that fifty of the people in the
trial have received their last dose and their well beyond that.
So when sixty days is a couple of weeks further
than the forty five day outer limit, so the chances
of their being a very long negative effect is very
(30:02):
very low. How long are we protected after being vaccinated?
When do we have to get vaccinated again? Robin, We
don't know the answer to that right now, because we've
only been in this now for literally less than a year.
When you're talking about the vaccination, we know now from
preliminary studies that it's at least six months, and I
(30:25):
hope it's a lot longer, but we don't know yet
until we get a lot more experience as the months
go by. Can I say thank you because you all
admit when you don't have the answer, and that's transparency,
and you're being very honest and and you're you're learning
some things along the way. You're giving us as much
(30:47):
information as you can and want to make sure that
it's it's very accurate. But that is something that needs
to be understood. I remember early on you all were saying,
there's as much we don't know as we do know.
But you have to admit for the for the public,
it's hard to hear that. One of the real risky
things that sometimes people do, often scientists do that is that,
(31:12):
in their feeling of not wanting to seem inadequate, of
not knowing the answer, they guess. You know, one of
the things when you're dealing with communication and science, don't guess.
You can say I don't have the data, but my
projected common sense feeling is this, don't ever say it
(31:33):
definitively unless you know. And since I don't know how
long this lasts, I have to be honest with you
and tell you, I don't know, can you give us
a sense when you think we're going to finally put
the pandemic though behind us? So that gets into what
we were just referring to. There's no guarantee, there's no
mathematical formula, but I can make some judgment calls that
(31:58):
given the fact that we now have several highly efficacious vaccines,
that the vaccines are really really seemed to be quite good,
not only against the regular virus, but even against some
of the variants like the one one seven. The vaccine
seems to handle that pretty well. That we're going to
(32:19):
have enough vaccine to vaccinate everybody in the country by
the end of May, as the President says, logistically getting
it into the arms of people would like to take
through the summer. I would think if we get to
the point by the end of the summer and the
beginning of the fall, when we have the overwhelming proportion
of the population vaccinated, that as we get into the fall,
(32:43):
we may not be exactly the way we were, you know,
in October of but we will be much much closer
to normality than we are right now. And by that
I mean doing some of the things that we've not
done is so long. Getting back into the workplace, being
(33:03):
able to travel, getting the schools safely open, with less
anxiety about things like that, going to your house of
worship without worrying about things, going to a theater, going
to arrest. Those are the kind of things that will
gradually unfold as we get more and more people vaccinated,
and all those things we will never take for granted again. Hallelujah, holle.
(33:32):
What is your parting message, in particular for those skeptical
listeners that are still I'm not sure about getting vaccinated.
The first thing that I always say is that you
never confront them is like there's something wrong with them.
You respect the fact that people have skepticism. I do
that all the time. I do that especially when I'm
(33:53):
dealing with people of color who historically have a good
reason to have skepticism about vaccine. Is particularly when the
federal government is involved, because you can't just forget about
what happened with Tuskegee. You've got to respect that skepticism.
And then once you say, you know, there are things now,
(34:13):
ethical constraints that have been put in place that would
make something like that impossible right now. So Therefore, even
though there may be some lingering concern whether you're a
person of color or not, just take a look that
five hundred and twenty five thousand Americans have died thus far,
we're still having fifty five to sixty five thousand new
(34:36):
infections per day. We know these vaccines work. Even if
you're in a situation where you feel I'm young, I'm healthy,
do I really needed you know, you can't think about
yourself in a vacuum. You've got to think about yourself.
Is that if the virus comes to you and infects you,
even if you don't get any symptoms, you become part
(34:59):
of the outbreak if you then spread it to someone else,
even if you do it innocently and inadvertently. So there
are two or three major reasons to get vaccinated. For
your own protection, for protection of your family, and for
the protection of your community. So you've got to have
some community responsibility because you want to be part of
(35:21):
the solution to the outbreak, not a part of the
problem of propagating it. And together we can do this.
