April 22, 2021 • 19 mins
State of emergency declared at the Arizona border. Gov. Doug Ducey has blamed the Biden administration for the surge in illegal crossing and said that about 250 National Guard troops would be deployed to help local law enforcement that is overwhelmed. While unaccompanied minors continues to be a problem, Arizona is seeing an influx of single adult males. Alicia Caldwell, immigration reporter at the WSJ, joins us for more.
Next, we might be hitting another snag in the vaccine rollout… too much vaccine. Some states are starting to see the supply of doses exceed the demand. The pace of vaccinations has flattened out at about 3 million per day as states are starting to see too many open vaccine appointments. Rachel Roubein, health reporter at Politico, joins us for how the strategy is changing to get more people vaccinated.
Finally, get ready for the forever maskers. There are pockets of people that have indicated that despite the easing of mask wearing rules and increased vaccination rates, they will most likely be wearing their masks far beyond the pandemic. Reasons vary, with many saying they have avoided the flu and other illnesses and want to keep that streak going. Eve Peyser, writer at NY Magazine, tells us about those who won’t be putting their masks away just yet.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Thursday, April. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles, and
this is the daily dive. State of emergency declared at
the Arizona border. Governor Doug Goosey has blamed the Biden
administration for the surgeon of legal crossings and said that
about two hundred and fifty National Guard troops would be
(00:21):
deployed to help local law enforcement that is overwhelmed. While
unaccompanied miners continues to be a problem, Arizona is seeing
an influx of single adult males. Alicia Caldwell, immigration reporter
at The Wall Street Journal joins us for more. Next,
we might be hitting another snag in the vaccine rollout.
Too much vaccine in some states are starting to see
(00:42):
the supply of doses exceed the demand. The pace of
vaccinations has flattened out at about three million per day.
The states are starting to see too many open vaccine
appointment Rachel Rubin, health reporter at Politico joins us for
how the strategy is changing to get more people vaccinated finally,
get ready for the forever maskers. There are pockets of
(01:04):
people that have indicated that despite the easing of mask
wearing rules and increased vaccination rates, they will most likely
be wearing their masks far beyond the pandemic. Reasons vary,
with many saying that they have avoided the flu and
other illnesses and want to keep that street going. Eve Piser,
writer and New York magazine, tells us about those who
(01:24):
won't be putting their masks away just yet. It's news
without the noise. Let's dive in. President Biden, you should
declare a national emergency and deploy the vast powers of
your administration to stop what's happening here. Joining us now
is Alicia Caldwell, immigration reporter at the Wall Street Journal.
(01:46):
Thanks for joining us, Alicia, Thanks for having me. I
wanted to talk about immigration. There was some action by Arizona.
The Arizona Governor, Doug Doocey, declared a state of emergency
at the southwest border. There. He is going to deploy
about two d and fifty National Guard troops to help
local law enforcement. Obviously, we've been seeing increased numbers of
(02:08):
migrants coming to the border, a lot of unaccompanied minors
coming to the borders. So it's become this crisis that
hasn't been called a crisis, let's say, by the administration.
But it's increasingly becoming a problem for housing these kids,
housing the other migrants, sending them back. You know, it
is kind of a mess again, as it usually ramps
(02:29):
up every time of the year. So Alicia, tell us
a little bit more about what we're seeing in Arizona
that caused this order to be enacted. So, as you described,
it's a bit of a mess. It's not new, but
it's happening again. So in Arizona, you've got two border
patrol sectors, Yuma and two Soon, so the state's not
quite divided in half. Two Sons is a much bigger
(02:51):
land mass area for border patrol, but you've got a
lot of single adults coming through Tewson and a lot
of families and kids coming through both areas. What's happening,
effectively is border patrol doesn't have any room to hold
them because of the pandemic and limited space. You don't
want to put people in crowded border patrol stations. Never
(03:11):
a good idea to put children in those facilities, according
to Border Patrol, they're not designed for them. They're not
designed for families either. Then you add the pandemic and
they're out of space, so they're putting up tents. As
we speak, one has gone up in Yuma. These are big,
thirty thousand square foot tents divided into different pods where
families and kids and single adults are held. Primarily family
(03:33):
and kids. They're only supposed to be there for seventy
two hours, a maximum of seventy two hours. They're often
they're in terms of the kids for longer because border
patrol is in a bit of a pickle, if you will,
to sort of, I don't want to be good about it,
but they can't release children. The children have to be
sent off to another government agency, the Department of Health
(03:53):
and Human Services, and there's a backup there. So you've
got all these different backups happening. And in Arizona right now,
the big concern from local governments and some small towns
is that families are being released in their communities, known
as staying in those communities. No one is staying in Afo, Arizona,
which is in the middle of the desert north of
(04:15):
the border but doesn't have any infrastructure to handle folks.
