May 26, 2021 • 19 mins
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis this week signed a ‘Big Tech’ bill aimed at cracking down on social media giants like Facebook and Twitter for deplatforming conservatives. The bill makes it illegal to remove candidates for office from their social media in the lead up to an election. It also makes it easier for the Florida attorney general and individuals to sue big tech. Ana Ceballos, reporter at the Miami Herald, joins us for this new law that will most certainly be challenged in court.
Next, another important piece of the vaccine puzzle has come into play. Moderna says that its vaccine has been found to be 100% effective in kids ages 12-17, two week after their second dose. Moderna will seek for FDA authorization early in June offering more choices for families over summer vacation and before the new school year begins. Elizabeth Weise, national correspondent at USA Today, joins us for how this will help bring us closer to herd immunity.
Finally, the recent unionization effort at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama failed, but the fight continues. In a hearing before the National Labor Relations Board, the union is arguing that a mailbox installed on the grounds by the Post Office interfered with how workers may have voted. Amazon wanted workers to use the mailbox to cast their ballots. Sara Morrison, reporter at Vox’s Recode, joins us for why the decision to overturn the votes may come down to this mailbox.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Wednesday, ma i'm Oscar Ramires in Los Angeles, and
this is the daily dive. Florida Governor Rhnda Santis this
week signed a big Tech bill aimed at tracking down
on social media giants Facebook and Twitter for deep platforming conservatives.
(00:20):
This bill makes it illegal to remove candidates for office
from their social media in the lead up to an election.
It also makes it easier for the Florida Attorney General
and individuals to sue big Tech. Anna Sabaios, reporter at
the Miami Herald joins US for this new law that
will most certainly be challenged in court next. Another important
(00:40):
piece of the vaccine puzzle has come into play. Maderna
says that It's vaccine has been found to be effective
kids ages twelve to seventeen two weeks after their second does.
Madonna will seek for FDA authorization early in June, offering
more choices for families over summer vacation and before the
new school year begin. Elizabeth Weiss, national correspondent at USA Today,
(01:04):
joins us for how this will help bring us closer
to her Dominia. Finally, the recent unionization effort at an
Amazon warehouse in Bessemer Alabama has failed, but the fight
continued in a hearing before the National Labor Relations Board.
The union is arguing that a mailbox installed on the
grounds by the post Office interfered with how workers may
have voted. Amazon wanted workers to use the mailbox to
(01:26):
cast their ballot. Sarah Morrison, reporter at Boxes Recode, joins
us for why the decision to overturn the votes may
come down to this mailbox. It's news without the noise.
Let's dive in. Courts may award up to one hundred
thousand dollars in damages for each proven claim. These protections
(01:50):
aren't just for elite but for everyday people, millions of
people now. Is Anna Sabios, reporter at the Miami Herald,
Thanks for joining us, Anna, thanks for having me. Florida
Governor Ronda Santists has signed a bill this week aimed
at cracking down on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter
and basically would make it illegal for them to deep
(02:12):
platform a candidate for office in the run up to
an election. The bill would also make it easier for
Florida's Attorney general and individuals to sue these big tech
companies also if they feel they've been deep platformed wrongly
and whatnot. So and tell us a little bit about
what we're seeing in this bill and and kind of
the implications of all of this because it's open up
to legal challenges. There's a lot going on here, right,
(02:35):
Like you said, there's there's really a lot going on.
And Governor Ronda Santists has been talking about this for
a few months now. You started making a big deal
about this issue back in January when he was talking
to a group of conservatives that in Texas UM and
then he asked lawmakers to really crack down on the
big tech companies, which you know there's bipartisan support that
(02:58):
maybe they're these companies are a two days but what
there is no bipartisan consensus or there's still questions in
them joining about first of all, can even do this
and second of all, what is the intent in the
motivation behind this proposal? And like you said, you know
that the proposal does take aim at social media companies
(03:20):
PLoP political candidates for either statewide office or local offices.
And it allows these candidates if they are removed for
whatever type of content they post that violates the terms
of agreement for those companies, they can seek compensation from
the company and see them for up to two hundreds
(03:41):
two thousand dollars to day. Can they even do this?
I mean this is where a lot of the legal
challenges are gonna lie. Obviously, you're compelling speech onto private companies.