We can do this, and we thank you for your
tireless efforts and your service. Dr Anthony Faucci, thank you
very much, Robin, thank you for having me. Tasha French,
(35:47):
Limley Kim, Cannon, and Dr Anthony Fauci have all reminded
us that it's important to listen to well respected experts
for the answers to the questions we have about the
COVID nineteen vaccines, and leaders like the one Tasha turn to,
Dr Francis Collins provide us with that same advice. Every
(36:08):
American over the age of sixteen is now eligible for
vaccination in every state. I urge you to join Tasha
Kim and over half of the United States population that
have already received at least one dose. Schedule your vaccination
appointment as soon as you can. To get vaccinated, go
(36:34):
to c DC dot gov forward slash coronavirus and scroll
down to the middle of the page to click on
the word vaccines. From there, click on Vaccine Finder, and
the site will help you determine where you can get
the vaccine and how to make an appointment. You don't
have to worry about paying for your vaccine. Your taxpayer
(36:56):
dollars are funding the rollout, so there's no individual cost
to you. So if someone asked you to provide your
insurance information, that's only so your vaccination provider can build
your insurance for the administrative costs, but you will not
be personally responsible for any expenses. I'd like to thank
our guests Tasha French, Lemley Kim Cannon, and Dr Anthony
(37:19):
Fauci for sharing their thoughts and their expertise with us today.
I sure hope you'll tune in again for episode four,
in which will be discussing how COVID nineteen is impacting
the Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander community. COVID
(37:42):
nineteen Immunity in Our Community was developed and paid for
by the U. S Department of Health and Human Services,
part of a public education campaign to increase public confidence
in COVID nineteen vaccines while reinforcing basic prevention measures. We
can do this for is in it by I Heart
Radio and ABC News. This podcast is hosted by Little
(38:04):
O Me Robin Roberts and this episode was executive produced
by Get This Ethan Fixel. It was written by Stephanie
Thurrott and You Know My Man. It was engineered, edited,
mixed by Matt Stillo, with original theme music by Brad Kemp.
If you haven't already subscribed. What are you waiting for?
(38:26):
Please do so on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you get your podcasts. I am Robin Roberts
and this is COVID nineteen immunity in our community. We
could do this. Thank you for listening.
Welcome to COVID nineteen Immunity in Our Community. Before we
kick off the show, here's the latest COVID nineteen vaccination
news at the time of this recording. On Monday, ap
after reviewing all available safety data, the CDC and f
d A lifted the pause to resume the use of
Johnson and Johnson's Jansen COVID nineteen vaccine. At the start
(00:24):
of this week, over two hundred thirty million vaccines have
been administered in the US and more than half of
eligible Americans have received at least a first dose. Also
this week, CDC Director Rochelle Wilenski recommended that pregnant women
receive a COVID nineteen vaccine. That's it for now, enjoy
the show. Well, Hello everyone, I'm Robin Roberts of ABC IS.
(00:50):
Good Morning, America. Welcome to COVID nineteen Immunity and Our Community,
an innovative new podcast series brought to you by the
U S Department of Health and Human Services. COVID nineteen
(01:11):
Immunity in Our Community has been created to provide you
with the groundbreaking science, honest facts, unvarnished truth about the
deadly coronavirus and the revolutionary vaccines that could put this
pandemic behind us and bring back a bit of normalcy
for all of us. And in this third episode, we're
talking about how plenty of misinformation has surfaced online as
(01:36):
the COVID nineteen vaccines are being manufactured and distributed, leaving
people unsure about what is true and who to trust. First,
we're going to hear from Tasha French Lemley and Kim Cannon.
(01:57):
They are sisters with very different view points on the vaccine.
The night before Tasha was scheduled for her first vaccine appointment,
Kim had forwarded her a YouTube video of a doctor
with advice that contradicted that of the vast majority of
medical professionals. We're gonna hear how this social media share
affected Tasha's decision to get vaccinated and her relationship with
(02:20):
her sister after that. Stay tuned as we get answers
from infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Faucci. Yes, President Biden's
chief science advisor and a leader who many have come
to trust as a straight shooter during the course of
the pandemic. I have the pleasure of speaking with Dr
Faucci myself and getting the facts about these new vaccines,
(02:44):
how they work exactly, and what you can do to
weed out misinformation about them in the future. We've all
heard the myths, the conspiracy theories, and the outright lies
(03:04):
about the COVID nineteen vaccine that have spread all over
social media and the Internet since this pandemic started. You know,
such misinformation isn't just extremely misleading, it can be deadly.