Same with a town north of there called La Bend.
Those migrants then will be taken to Tucson or Phoenix,
where they will be sheltered by non government organizations and
they'll be helped you know, along their way into the
interior of the u S wherever they were headed. But again,
the problem is that there are a lot of people
(04:35):
in Tucson. As I said, it's the big issue is
single adults. There are lots of them coming across the
border illegally, but you do have that mix of families
and kids as well. You know, a lot of times
when we hear about stories that you know, people come
to the border of the first inclination that people think
of is Texas, and they're the only really place where
we've seen some pictures of some of these centers where
(04:56):
the kids are and where some of the adults are
being held. Have we seen anything like that in Arizona,
any any pictures or optics from that. We've not seen pictures.
But it's a different situation in Arizona. What you're seeing
in Texas is not what you're seeing in Arizona. So
you don't have significant groups of people, meaning a hundred
or two hundred people at a time surrendering to the
(05:18):
border patrol the way you do in South Texas. In Arizona,
like I said, it's it's a lot of single adults crossing.
So those single adults can be turned around. They can
be actually sent back across the Mexican border under a
public health law called Title forty two. It allows the
government to expel them back to Mexico. No harm, no foul.
You're just pushed back into Mexico, regardless of whether or
(05:39):
not you're from Mexico, so long as the Mexican government
will accept you. With the families, some of those folks
are sent back as well. None of the kids can
be sent back because the Biden administration has has decided
that they will not expel unaccompanied kids. So you don't
have the same volumes. You have different problems in Arizona
that you haven't in access and so the National Guard
(06:01):
will be deployed, you know soon. It's gonna take a
little bit of time for them to get mobilized there.
There's always mixed feelings when the Guard is being deployed.
The money aspect of it. The two Democratic senators from
Arizona actually said that this was a good decision. They
agreed with it at least, and said that there is
some support needed there. But what are they going to
be doing, because that's always the big question, you know,
(06:23):
why bringing the guard, what are they going to be doing.
So they're actually joining other do O D assets that
are already there. It's a border to remember that under
President Trump, the National Guard was deployed along with active
duty military, and National Guard has been deployed over the
course of years since really the Bush administration and Earnest
uh excuse me, W Bush, George W. Bush. So they're
(06:46):
joining some already deployed resources at the border, but they're
not allowed to do any immigration enforcement. They're not allowed
to do any law enforcement. They're going to help with
monitoring cameras, deploying cameras. According to the governor, they'll helpe
in detention facilities. In terms of medical care, providing medical
care because obviously in the midst of a pandemic, that's
(07:06):
a significant issue, and you do have a lot of
people who come across the border who are in need
of medical care. Aside from the pandemic. It's a treacherous trip,
so it's not unheard of for someone to be injured
along the road. But it's incredibly important that we stress
the National Guard can't enforce immigration or really help with
immigration enforcement. Because of a variety of laws post comatatas,
(07:29):
you're not allowed to conduct law enforcement as US military
in the US in this setting. So they're there to
help and augment, and really in mideployment, they'll be there
to help and augment local law enforcement and state troopers
and so on. Alicia called Well, immigration reporter at the
Wall Street Journal, thank you very much for joining us.