You know, they have their terms of service. If you're
breaking them, generally, that's that's the rule you're breaking it.
They can be platform you. So there's a lot of
First Amendment stuff going on there. And then can they
regulate these companies that operate across state lines just because
(04:04):
it applies there in Florida, what it means that it
applies somewhere else. These are where all the legal challenges
are going to be stemming from. And then it is
pretty narrow. I guess in that sense that it is
only for political candidates. It's just doesn't open it up
to free speech for everybody, which is something that a
lot of conservatives feel that they're being targeted unfairly by
these big tech companies. It does often some recourse for
(04:29):
for everyday flurry, and I guess you could say, but
the toughest penalties or toughest provisions are in favor of
candidates who are being be platformed. But like you said,
you know, there is still a lot of questions whether
Florida will be able to enforce this. You know, there's
language in the bill that says that this is the
intent of this state, but it can't trump state law.
(04:50):
And hear what the state of saying is, you know,
we deem it do not be too state. Yeah, they're
saying that they should be allowed to be on there
for an extra thirty day days if they need to
remove their information and all of that. RHN De Santis,
as you mentioned, had been talking about it for some
time now, especially after President Trump was taken off some
of these platforms. De Santis himself though, was kind of
(05:12):
taken off a little bit too. In April, he did
some type of YouTube panel discussion. They removed that video
because they said it violated some of the misinformation policies
that YouTube had. Right that was the round table during
the pandemic. It was in the heat of the pandemic
when they were all discussions being held here in the state.
(05:32):
He would he would regularly hold down table discussions and
one of those he invited some health experts who you know,
violated YouTube, COVID, medical and misinformation policies and to Santis
defiantly held another discussion with the same experts a few
months later, and he started promoting some smaller tech companies
like as the likes of Parlor if you will, right,
(05:54):
but they are more fabled by conservatives, and it's called
I believe Rumble. It's the video platform that is more
an alternative to YouTube. So we're seeing a trend of
him just trying pretty hard, not just the policy or
attempts to create new policy that the Trump state law
or potentially act, but you're also seeing him asked and
just promoting other tests of alternative media that he's used
(06:17):
as not silencing the conservative voices. I've had on some
of your colleagues from the Miami Herald to talk about
different things that the governor there is doing. He is
a rising star in the Republican Party. A lot of
people are saying he might run for for president former
President Trump doesn't. So the question is what does this
(06:38):
type of action do for the national conversation. Are we
expecting other states to pick this up, because, as I
said in the beginning, you know a lot of conservatives
field they're being targeted when it comes to free speech, right.
I mean, Florida always pecked himselves as a leader in
the nation. Right, he's been using the still as uh
you know, this is the first the nation and everyone's
(06:59):
going to follow. See were among But there are other
states that happened, not quite like Florida, which sense for shure,
but there are other states that have targeted internet companies.
Because Congress has been pretty flow to act um. So
we are seeing kind of you know, state action for
certain things. But I believe Florida is um the first
(07:21):
one to target censorship um the way that he did
in this bill. And you know, it's one extra thing
that he can take. Heke's expected to uh you know,
being good standing for re election next year. He's a
popular government here in Florida. And you know there's a
(07:43):
lot of things that he got done during the regular
legislative especially that just ended in May. It's a sixty
day session where he got this big tech bill, and
he got an anti riot bill, he got a voting bill,
he got you know, just name it. I mean, he
even got teacher illnesses for for at least some um
(08:05):
some teachers. Uh. So there's there's a lot of things
in his legislative goody bad if you will, you can
just pretty much take it to the road and you
start promoting his agenda and say, hey, I got these
things done, and these are issues are really popular among
the base of his supporters, and so you could argue
that it's not only going to benefit him here for
(08:27):
a re election in Florida, but could potentially put him
in a national scene. And he takes to Fox Sings
all the time, and he can raise that agenda at
a national level and test the waters. If he could
potentially run for the White House. Well, we'll see how
that all develops. Anna Sabio's reporter at the Miami Herald,
Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you. If
(08:57):
we can get a significant percentage of adults and adolescents
immunized by the fall, then middle schools, high schools are
going to be extremely safe, and then even elementary schools
are going to be safe because we'll dramatically lower transmission,
provided we can fix the awful pocket that we have
in the U S where people aren't getting vaccin. Joining
us now is Elizabeth Lee's national correspondent at USA Today.