Some folks are turning down a vaccine that can protect
them from illness, hospitalization, and death. And when we doubt
that the vaccine is indeed safe and effective and decide
(03:28):
not to get vaccinated, we may also put everyone around
us at risk of succumbing to the virus and continuing
the pandemic. Tasha French Limley and Kim Cannon are two
sisters in Tennessee and Arkansas, respectively, who found themselves in
the crosshairs of some of the misinformation surrounding the COVID
nineteen vaccine. Now. Just prior to her appointment to get vaccinated,
(03:52):
Tasha's sister Kim forwarded her a video making some false
claims about how the vaccine can affect people's gene Now
we know the vaccines trigger your body to create immunity
against the COVID virus, but it does not interfere with
your genetic code. But with that deceptive presentation of pseudoscience, Tasha,
(04:12):
who didn't yet know many people who had been vaccinated,
started to feel scared, stressed, and worried. The video not
only had an effect on Tasha, it affected her relationship
with her sister too. Here now are Tasha and Kim
telling their stories about how they each reached their own
conclusions on vaccination and the impact their decisions have had
(04:35):
on their lives. Sense My name is Tasha French Lemley,
and I am a media professional and social entrepreneur in Nashville, Tennessee.
My name is Kim Cannon. I live in northwest Arkansas
(04:56):
work for community college here. Tasha is my little sister.
We have the same mom and the same dad, and
she was born when I was twenty two years old,
so I think that it was the most amazing thing.
When she was about eighteen Before then, she had just
been a child, my little sister, and she actually was
(05:18):
friends with my children. We reconnected over a holiday kind
of suddenly and kind of intensely, like all of a sudden,
I had grown up enough to where we could speak
the same language. She is my go to person. If
I have a problem, she helps me think through it.
We're just very close. I feel like she's my soul mate.
(05:42):
I can't remember what I first thought about COVID. I
guess I felt the same as I did about a
lot of the scares, like stars, like Ebola. You know,
I mean, there was some terrifying ones out there, and
I disregarded it. I thought, you know, it's sad and
it's scary for the people that are going through this,
but it probably won't come here. I remember feeling very nervous,
(06:04):
watching the news a lot and getting a lot of
mixed messages. When I first found out about the vaccine,
I latched onto the m RNA and thought, this thing
is going to change people's biology. I'm not into it,
and she was pretty aligned. We were like, I don't
know what this means. You know, we have a layman's
(06:25):
understanding of the other kinds of vaccines with the weekend
or killed virus and how that might kind of work
in the body. But I think this mRNA stuff blew
my mind and and scared me. I had no intention
of being one of the first people to get this vaccine,
and neither did she. When people asked me if I
(06:46):
would take the vaccine, I didn't know. I continue to
listen and hear about it and wonder, and a lot
of people are nervous because they say that it's just
such a quick vaccine, that they've come up with this
so fast. Over the months that we've heard about this
MR and A vaccines and they've been running trials, I
started to soften to it a little. I started listening
(07:08):
to these people who know more than me and started going, Okay,
you know what can I understand about this again? I'm
still not first in line. I'm relatively young, middle age,
and generally pretty healthy, and so I didn't think it
was going to have to be a decision I made quickly.
One of my part time jobs sent out an email
(07:30):
to the entire staff and said, anybody who was a
staff of this company is eligible to get the vaccine.
I look over at my husband and I'm like, and
I start shaking. I'm like, I could do this like
three days from now. What in the world? And and
in the end we've we felt like this is a gift,
and so I decided to accept that I had listened
(07:54):
to a video from Dr Christiane Northrop. She's a doctor
and she's on NPR and public TV, and she's written
many books and I've read some of them, and on
this particular one, she was very cautious about the vaccine.
In fact, discouraged her listeners from taking the vaccine. And
because Tasha was getting her vaccine that very day, this
(08:16):
was about two in the morning, I sent the video
to her so that she could see that perspective. I'm
in a vulnerable position, but I decided to kind of
kick myself in the balls. I decided to watch the video.