(07:49):
Thank you mindset seeing kind of appointment websites crash and
seen and hearing anados of people waiting around at pharmacy
kin helping to get west over doses. And now state,
(08:10):
local and federal officials are really trained to make a
twist and meet people where they are. Joining us. Now
is Rachel Rubin, health reporter at Politico. Thanks for joining us, Rachel, Hi,
thanks for having me. All right. So we're starting to
run into another problem when it comes to vaccines. Now.
(08:30):
You know, after a lot of states have really expanded
their tears, everybody's more eligible to go and get those vaccines.
We're starting to running the problem where states are having
too many vaccine doses. The demand is not as high
as the supply that we once had at the beginning.
It's kind of the inverse of the whole thing now
and states are coming up with different ways of how
to get the word out that we still have the vaccines.
(08:53):
It's important to get it done, and you should go
get it. So, Rachel, tell us a little bit about
what we're seeing. Yeah, exactly what you said. The supply
of COVID vaccines is now exceeding demand, both in rural
areas and big cities. And what was interesting was when
we were doing some reporting this week, we were talking
to state and local officials who all expected this to happen,
(09:18):
but it had actually happened earlier. In the quest of vaccinates.
We have been billion Americans over there and billion Americans,
and they thought so it is kind of a daring
twist after months of seeing kind of appointment websites crash
and seen and hearing antados of people waiting around at
pharmacy counters helping to get west over doses, and now state,
(09:40):
local and federal officials are really trained to make a
twist and meet people where they are. And you know,
we've spoken a lot on the podcast about vaccine hesitancy
for a number of reasons. Some of it is political.
Some people just don't trust the government. Other people don't
trust the You know, the pace of the vac scenes
were made, but by and large they've been very effective.
(10:03):
They are safe, and more people are getting it. I
know a lot of people were saying, well, I want
to wait till more people get it. We've reached that
point now, you know what I mean. So it's like
it's hard to figure out that new tactics. So this
is exactly what a lot of these states are are
working towards figuring out what that new campaign is and
how to do it. So what are some of the
states doing exactly you mentioned taking the vaccines to them,
(10:25):
but what else are we seeing out there. Some of
the things that my colleague Dan Goldberg and I heard
about is in a peninsula in Alaska, emergency medical service
personnel are bringing the vaccine to kind of any house
or business with three or more people who wanted. In
New Orleans, we heard of the city partnering with bar
to do shots for shots promotion, so giving out a
(10:48):
different kind of shot after you get the vaccine. We
talked the officials in North Dakota who were working on
piloting pop up clinics at Walmart, and we also heard
Moore in Louisiana, and this was a message that we
heard from other local and state officials. Was working on
smaller scale events in neighborhoods, churches, and community centers and
(11:10):
working with trusted community members who can help spread the
word such as physicians, providers, primary care doctors, etcetera. What
have a lot of these states said when it comes
at least to the part of the Biden administration and
figuring that out governors, centers. Public health experts that we
talked to said that the White Health can't rely on
(11:32):
the same strategy it used when supply was constrained, going
back to trying to meet people where they are having
trusted messengers. The Fine administration says that they have put
three billion dollars towards investing in vaccine confidence and launch
a new volunteer core. My colleague San Goldberg talked to,
for example, tender John Tester, a Democrat from Montana, who
(11:57):
said that, like Keston, members of the community play of
the role here. He also added that see like the
CDC to more explicitly link vaccines to return to normal life,
and the but administration school has been to return closer
to normalcy by July four, Rachel Rubin, healthy reporter at Politico,
(12:18):
Thank you very much for joining us. Thanks for having me.
She said that it's a way of relieving anxiety in
a similar way that having a drink after a long
day at work relieves anxiety, or going running or any
(12:41):
sorts of behaviors that people do to be less stressed
at Joining us now is Eve Piser, writer at New
York Magazine. Thanks for joining us, Eve, Thanks for having me. Currently,
just over half of the American population has been vaccinated
at least one dose of the vaccine. Many are on
their way to their second. So we're getting some good
(13:01):
numbers out of that. And you know, obviously the country
is starting to slowly reopen. Regulations are starting to be
lifted in a lot of places. Some places still continue
the mask wearing and all that stuff, and and health
experts say we should be wearing mask still and social distancing.