(09:20):
Thanks for joining us, Elizabeth, You're welcome. We've got some
good news and another piece of the vaccination puzzle here.
Maderna has now released their information on on their studies
in children ages twelve to seventeen. They said that their
vaccine is one effective in that age range two weeks
after the second though. So some very good news here, Elizabeth.
(09:43):
What are we seeing out of Maderna. They haven't actually
published the full data set, that will come later, but
they've published most of it and it is it's good news.
So this is in adolescents. They looked at three thousands,
actually it's thirty seven adolescents. Two thirds of them got
the vaccine, the third of them got the placebo, and
(10:04):
the kids who got the vaccine after the first dose
was effective and after the second dose two weeks after that,
there were no cases of COVID among the vaccinated participants.
So that's pretty darn effective. Side effects, everybody's always concerned,
especially parents when they're getting their kids shots and all.
Nothing really to report there either, just the same common
(10:25):
side effects we've seen the deult experience. Right, So for
the first shot, the biggest side effect was your arm
hurt where you got the shot, pretty common. After the
second shot, the most common side effects were at you know,
a day or so of headache, fatigued muscle pains, and chills,
which is is basically your immune system ramping up to
(10:48):
fight off if it were able to encounter COVID nineteen
and you get a little echo of what it would
feel like to actually have COVID. These results are going
to be submitted to the FDA soon. They say, maybe
early June, we might be able to get the emergency
use authorization for this age range, just in time for
going back to school. A lot of vaccinations could probably
(11:10):
take place over the summer, and that's one of the
biggest pushes. One of the biggest concerns is getting kids
back to school safely. We saw news out of New York,
news out of Los Angeles that they're going back to school,
no more remote learning when the fall comes around. This
is good news and and uh, you know, I'm sure
a lot of parents are gonna try to get their
kids vaccinated before the school year begins. You know, I
(11:32):
was up at my local Walgreen's last weekend and I
walked in. I was like, good God, what is going on?
Because they were all these parents and teenagers. And then
I realized, oh, it's all the kids who are there
to get COVID shots because now they can so and
and we had the Fiser biolin tech vaccine which was
authorized down to the age of twelve in May. And
(11:55):
if we add Madoernald on top of that, it's you know,
it's just more vaccine. It can go and and it's
a it's I mean, we we keep talking about wanting
to get as many people vaccinated as possible and to
get as close to her immunity as we possibly can.
And even though we have a lot of we have
some vaccine hesitant adults, uh, adolescents, they're a big chunk
(12:19):
of the population, you know, We're we're talking seventeen million
people are in this age range in the United States,
so getting a lot of them vaccinated will be a
positive thing. That leads perfectly to my next question, because
when we kept hearing about her immunity, that magic number
was about anywhere from seventy would would be ideal for
(12:40):
that of people being vaccinated. We're kids included into that
number or were we just talking about adults when we're
throwing those numbers around, we're talking about the population as
a whole. So that's the total population, not just adults. Oh,
then that's great news that that this is now available
to them. And teens and kids don't really get the
(13:00):
most serious cases of COVID. It's happened, and you know,
there has been some debts, but children do represent about
fourteen percent of all COVID nineteen cases. But they can
get sick and they can pass that virus onto others.
So that's why it's important to have them vaccinated as well. Exactly.
That's I think the biggest thing in this age range
(13:21):
is yeah, they don't they typically don't get sick, but
they can give it to their parents, they can give
it to their grandparents, they can give it to their teachers.
And as we know, the older you are, the more
danger COVID nineteen poses to you. So the kids might
be okay, but they sure as heck don't want to
give it to their grandparents or their parents or the
adults around them. Elizabeth Wei's national correspondent at USA today,
(13:46):
thank you very much for joining us. You're so welcome.
Amazon sent a lot of things to uh the employees,
encouraging them to use that to vote. They put a
tent around it sort of saying vote here encouraging them
(14:07):
to use that to vote. You know, Amazon's pretorious for
how it surveils its workers, and so you know, if
you're an Amazon worker, you could possibly think Amazon is
watching me, you know. Joining us now with Sarah Morrison,
reporter at Vox's Recode. Thanks for joining us, Sarah, thanks
for having me. We had been following the story of
(14:28):
this attempted unionization at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama.