So it's a ten minute video, and I'm mortified. She says,
I know a lot of you are grieving about loved
(08:38):
ones who are going to be taking the and she
won't use the word vaccine. She holds up two fingers
in the letter V and she says, this is not
actually a vaccine. This is to genetically reprogram us. That's
basically what's going to happen to all of us. We
are no longer going to be living organisms. I have
(09:02):
a personality that when someone is very passionate about something,
it's not that I believe them, but something can rattle
me about it that someone is so passionate and believes
this so hard. What if they're right. I guess it
was just a really bad time to send it to her.
But if I had decided in my heart of hearts
that I thought it was a dangerous thing to do,
(09:22):
then of course I had to send it. I love
my sister just about more than anybody in the world,
and I was so hurt and so angry that she
would take this seriously enough to potentially stand in the
way of doing me doing something really healthy for myself.
And um, I wanted to throw my computer into a wall.
(09:47):
I think she was angry about the video, and maybe
I understand that now, you know, I I really do.
So that morning, I'm sitting here and I've got on
one hand all of this fear and conspiracy and misinformation
and a lot of emotion. And I'm an emotional person.
I can be swayed by fear. And then on the
(10:10):
other hand, I've got these scientists who have dedicated their
entire lives to these technologies. You know, it wasn't just
the video that made Tasha nervous. Her lack of understanding
of the new m r N, a technology in the
vaccines produced by Fiser and Maderna had initially given her pause.
(10:32):
Tasha was ultimately reassured by the ways in which Dr Collins,
director of the National Institutes of Health, could speak to
science while keeping the importance of faith in mind. Kim
was similarly comforted after during further research and speaking to
a medical professional. We come from a Church of Christ background,
(10:52):
so as my poor husband leaving for work and I'm
a mess in the bed, he says. Francis Collins used
to be really big in the Church of Christ. He
said he would go around and talk to churches about
science and try to help congregations understand how these scientific
things work. He goes, he's really compassionate. You might want
to listen to him. So I looked up France's Collins.
(11:13):
I looked at this guy, and I'm like, no, I
don't think this guy is lying to me. I don't
think he's trying to kill me or turn me into
a chimera. So, yeah, those were the people that helped
me that morning. And then of course, once I got
to the facility, looking at those nurses and looking at
the people in line, just I felt overwhelming gratitude for
the process that it was happening is as smoothly as
(11:33):
it was, just glad to be there. A couple of
days later, my sister says, I talked to my boss
and he says he's going to get it. He thinks
we should all get it when when we have the opportunity.
Was it a week and a half later something like
that she went and got her vaccine. I don't know.
(11:53):
I just did a lot of reading and a lot
of listening. I really think that we should be operative
with this process of trying to get rid of this stuff.
You know, it's not getting any better without the vaccine.
Listening to my boss, who was an attorney and his wife,
who was a nurse practitioner, really helped. I felt that
they gave me great advice. So when I went to
(12:19):
get the vaccine, I didn't know what to expect. Um
they kept us very distanced from each other. It seemed
very very safe. And then it was my turn and
I sat in the chair and they had me take
down my sleeve and they shot me in the arm
and it was easy, breezy. I did feel some soreness
(12:43):
in the arm, not much. And Tash actually got her
second one and didn't feel any adverse effects from her
second one. I'll have my second shot in two days,
and I'm really looking forward to it now, Kim says
she feels like her life will be much freer, and
she's looking forward to a day soon when she can
see her mother. The two of them haven't been together
(13:06):
in more than a year. I am feeling empowered having
this protection that I can get back to my normal
life sooner, not immediately. I understand that, in fact, you're
supposed to wait a full two weeks after the second
vaccine before you feel like the full effects have taken place,
but even then you're to continue to wear your mask
(13:28):
for the sake of other people. And I probably won't
be joining social circles yet either, so it's a slow process.
But I'm still feeling very fortunate to be one of
the first people to get the vaccine. I feel like
I'm going to be much freer in my life. So
I just want it for everybody. I want the whole
(13:49):
world to get through this. Kim had the best of
intentions when she sent that video to her sister, and
she and Tasha certainly aren't the only people who have
been concerned about the COVID nineteen vaccines. Plenty of folks
are worried about the apparent speed at which the pharmaceutical
(14:12):
companies and government began developing, testing and producing them. Others
are apprehensive that the vaccines could cause long term side
effects that haven't yet come to light. Some might even
wonder if they might be better off taking their chances
with COVID nineteen over getting vaccinated. But with an informed
expert on hand, we can confidently put those notions to rest.