But you know, everybody, a lot of people are still
waiting for that moment where you can rip off the
mask and don't have to worry about it anymore. But
(13:23):
even for a recent piece that you wrote, you spoke
to people who were calling the forever maskers, people who
say that even when the pandemic is over, they plan
on wearing masks for a long time to come. So
you tell me a little bit about that. So I
found some people who wanted to wear masks after the
pandemic ended, and they all kind of had different reasons.
(13:47):
Some people, it was as simple as they hadn't gotten
a cold since the pandemic started, Yeah, and they wanted
to keep it that way. But I think for others
there was more emotional complexity, and it was kind of
had to do with how traumatized they've been by what's
happened over the past year. Yeah, let's start off with
(14:09):
the first one, because I think that's the easiest one
to understand. A lot of people might even feel very similar.
I know I do. I haven't really had any major illness, flu, cold,
anything like that. I think we saw flu rates plummet
this past year, like almost really no flu season. That
happened in part because a lot of people were wearing
their masks. So there's a few people that you spoke to.
(14:29):
I think Michael Bizarro, he's a Colorado teacher in particular,
said Hey, this has been working for me. I want
to keep it going. Michael Bizarrow has a job that
involves interacting with kids, and I'm sure we can all
remember that when we were kids and went to school,
you just had got cold after cold. So I thought
that his reasoning made a lot of sense. And I mean,
(14:53):
my interview with him was longer, and I obviously didn't
get to include all of it in the article, but
he said at his fiance works in public health, so
it's something that he's been really conscious of and he's
been really focused on keeping their household safe. But that's
also been hard because he's the choir director for the
school and that's the one time at school where he
(15:14):
can't wear a mask. But still just this one change
for him. I mean, I think for me when people said, oh,
I haven't gotten sick since I started wearing a mask,
in my head, I was kind of wondering, well, there
are other things that play like you're during the pandemic,
you're just interacting with a lot less people than you
normally would. But I think Michael Bizarro kind of presented
(15:38):
a compelling argument because he's interacting with the same amount
of kids as he was before the pandemic, but there's
been this one big shift that has changed his life
for the better. One of the psychologists that you spoke
to about it says that the pandemic kind of gave
everybody almost like an anxiety disorder, and wearing the mask
is this safety behavior that can leave eat some of
(16:00):
those anxieties. You feel like, if I'm wearing the mask,
I'm at least doing the most I can to protect myself.
And there was a few common threads that people had
that kind of surrounded that they were trying to calm
those anxieties down. I mean, I think with the pandemic,
there are a lot of behaviors you can control to
make your risk of getting this disease less likely, but
(16:25):
most of it is pretty much out of your control.
And so I think that wearing a mask makes people
feel proactive. And the psychologists I spoke to a pearl
She said that it's a way of relieving anxiety in
a similar way that having a drink after a long
day at work relieves anxiety, or going running or any
(16:48):
sorts of behaviors that people do to be less stressed out.
But I think that she also made a really important point,
which is the psychological benefits of getting to see other
people's faces and how that can actually be something that
helps you feel more calm, because if you're walking down
(17:09):
the street and you see a stranger and you see
their face and they smile at you, it can kind
of put you at ease and say, Okay, Like I
see strangers all the time, and these people don't actually
pose any threats to me. I'm one of those people.
I'm ready to take the mask off, you know, just
to kind of go back to normal. But I've kind
of long posed that question. I never thought it would
(17:29):
be something cultural here in the United States, but we've
seen it in a lot of Asian countries where mass
wearing is just kind of part of their everyday life.
And I've long thought that there's gonna be a lot
of people that are gonna want to hold onto that.
Not everybody, obviously, but a lot of people still wanting
to keep those masks on. Yeah. I mean, I think
that the pandemic has shifted life in all these profound ways,
(17:54):
and it's made people be more insular, and it's made
their world smaller and made them afraid of the public
and like scared of strangers. And I think that even
as more and more people get vaccinated and rates and
death continue to go down, those feelings won't just go away.