You know, in the end that ended up failing. There
was about six thousand workers that were eligible to vote
by mail, only about workers actually voted, and it overwhelmingly lost.
So no union there at that warehouse. But since then,
(14:48):
you know, there's like an appeal. They're looking into it
to see if they could possibly be overturned. And a
lot of this has to center around a mailbox that
got installed by Amazon there on the ground owns. They're
pointing to it, saying that they had outside influence over
the ballots because of this mailbox, and a lot of
people are saying that this could really be the thing
(15:09):
that possibly turns this whole thing over. So Sarah, help
us walk through some of this. Basically, they're trying to
organize to join. They believe it is the Retail Hostel
and Department Store Union. They've been doing this for several months.
They finally got to vote due to COVID. They wanted
to do it by mail. Amazon actually really wanted to
do it in person when they lost, and then Amazon
(15:31):
started sort of pressing the United States Postal Service to
have a mailbox installed on the property. Eventually they were
able to do that. It's not like, you know, one
of those like blue mailboxes that you would recognize, but
this like gray cluster mailbox was put in the parking
lot and Amazon sent a lot of things to uh
the employees, encouraging them to use that to vote. They
(15:54):
put a tent around it sort of saying vote here,
encouraging them to use that to vote. You know, Amazon's
preatical orous for how it surveils its workers, and so
you know, if you're an Amazon worker, you could possibly
think Amazon is watching me, you know, you know, like
maybe looking at how I vote, seeing who voted who didn't.
I'm not saying that Amazon did that, but there is
(16:15):
if you're an employee, I could possible, you know, way
you might think that. And then the second part of
this is the National Labor Relations Board is the one
that conducts these elections. They oversee these elections. When you
have like a company sort of putting a you know,
essentially a ballot box on its property, putting sort of
signage around it, you know, the employees could get the
(16:36):
impression that it's Amazon running the election. So there's a
couple of ways that there's an appearance of Amazon having
like surveillance or Amazon running an elections that could be
considered not appropriate in the hearing, and those I think
are the two big points that the union is hoping
will get the results overturned and then possibly lets them
have another vote. It's kind of funny to think that
(16:58):
the union is putting so much on this mailbox when
the voting really seemed that nobody was in favor for
forming the union, you know, the votes opposing it were
so overwhelming, So that's kind of like an interesting thing.
But people are pointing to this mailbox as actually the
thing that could overturn that vote. There's a lot of
emails and stuff that were exchanged that shows just how
(17:21):
much Amazon really wanted that mailbox put in there, and
it was their second choice. You know, they initially wanted
a dropbox. They settled on this mailbox. But there's emails
going back and forth at the highest levels of Amazon
and the post Office. And in terms of the vote,
the result, yes, it was overwhelming, but there were five
hundred votes that were challenged and thrown out because they
(17:43):
wouldn't have affected the results, so it may have been
closer than we think. And again there's also like over
half of the employees eligible to vote didn't, So you
have to wonder with those results, how many people were intimidating,
didn't vote at all, how many people felt like they
should vote the way Amazon seemed to want them to. Again,
I'm not saying that's why, but these are sort of
(18:03):
factors that could play into the result, and which which
is why you know the union would like it to
be overturned. Amazon has a relationship with the Postal Service,
is a massive customer for them, and obviously, as we
saw on the emails, this is sort of very unconventional
thing for the postal service to agree to, but they did.
The highest levels of both Amazon and the Postal Service
(18:23):
were involved in this. So Amazon really really pushed for
this mailbox. So it's obviously something that's a pretty significant
factor for both sides here. What are the next steps
for this? Then? You know, how long does this go
on for before they decide if they do overturn something
or not? And then and then after that, as you
kind of alluded to earlier, the next steps would be
another vote basically, I think, you know, once to hear
(18:45):
and concludes, which I'm actually not even sure if it
has been out. If it hasn't yet, it will very soon.