(14:36):
If anyone knows just how long these vaccines have actually
been in the making, far longer than a year, it's
infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci, the director of the
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. You might not
have heard of Dr Fauci before the pandemic, but he
has since become a household name as someone that we've
(14:58):
come to recognize and trust. He's now serving as President
Biden's chief medical advisor and as a member of Biden's
COVID nineteen response team. Dr Faucci has been on the
front lines of the fight, watching in horror as the
COVID infections grew from just a handful of cases in
the United States more than a year ago to a
(15:18):
pandemic that has infected more than thirty million Americans and
killed more than half a million. But as of today,
three companies Bisor, Maderna and Johnson and Johnson are manufacturing
drugs that the f d A has authorized for emergency
use against COVID nineteen, and vaccinations are rolling out all
(15:39):
across the US. Dr Foulci has said publicly that he's
extremely confident that the large scale clinical trials of more
than a hundred thousand volunteers proved that these vaccines are
safe and effective. And he doesn't just talk the talk, no, no, no, no,
He walks the walk. Leads by example. He got his
first vaccine in front of a live audience on December,
(16:02):
his second on January. But he understands that not everyone
is willing to be vaccinated and knows that a lot
of people are still hesitant about the vaccine. Now, I'll
talk with him about why Tasha and Kim made the
right decision to get vaccinated, About how this vaccine went
from pharmaceutical laboratories to clinical trials to authorization and distribution
(16:27):
at unprecedented speed, and about the various misconceptions and rumors
surrounding the virus and the vaccines. Here's my conversation with
Dr Faucci. Dr Fauci, we just heard from those two
sisters who were both initially hesitant to get the vaccine
(16:50):
after they saw that that video that had so much
false information. So how can you respond to such hesitations
and address us how we might be able to combat
this false information about the vaccines that's out there. You know, Roman,
It's not easy, and it requires continual confronting distortions of
(17:13):
the fact of which there are a lot of them
out there. You've got to be out there with messages
as often as you possibly can to talk about the
facts about the vaccine. And I believe if you get
reasonable people and you talk to them in a way
that they can understand, namely about the safety, the efficacy,
(17:33):
and what vaccines do historically and the specific vaccines that
we're dealing with right now, you can get them to
change their mind and realize that this is a lot
of false information. It's not an easy task because the
the distortions of reality are really kind of pervasive out there.
I hear and see a lot of it myself, and
(17:57):
so I want to get to some of that and
some of the myths, if you will, about about the vaccinations.
And what I appreciate about this podcast on many levels
is that we're not dismissing anybody's questions about the vaccines,
and we want to give them the knowledge to be
able to make informed decisions for themselves. But when they
see the video as the sisters did, people wonder, does
(18:18):
it alter your DNA like it was said in that
video that they watched. Sometimes there are situations where a
question that's asked has a reasonable biological basis, namely, does
this do this? And you say, well, you know it can,
but it's such a rare event. Let let me give
you an example and then we'll get back to the
(18:40):
idea about influencing your your your DNA. Someone says, can
you get an allergic reaction to the vaccine? You could say,
you know, biologically, that's possible because there may be something
in the vaccine that you happen to have hyper sensitivity
to when you get an allergic reaction. We know there
(19:01):
are allergic reactions to the vaccines, but they're extremely rare
because we've been following tens of millions of people and
it happens anywhere from two to four per million, so
you're addressing a true biological reason. What you can say
about whether it alters your DNA is that there's no
biological possibility whatsoever of that happening. Because even though the
(19:26):
two of the vaccines are m RNA vaccines, people here ARENA.
They think of genetics and they think it's going to
modify your gene and in fact, you need to explain
to them that RNA is something that gets in their
codes for a protein and the RNA kind of disappears
after a couple of days that you need to explain.