(18:20):
One of the people I talked to, this really lovely
woman named robin our Gentye, had like a really traumatic pandemic.
She had a really close family member die. She didn't
really get to see anybody. She said, she hadn't touched
anybody in over a year, and she had previously been
(18:40):
kind of agoraphobic before the pandemic, and then the pandemic
affirmed all those fears that she maybe once thought were
irrational about being afraid of being in public spaces, where
she was learned like, no public spaces really are threatening,
and now she's going to do every things she can
to hold on to that safety net in the mask. Yeah.
(19:03):
She you mentioned that she's one of the people that
are going to be having this on for a long time.
So I think we'll see, you know, as all the
regulations do start to get ease, you know, we'll start
to be able to point out those people that are
going to be the long haul mask wears. Eve Payser,
writer at New York Magazine, Thank you very much for
joining us. Thanks for having me. That's it for today.
(19:29):
Join us on social media at Daily Dive pod on
both Twitter and Instagram. Leave us a comment, give us
a rating, and tell us the stories that you're interested in.
Follow us and I Heart Radio or subscribe wherever you
get your podcast. This episode of The Daily Divers produced
by Victor Right, engineered by Tony Sarrantina. I'm Oscar Mires
(19:50):
and this was your Daily Dive
It's Thursday, April. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles, and
this is the daily dive. State of emergency declared at
the Arizona border. Governor Doug Goosey has blamed the Biden
administration for the surgeon of legal crossings and said that
about two hundred and fifty National Guard troops would be
(00:21):
deployed to help local law enforcement that is overwhelmed. While
unaccompanied miners continues to be a problem, Arizona is seeing
an influx of single adult males. Alicia Caldwell, immigration reporter
at The Wall Street Journal joins us for more. Next,
we might be hitting another snag in the vaccine rollout.
Too much vaccine in some states are starting to see
(00:42):
the supply of doses exceed the demand. The pace of
vaccinations has flattened out at about three million per day.
The states are starting to see too many open vaccine
appointment Rachel Rubin, health reporter at Politico joins us for
how the strategy is changing to get more people vaccinated finally,
get ready for the forever maskers. There are pockets of
(01:04):
people that have indicated that despite the easing of mask
wearing rules and increased vaccination rates, they will most likely
be wearing their masks far beyond the pandemic. Reasons vary,
with many saying that they have avoided the flu and
other illnesses and want to keep that street going. Eve Piser,
writer and New York magazine, tells us about those who
(01:24):
won't be putting their masks away just yet. It's news
without the noise. Let's dive in. President Biden, you should
declare a national emergency and deploy the vast powers of
your administration to stop what's happening here. Joining us now
is Alicia Caldwell, immigration reporter at the Wall Street Journal.
(01:46):
Thanks for joining us, Alicia, Thanks for having me. I
wanted to talk about immigration. There was some action by Arizona.
The Arizona Governor, Doug Doocey, declared a state of emergency
at the southwest border. There. He is going to deploy
about two d and fifty National Guard troops to help
local law enforcement. Obviously, we've been seeing increased numbers of
(02:08):
migrants coming to the border, a lot of unaccompanied minors
coming to the borders. So it's become this crisis that
hasn't been called a crisis, let's say, by the administration.