Then you have the decision has been made. You know,
the arguments have to be reviewed. If the board rules
in the Union saver then and we would be looking
at another vote. That rulin would come probably weeks or
months from now. And then again if if it is
(19:07):
to have another vote, there's a whole bunch of, like
you know, arrangements having to be made to do that.
So if the final outcome of this is a second vote,
we're a long time away from that. Sarah Morrison, reporter
at Vox's Recode. Thank you very much for joining us.
Thank you. That's it for today. Join us on social
(19:33):
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Leave us a comment, give us a rating, and tell
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This episode of The Daily Divers produced by Victor Right
and engineered by Tony Sarrantina. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this
(19:54):
is our Daily dive
It's Wednesday, ma i'm Oscar Ramires in Los Angeles, and
this is the daily dive. Florida Governor Rhnda Santis this
week signed a big Tech bill aimed at tracking down
on social media giants Facebook and Twitter for deep platforming conservatives.
(00:20):
This bill makes it illegal to remove candidates for office
from their social media in the lead up to an election.
It also makes it easier for the Florida Attorney General
and individuals to sue big Tech. Anna Sabaios, reporter at
the Miami Herald joins US for this new law that
will most certainly be challenged in court next. Another important
(00:40):
piece of the vaccine puzzle has come into play. Maderna
says that It's vaccine has been found to be effective
kids ages twelve to seventeen two weeks after their second does.
Madonna will seek for FDA authorization early in June, offering
more choices for families over summer vacation and before the
new school year begin. Elizabeth Weiss, national correspondent at USA Today,
(01:04):
joins us for how this will help bring us closer
to her Dominia. Finally, the recent unionization effort at an
Amazon warehouse in Bessemer Alabama has failed, but the fight
continued in a hearing before the National Labor Relations Board.
The union is arguing that a mailbox installed on the
grounds by the post Office interfered with how workers may
have voted. Amazon wanted workers to use the mailbox to
(01:26):
cast their ballot. Sarah Morrison, reporter at Boxes Recode, joins
us for why the decision to overturn the votes may
come down to this mailbox. It's news without the noise.
Let's dive in. Courts may award up to one hundred
thousand dollars in damages for each proven claim. These protections
(01:50):
aren't just for elite but for everyday people, millions of
people now. Is Anna Sabios, reporter at the Miami Herald,
Thanks for joining us, Anna, thanks for having me. Florida
Governor Ronda Santists has signed a bill this week aimed
at cracking down on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter
and basically would make it illegal for them to deep
(02:12):
platform a candidate for office in the run up to
an election. The bill would also make it easier for
Florida's Attorney general and individuals to sue these big tech
companies also if they feel they've been deep platformed wrongly
and whatnot. So and tell us a little bit about
what we're seeing in this bill and and kind of
the implications of all of this because it's open up
to legal challenges. There's a lot going on here, right,
(02:35):
Like you said, there's there's really a lot going on.
And Governor Ronda Santists has been talking about this for
a few months now. You started making a big deal
about this issue back in January when he was talking
to a group of conservatives that in Texas UM and
then he asked lawmakers to really crack down on the
big tech companies, which you know there's bipartisan support that
(02:58):
maybe they're these companies are a two days but what
there is no bipartisan consensus or there's still questions in
them joining about first of all, can even do this
and second of all, what is the intent in the
motivation behind this proposal? And like you said, you know
that the proposal does take aim at social media companies
(03:20):
PLoP political candidates for either statewide office or local offices.
And it allows these candidates if they are removed for
whatever type of content they post that violates the terms
of agreement for those companies, they can seek compensation from
the company and see them for up to two hundreds
(03:41):
two thousand dollars to day. Can they even do this?
I mean this is where a lot of the legal
challenges are gonna lie. Obviously, you're compelling speech onto private companies.
You know, they have their terms of service. If you're
breaking them, generally, that's that's the rule you're breaking it.
They can be platform you. So there's a lot of
First Amendment stuff going on there. And then can they
regulate these companies that operate across state lines just because
(04:04):
it applies there in Florida, what it means that it
applies somewhere else. These are where all the legal challenges
are going to be stemming from. And then it is
pretty narrow. I guess in that sense that it is
only for political candidates. It's just doesn't open it up
to free speech for everybody, which is something that a
lot of conservatives feel that they're being targeted unfairly by
these big tech companies. It does often some recourse for
(04:29):
for everyday flurry, and I guess you could say, but
the toughest penalties or toughest provisions are in favor of
candidates who are being be platformed. But like you said,
you know, there is still a lot of questions whether
Florida will be able to enforce this. You know, there's
language in the bill that says that this is the
intent of this state, but it can't trump state law.