(19:48):
So there's no biological reason how could ever get into
your d NA. Let's talk about J and J. Johnson
and Johnson. People like to call it one and done,
the one and done vaccine. How does it? The viral
vector vaccine work. So when you look at the the
virus under an electron microscope, it has these spikes that
(20:10):
stick out. And that's why you get the word coronavirus
because the spikes look like the spikes of a crown,
So corona is the word for crowns, so they call
it coronavirus. So the way you protect against it the
body makes a response against these spike proteins. So one
(20:31):
way or the other, you want to get the spike
protein into the body so that when the body sees it,
the body thinks it's the virus, and it makes a
really good response against the spike protein, even though it's
harmless because it's only in a protein, it's not the virus.
It's not replicating, so that when you get exposed to
(20:52):
the real virus, the body has built up this memory
of trying to prevent that virus from coming in, so
when you get exposed, your immune system jumps all over
that virus and suppresses it. So, having said that, each
of the vaccines presents the spike protein to the body
(21:14):
in a different way. The mRNA presents it by putting
into the body a messenger the mr and A that
codes to make the protein. The body sees the protein
makes the immune response. Then you get to the J
and J, which is a harmless coal virus called ad
(21:35):
no virus. It's a virus that's inactivated, so it's not replicating,
but the body makes a pretty good response when it
sees that virus in the context of other things. So
you get the virus, you stick the gene of the
spike protein in there. When you injected into a person,
(21:56):
that gene starts coding for the protein, and the only
thing the body see ease is the spike protein, and
it responds to it the same way as it responds
to the spike protein that the m R in A
coded for. All of them have the common denominator, as
they're all making a response against the spike protein, and
(22:18):
it's just presented to the body in a different way.
With the three different types of vaccines. You know, there
are some myths out there, Dr Fauci about the vaccines.
You know this, and for one, I know many experts
are thrilled about how fast we were able to get
these vaccines to the people. Some skeptic citizens, though, are
out there and they're wondering if they were rushed, and
(22:39):
if so, how can they be safe. That is not
only a good question, it is the most common question
I get, and it's understandable. The reason is we keep
saying historically that it takes years from the time you
get a new pathogen, a new virus for example, to
the time you actually get a safe and effective X
(23:00):
sing into the arms of individuals. Because of the extraordinary
advances in vaccine platform technologies that was worked, that was
done a decade or more before the actual work began
on this vaccine. That we were able to get the
genetic sequence of the virus, which was published on a
(23:22):
public database on January the ninth, or what we did
was literally within a few days, took that sequence out,
made an rn A version of it, and therefore we
started our phase one trials. About sixty or sixty five
(23:43):
days later. On July, we started to Phase three trials.
Normally on purely technical basis alone, that would have taken years.
So safety was not compromised, Scientific integrity was not compromise.
It was merely a reflection of spectacular advances in scientific technology.
(24:10):
That's all that was. So there's a very good explanation
for the speed. It isn't as if we rushed it through.
Another very important point about speed is that, unfortunately for
the people who get infected, but quite fortunate for the
vaccine development, is that when you are testing a vaccine
(24:32):
in the middle of an explosive outbreak, you can get
your answer within months rather than years. Let me give
you an example that I think you'd appreciate. You remember
back when we were making a vaccine for zica. We
made a really good vaccine Physica, but as the infection
(24:53):
rate came down because we controlled the mosquitoes. It was
years into it and we still don't have a vaccine.
You know why. They're not enough cases of zeka to
prove that the vaccine works. We have a vaccine, we
have a really good vaccine, but there were so few
(25:13):
cases of zeka it's gonna take years to prove that
the zeke of vaccine works. Whereas when you test a
vaccine in a country that was averaging two hundred thousand
infections per day, you get your answer like that, You
get your answer in months at the most. That's the
(25:36):
why it was fast, not because corners were cut, not
because safety was compromised, but a combination of scientific technology
and the unfortunate situation of having hundreds of thousands of
cases per day. So you talk about the covered nineteen
and those that have had it, well, some people want
(25:59):
to know, Okay, I've at it, so I don't need
to get vaccinated. True or false? Well, the reason the
reason it's it's false, Robin, is that we have found
now and we're getting more and more information that the
immunity that's induced by prior infection is not as powerful
or durable as the immunity that you get from a good,
(26:22):
powerful vaccine. In fact, a really really interesting observation was
made that if you get infected and recover and then
you get a single boost of either the m R
and A from PISO or Mordanna, the amount of protection
(26:42):
you get increases many, many, many many fold, so that
you get this extraordinarily robust immune response of protection. So
if you want to be the most protected, person would
likely be somebody who had a mild infection and then
got vaccinated, because the level of protection goes way way up.