But it's increasingly becoming a problem for housing these kids,
housing the other migrants, sending them back. You know, it
is kind of a mess again, as it usually ramps
(02:29):
up every time of the year. So Alicia, tell us
a little bit more about what we're seeing in Arizona
that caused this order to be enacted. So, as you described,
it's a bit of a mess. It's not new, but
it's happening again. So in Arizona, you've got two border
patrol sectors, Yuma and two Soon, so the state's not
quite divided in half. Two Sons is a much bigger
(02:51):
land mass area for border patrol, but you've got a
lot of single adults coming through Tewson and a lot
of families and kids coming through both areas. What's happening,
effectively is border patrol doesn't have any room to hold
them because of the pandemic and limited space. You don't
want to put people in crowded border patrol stations. Never
(03:11):
a good idea to put children in those facilities, according
to Border Patrol, they're not designed for them. They're not
designed for families either. Then you add the pandemic and
they're out of space, so they're putting up tents. As
we speak, one has gone up in Yuma. These are big,
thirty thousand square foot tents divided into different pods where
families and kids and single adults are held. Primarily family
(03:33):
and kids. They're only supposed to be there for seventy
two hours, a maximum of seventy two hours. They're often
they're in terms of the kids for longer because border
patrol is in a bit of a pickle, if you will,
to sort of, I don't want to be good about it,
but they can't release children. The children have to be
sent off to another government agency, the Department of Health
(03:53):
and Human Services, and there's a backup there. So you've
got all these different backups happening. And in Arizona right now,
the big concern from local governments and some small towns
is that families are being released in their communities, known
as staying in those communities. No one is staying in Afo, Arizona,
which is in the middle of the desert north of
(04:15):
the border but doesn't have any infrastructure to handle folks.
Same with a town north of there called La Bend.
Those migrants then will be taken to Tucson or Phoenix,
where they will be sheltered by non government organizations and
they'll be helped you know, along their way into the
interior of the u S wherever they were headed. But again,
the problem is that there are a lot of people
(04:35):
in Tucson. As I said, it's the big issue is
single adults. There are lots of them coming across the
border illegally, but you do have that mix of families
and kids as well. You know, a lot of times
when we hear about stories that you know, people come
to the border of the first inclination that people think
of is Texas, and they're the only really place where
we've seen some pictures of some of these centers where
(04:56):
the kids are and where some of the adults are
being held. Have we seen anything like that in Arizona,
any any pictures or optics from that. We've not seen pictures.
But it's a different situation in Arizona. What you're seeing
in Texas is not what you're seeing in Arizona. So
you don't have significant groups of people, meaning a hundred
or two hundred people at a time surrendering to the
(05:18):
border patrol the way you do in South Texas. In Arizona,
like I said, it's it's a lot of single adults crossing.
So those single adults can be turned around. They can
be actually sent back across the Mexican border under a
public health law called Title forty two. It allows the
government to expel them back to Mexico. No harm, no foul.
You're just pushed back into Mexico, regardless of whether or
(05:39):
not you're from Mexico, so long as the Mexican government
will accept you. With the families, some of those folks
are sent back as well. None of the kids can
be sent back because the Biden administration has has decided
that they will not expel unaccompanied kids. So you don't
have the same volumes. You have different problems in Arizona
that you haven't in access and so the National Guard
(06:01):
will be deployed, you know soon. It's gonna take a
little bit of time for them to get mobilized there.
There's always mixed feelings when the Guard is being deployed.
The money aspect of it. The two Democratic senators from
Arizona actually said that this was a good decision. They
agreed with it at least, and said that there is
some support needed there. But what are they going to
be doing, because that's always the big question, you know,
(06:23):
why bringing the guard, what are they going to be doing.
So they're actually joining other do O D assets that
are already there. It's a border to remember that under
President Trump, the National Guard was deployed along with active
duty military, and National Guard has been deployed over the
course of years since really the Bush administration and Earnest
uh excuse me, W Bush, George W. Bush. So they're
(06:46):
joining some already deployed resources at the border, but they're
not allowed to do any immigration enforcement. They're not allowed
to do any law enforcement. They're going to help with
monitoring cameras, deploying cameras. According to the governor, they'll helpe
in detention facilities. In terms of medical care, providing medical
care because obviously in the midst of a pandemic, that's
(07:06):
a significant issue, and you do have a lot of
people who come across the border who are in need
of medical care. Aside from the pandemic. It's a treacherous trip,
so it's not unheard of for someone to be injured
along the road. But it's incredibly important that we stress
the National Guard can't enforce immigration or really help with
immigration enforcement. Because of a variety of laws post comatatas,
(07:29):
you're not allowed to conduct law enforcement as US military
in the US in this setting. So they're there to
help and augment, and really in mideployment, they'll be there
to help and augment local law enforcement and state troopers
and so on. Alicia called Well, immigration reporter at the
Wall Street Journal, thank you very much for joining us.