(04:50):
And hear what the state of saying is, you know,
we deem it do not be too state. Yeah, they're
saying that they should be allowed to be on there
for an extra thirty day days if they need to
remove their information and all of that. RHN De Santis,
as you mentioned, had been talking about it for some
time now, especially after President Trump was taken off some
of these platforms. De Santis himself though, was kind of
(05:12):
taken off a little bit too. In April, he did
some type of YouTube panel discussion. They removed that video
because they said it violated some of the misinformation policies
that YouTube had. Right that was the round table during
the pandemic. It was in the heat of the pandemic
when they were all discussions being held here in the state.
(05:32):
He would he would regularly hold down table discussions and
one of those he invited some health experts who you know,
violated YouTube, COVID, medical and misinformation policies and to Santis
defiantly held another discussion with the same experts a few
months later, and he started promoting some smaller tech companies
like as the likes of Parlor if you will, right,
(05:54):
but they are more fabled by conservatives, and it's called
I believe Rumble. It's the video platform that is more
an alternative to YouTube. So we're seeing a trend of
him just trying pretty hard, not just the policy or
attempts to create new policy that the Trump state law
or potentially act, but you're also seeing him asked and
just promoting other tests of alternative media that he's used
(06:17):
as not silencing the conservative voices. I've had on some
of your colleagues from the Miami Herald to talk about
different things that the governor there is doing. He is
a rising star in the Republican Party. A lot of
people are saying he might run for for president former
President Trump doesn't. So the question is what does this
(06:38):
type of action do for the national conversation. Are we
expecting other states to pick this up, because, as I
said in the beginning, you know a lot of conservatives
field they're being targeted when it comes to free speech, right.
I mean, Florida always pecked himselves as a leader in
the nation. Right, he's been using the still as uh
you know, this is the first the nation and everyone's
(06:59):
going to follow. See were among But there are other
states that happened, not quite like Florida, which sense for shure,
but there are other states that have targeted internet companies.
Because Congress has been pretty flow to act um. So
we are seeing kind of you know, state action for
certain things. But I believe Florida is um the first
(07:21):
one to target censorship um the way that he did
in this bill. And you know, it's one extra thing
that he can take. Heke's expected to uh you know,
being good standing for re election next year. He's a
popular government here in Florida. And you know there's a
(07:43):
lot of things that he got done during the regular
legislative especially that just ended in May. It's a sixty
day session where he got this big tech bill, and
he got an anti riot bill, he got a voting bill,
he got you know, just name it. I mean, he
even got teacher illnesses for for at least some um
(08:05):
some teachers. Uh. So there's there's a lot of things
in his legislative goody bad if you will, you can
just pretty much take it to the road and you
start promoting his agenda and say, hey, I got these
things done, and these are issues are really popular among
the base of his supporters, and so you could argue
that it's not only going to benefit him here for
(08:27):
a re election in Florida, but could potentially put him
in a national scene. And he takes to Fox Sings
all the time, and he can raise that agenda at
a national level and test the waters. If he could
potentially run for the White House. Well, we'll see how
that all develops. Anna Sabio's reporter at the Miami Herald,
Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you. If
(08:57):
we can get a significant percentage of adults and adolescents
immunized by the fall, then middle schools, high schools are
going to be extremely safe, and then even elementary schools
are going to be safe because we'll dramatically lower transmission,
provided we can fix the awful pocket that we have
in the U S where people aren't getting vaccin. Joining
us now is Elizabeth Lee's national correspondent at USA Today.
(09:20):
Thanks for joining us, Elizabeth, You're welcome. We've got some
good news and another piece of the vaccination puzzle here.
Maderna has now released their information on on their studies
in children ages twelve to seventeen. They said that their
vaccine is one effective in that age range two weeks
after the second though. So some very good news here, Elizabeth.