(27:04):
So we do recommend that people who have been infected
and recovered ultimately get vaccinated. Okay, we have two more myths.
Can it affect women's fertility? Robin, There's no biological reason
or any possibility that you could even make up as
to why it should influence women's fertility. You could ask
(27:29):
that question forever. I mean, is it possibly that if
you invet, you inject someone with this, that it would
make them three ft taller? And the answer is, there's
no biological reason to believe that that could happen. So
you've really got to put feasibility with the question. There's
no biological reason why it should interfere with fertility. The
(27:52):
last one getting the COVID nineteen vaccine gives you COVID
nineteen true or false. That is absolutely impossible. For the
reason I mentioned just a little bit ago. You're getting
injected not with the virus itself, but with the spike protein,
which is one component of the virus that you want
(28:12):
your body to make an immune response against. How are
you feeling at this point, Dr Fauci about where we are.
We're having tens of millions of Americans that are getting vaccinated.
We've heard of the mostly mild to moderate side effects.
Some people are worried about severe long term effects. How
much time or post surveillance data would you need to
(28:34):
kind of make people feel better about those concerns that
they have. Yeah, I'm feeling comfortable now about what people
would be considering long term effects. One of the things
that went on with the with the approval emergency used
to approval of the vaccine some time ago. You might
remember when we collected data. After all the data was
(28:55):
collected and we were looking at the possibility of getting
emergency US authorization. The FDA said we have to wait
sixty days, and people were saying, well, why was that
sixty days? You want to wait until the election is over?
Remember that that was remember that very well? Okay, well,
it wasn't any arbitrary political reason. It was a public
(29:18):
health reason because if you look at the history of vaccines,
the so called longer term adverse events, almost all of
them occur between fifteen and forty five days after the
last dose. So every time you want to go for
an emergency use authorization, you have to wait sixty days
(29:41):
from the time that fifty of the people in the
trial have received their last dose and their well beyond that.
So when sixty days is a couple of weeks further
than the forty five day outer limit, so the chances
of their being a very long negative effect is very
(30:02):
very low. How long are we protected after being vaccinated?
When do we have to get vaccinated again? Robin, We
don't know the answer to that right now, because we've
only been in this now for literally less than a year.
When you're talking about the vaccination, we know now from
preliminary studies that it's at least six months, and I
(30:25):
hope it's a lot longer, but we don't know yet
until we get a lot more experience as the months
go by. Can I say thank you because you all
admit when you don't have the answer, and that's transparency,
and you're being very honest and and you're you're learning
some things along the way. You're giving us as much
(30:47):
information as you can and want to make sure that
it's it's very accurate. But that is something that needs
to be understood. I remember early on you all were saying,
there's as much we don't know as we do know.
But you have to admit for the for the public,
it's hard to hear that. One of the real risky
things that sometimes people do, often scientists do that is that,
(31:12):
in their feeling of not wanting to seem inadequate, of
not knowing the answer, they guess. You know, one of
the things when you're dealing with communication and science, don't guess.
You can say I don't have the data, but my
projected common sense feeling is this, don't ever say it
(31:33):
definitively unless you know. And since I don't know how
long this lasts, I have to be honest with you
and tell you, I don't know, can you give us
a sense when you think we're going to finally put
the pandemic though behind us? So that gets into what
we were just referring to. There's no guarantee, there's no
mathematical formula, but I can make some judgment calls that
(31:58):
given the fact that we now have several highly efficacious vaccines,
that the vaccines are really really seemed to be quite good,
not only against the regular virus, but even against some
of the variants like the one one seven. The vaccine
seems to handle that pretty well. That we're going to
(32:19):
have enough vaccine to vaccinate everybody in the country by
the end of May, as the President says, logistically getting
it into the arms of people would like to take
through the summer. I would think if we get to
the point by the end of the summer and the
beginning of the fall, when we have the overwhelming proportion
of the population vaccinated, that as we get into the fall,
(32:43):
we may not be exactly the way we were, you know,
in October of but we will be much much closer
to normality than we are right now. And by that
I mean doing some of the things that we've not
done is so long. Getting back into the workplace, being
(33:03):
able to travel, getting the schools safely open, with less
anxiety about things like that, going to your house of
worship without worrying about things, going to a theater, going
to arrest. Those are the kind of things that will
gradually unfold as we get more and more people vaccinated,
and all those things we will never take for granted again. Hallelujah, holle.