(09:43):
What are we seeing out of Maderna. They haven't actually
published the full data set, that will come later, but
they've published most of it and it is it's good news.
So this is in adolescents. They looked at three thousands,
actually it's thirty seven adolescents. Two thirds of them got
the vaccine, the third of them got the placebo, and
(10:04):
the kids who got the vaccine after the first dose
was effective and after the second dose two weeks after that,
there were no cases of COVID among the vaccinated participants.
So that's pretty darn effective. Side effects, everybody's always concerned,
especially parents when they're getting their kids shots and all.
Nothing really to report there either, just the same common
(10:25):
side effects we've seen the deult experience. Right, So for
the first shot, the biggest side effect was your arm
hurt where you got the shot, pretty common. After the
second shot, the most common side effects were at you know,
a day or so of headache, fatigued muscle pains, and chills,
which is is basically your immune system ramping up to
(10:48):
fight off if it were able to encounter COVID nineteen
and you get a little echo of what it would
feel like to actually have COVID. These results are going
to be submitted to the FDA soon. They say, maybe
early June, we might be able to get the emergency
use authorization for this age range, just in time for
going back to school. A lot of vaccinations could probably
(11:10):
take place over the summer, and that's one of the
biggest pushes. One of the biggest concerns is getting kids
back to school safely. We saw news out of New York,
news out of Los Angeles that they're going back to school,
no more remote learning when the fall comes around. This
is good news and and uh, you know, I'm sure
a lot of parents are gonna try to get their
kids vaccinated before the school year begins. You know, I
(11:32):
was up at my local Walgreen's last weekend and I
walked in. I was like, good God, what is going on?
Because they were all these parents and teenagers. And then
I realized, oh, it's all the kids who are there
to get COVID shots because now they can so and
and we had the Fiser biolin tech vaccine which was
authorized down to the age of twelve in May. And
(11:55):
if we add Madoernald on top of that, it's you know,
it's just more vaccine. It can go and and it's
a it's I mean, we we keep talking about wanting
to get as many people vaccinated as possible and to
get as close to her immunity as we possibly can.
And even though we have a lot of we have
some vaccine hesitant adults, uh, adolescents, they're a big chunk
(12:19):
of the population, you know, We're we're talking seventeen million
people are in this age range in the United States,
so getting a lot of them vaccinated will be a
positive thing. That leads perfectly to my next question, because
when we kept hearing about her immunity, that magic number
was about anywhere from seventy would would be ideal for
(12:40):
that of people being vaccinated. We're kids included into that
number or were we just talking about adults when we're
throwing those numbers around, we're talking about the population as
a whole. So that's the total population, not just adults. Oh,
then that's great news that that this is now available
to them. And teens and kids don't really get the
(13:00):
most serious cases of COVID. It's happened, and you know,
there has been some debts, but children do represent about
fourteen percent of all COVID nineteen cases. But they can
get sick and they can pass that virus onto others.
So that's why it's important to have them vaccinated as well. Exactly.
That's I think the biggest thing in this age range
(13:21):
is yeah, they don't they typically don't get sick, but
they can give it to their parents, they can give
it to their grandparents, they can give it to their teachers.
And as we know, the older you are, the more
danger COVID nineteen poses to you. So the kids might
be okay, but they sure as heck don't want to
give it to their grandparents or their parents or the
adults around them. Elizabeth Wei's national correspondent at USA today,
(13:46):
thank you very much for joining us. You're so welcome.
Amazon sent a lot of things to uh the employees,
encouraging them to use that to vote. They put a
tent around it sort of saying vote here encouraging them
(14:07):
to use that to vote. You know, Amazon's pretorious for
how it surveils its workers, and so you know, if
you're an Amazon worker, you could possibly think Amazon is
watching me, you know. Joining us now with Sarah Morrison,
reporter at Vox's Recode. Thanks for joining us, Sarah, thanks
for having me. We had been following the story of
(14:28):
this attempted unionization at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama.
You know, in the end that ended up failing. There
was about six thousand workers that were eligible to vote
by mail, only about workers actually voted, and it overwhelmingly lost.
So no union there at that warehouse. But since then,
(14:48):
you know, there's like an appeal. They're looking into it
to see if they could possibly be overturned. And a
lot of this has to center around a mailbox that
got installed by Amazon there on the ground owns. They're
pointing to it, saying that they had outside influence over
the ballots because of this mailbox, and a lot of
people are saying that this could really be the thing
(15:09):
that possibly turns this whole thing over. So Sarah, help
us walk through some of this. Basically, they're trying to
organize to join. They believe it is the Retail Hostel
and Department Store Union. They've been doing this for several months.
They finally got to vote due to COVID. They wanted
to do it by mail. Amazon actually really wanted to
do it in person when they lost, and then Amazon
(15:31):
started sort of pressing the United States Postal Service to
have a mailbox installed on the property. Eventually they were
able to do that. It's not like, you know, one
of those like blue mailboxes that you would recognize, but
this like gray cluster mailbox was put in the parking
lot and Amazon sent a lot of things to uh
the employees, encouraging them to use that to vote. They
(15:54):
put a tent around it sort of saying vote here,
encouraging them to use that to vote. You know, Amazon's
preatical orous for how it surveils its workers, and so
you know, if you're an Amazon worker, you could possibly
think Amazon is watching me, you know, you know, like
maybe looking at how I vote, seeing who voted who didn't.
I'm not saying that Amazon did that, but there is
(16:15):
if you're an employee, I could possible, you know, way
you might think that. And then the second part of
this is the National Labor Relations Board is the one
that conducts these elections. They oversee these elections. When you
have like a company sort of putting a you know,
essentially a ballot box on its property, putting sort of
signage around it, you know, the employees could get the
(16:36):
impression that it's Amazon running the election. So there's a
couple of ways that there's an appearance of Amazon having
like surveillance or Amazon running an elections that could be
considered not appropriate in the hearing, and those I think
are the two big points that the union is hoping
will get the results overturned and then possibly lets them
have another vote. It's kind of funny to think that
(16:58):
the union is putting so much on this mailbox when
the voting really seemed that nobody was in favor for
forming the union, you know, the votes opposing it were
so overwhelming, So that's kind of like an interesting thing.
But people are pointing to this mailbox as actually the
thing that could overturn that vote. There's a lot of
emails and stuff that were exchanged that shows just how
(17:21):
much Amazon really wanted that mailbox put in there, and
it was their second choice. You know, they initially wanted
a dropbox. They settled on this mailbox. But there's emails
going back and forth at the highest levels of Amazon
and the post Office. And in terms of the vote,
the result, yes, it was overwhelming, but there were five
hundred votes that were challenged and thrown out because they
(17:43):
wouldn't have affected the results, so it may have been
closer than we think. And again there's also like over
half of the employees eligible to vote didn't, So you
have to wonder with those results, how many people were intimidating,
didn't vote at all, how many people felt like they
should vote the way Amazon seemed to want them to. Again,
I'm not saying that's why, but these are sort of
(18:03):
factors that could play into the result, and which which
is why you know the union would like it to
be overturned. Amazon has a relationship with the Postal Service,
is a massive customer for them, and obviously, as we
saw on the emails, this is sort of very unconventional
thing for the postal service to agree to, but they did.
The highest levels of both Amazon and the Postal Service
(18:23):
were involved in this. So Amazon really really pushed for
this mailbox. So it's obviously something that's a pretty significant
factor for both sides here. What are the next steps
for this? Then? You know, how long does this go
on for before they decide if they do overturn something
or not? And then and then after that, as you
kind of alluded to earlier, the next steps would be
another vote basically, I think, you know, once to hear
(18:45):
and concludes, which I'm actually not even sure if it
has been out. If it hasn't yet, it will very soon.
Then you have the decision has been made. You know,
the arguments have to be reviewed. If the board rules
in the Union saver then and we would be looking
at another vote. That rulin would come probably weeks or
months from now. And then again if if it is
(19:07):
to have another vote, there's a whole bunch of, like
you know, arrangements having to be made to do that.
So if the final outcome of this is a second vote,
we're a long time away from that. Sarah Morrison, reporter
at Vox's Recode. Thank you very much for joining us.
Thank you. That's it for today. Join us on social
(19:33):
media at Daily Dive Pod on both Twitter and Instagram.
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This episode of The Daily Divers produced by Victor Right
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(19:54):
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