(33:32):
What is your parting message, in particular for those skeptical
listeners that are still I'm not sure about getting vaccinated.
The first thing that I always say is that you
never confront them is like there's something wrong with them.
You respect the fact that people have skepticism. I do
that all the time. I do that especially when I'm
(33:53):
dealing with people of color who historically have a good
reason to have skepticism about vaccine. Is particularly when the
federal government is involved, because you can't just forget about
what happened with Tuskegee. You've got to respect that skepticism.
And then once you say, you know, there are things now,
(34:13):
ethical constraints that have been put in place that would
make something like that impossible right now. So Therefore, even
though there may be some lingering concern whether you're a
person of color or not, just take a look that
five hundred and twenty five thousand Americans have died thus far,
we're still having fifty five to sixty five thousand new
(34:36):
infections per day. We know these vaccines work. Even if
you're in a situation where you feel I'm young, I'm healthy,
do I really needed you know, you can't think about
yourself in a vacuum. You've got to think about yourself.
Is that if the virus comes to you and infects you,
even if you don't get any symptoms, you become part
(34:59):
of the outbreak if you then spread it to someone else,
even if you do it innocently and inadvertently. So there
are two or three major reasons to get vaccinated. For
your own protection, for protection of your family, and for
the protection of your community. So you've got to have
some community responsibility because you want to be part of
(35:21):
the solution to the outbreak, not a part of the
problem of propagating it. And together we can do this.
We can do this, and we thank you for your
tireless efforts and your service. Dr Anthony Faucci, thank you
very much, Robin, thank you for having me. Tasha French,
(35:47):
Limley Kim, Cannon, and Dr Anthony Fauci have all reminded
us that it's important to listen to well respected experts
for the answers to the questions we have about the
COVID nineteen vaccines, and leaders like the one Tasha turn to,
Dr Francis Collins provide us with that same advice. Every
(36:08):
American over the age of sixteen is now eligible for
vaccination in every state. I urge you to join Tasha
Kim and over half of the United States population that
have already received at least one dose. Schedule your vaccination
appointment as soon as you can. To get vaccinated, go
(36:34):
to c DC dot gov forward slash coronavirus and scroll
down to the middle of the page to click on
the word vaccines. From there, click on Vaccine Finder, and
the site will help you determine where you can get
the vaccine and how to make an appointment. You don't
have to worry about paying for your vaccine. Your taxpayer
(36:56):
dollars are funding the rollout, so there's no individual cost
to you. So if someone asked you to provide your
insurance information, that's only so your vaccination provider can build
your insurance for the administrative costs, but you will not
be personally responsible for any expenses. I'd like to thank
our guests Tasha French, Lemley Kim Cannon, and Dr Anthony
(37:19):
Fauci for sharing their thoughts and their expertise with us today.
I sure hope you'll tune in again for episode four,
in which will be discussing how COVID nineteen is impacting
the Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander community. COVID
(37:42):
nineteen Immunity in Our Community was developed and paid for
by the U. S Department of Health and Human Services,
part of a public education campaign to increase public confidence
in COVID nineteen vaccines while reinforcing basic prevention measures. We
can do this for is in it by I Heart
Radio and ABC News. This podcast is hosted by Little
(38:04):
O Me Robin Roberts and this episode was executive produced
by Get This Ethan Fixel. It was written by Stephanie
Thurrott and You Know My Man. It was engineered, edited,
mixed by Matt Stillo, with original theme music by Brad Kemp.
If you haven't already subscribed. What are you waiting for?
(38:26):
Please do so on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you get your podcasts. I am Robin Roberts
and this is COVID nineteen immunity in our community. We
could do this. Thank you for listening.
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