(07:49):
Thank you mindset seeing kind of appointment websites crash and
seen and hearing anados of people waiting around at pharmacy
kin helping to get west over doses. And now state,
(08:10):
local and federal officials are really trained to make a
twist and meet people where they are. Joining us. Now
is Rachel Rubin, health reporter at Politico. Thanks for joining us, Rachel, Hi,
thanks for having me. All right. So we're starting to
run into another problem when it comes to vaccines. Now.
(08:30):
You know, after a lot of states have really expanded
their tears, everybody's more eligible to go and get those vaccines.
We're starting to running the problem where states are having
too many vaccine doses. The demand is not as high
as the supply that we once had at the beginning.
It's kind of the inverse of the whole thing now
and states are coming up with different ways of how
to get the word out that we still have the vaccines.
(08:53):
It's important to get it done, and you should go
get it. So, Rachel, tell us a little bit about
what we're seeing. Yeah, exactly what you said. The supply
of COVID vaccines is now exceeding demand, both in rural
areas and big cities. And what was interesting was when
we were doing some reporting this week, we were talking
to state and local officials who all expected this to happen,
(09:18):
but it had actually happened earlier. In the quest of vaccinates.
We have been billion Americans over there and billion Americans,
and they thought so it is kind of a daring
twist after months of seeing kind of appointment websites crash
and seen and hearing antados of people waiting around at
pharmacy counters helping to get west over doses, and now state,
(09:40):
local and federal officials are really trained to make a
twist and meet people where they are. And you know,
we've spoken a lot on the podcast about vaccine hesitancy
for a number of reasons. Some of it is political.
Some people just don't trust the government. Other people don't
trust the You know, the pace of the vac scenes
were made, but by and large they've been very effective.
(10:03):
They are safe, and more people are getting it. I
know a lot of people were saying, well, I want
to wait till more people get it. We've reached that
point now, you know what I mean. So it's like
it's hard to figure out that new tactics. So this
is exactly what a lot of these states are are
working towards figuring out what that new campaign is and
how to do it. So what are some of the
states doing exactly you mentioned taking the vaccines to them,
(10:25):
but what else are we seeing out there. Some of
the things that my colleague Dan Goldberg and I heard
about is in a peninsula in Alaska, emergency medical service
personnel are bringing the vaccine to kind of any house
or business with three or more people who wanted. In
New Orleans, we heard of the city partnering with bar
to do shots for shots promotion, so giving out a
(10:48):
different kind of shot after you get the vaccine. We
talked the officials in North Dakota who were working on
piloting pop up clinics at Walmart, and we also heard
Moore in Louisiana, and this was a message that we
heard from other local and state officials. Was working on
smaller scale events in neighborhoods, churches, and community centers and
(11:10):
working with trusted community members who can help spread the
word such as physicians, providers, primary care doctors, etcetera. What
have a lot of these states said when it comes
at least to the part of the Biden administration and
figuring that out governors, centers. Public health experts that we
talked to said that the White Health can't rely on
(11:32):
the same strategy it used when supply was constrained, going
back to trying to meet people where they are having
trusted messengers. The Fine administration says that they have put
three billion dollars towards investing in vaccine confidence and launch
a new volunteer core. My colleague San Goldberg talked to,
for example, tender John Tester, a Democrat from Montana, who
(11:57):
said that, like Keston, members of the community play of
the role here. He also added that see like the
CDC to more explicitly link vaccines to return to normal life,
and the but administration school has been to return closer
to normalcy by July four, Rachel Rubin, healthy reporter at Politico,
(12:18):
Thank you very much for joining us. Thanks for having me.
She said that it's a way of relieving anxiety in
a similar way that having a drink after a long
day at work relieves anxiety, or going running or any
(12:41):
sorts of behaviors that people do to be less stressed
at Joining us now is Eve Piser, writer at New
York Magazine. Thanks for joining us, Eve, Thanks for having me. Currently,
just over half of the American population has been vaccinated
at least one dose of the vaccine. Many are on
their way to their second. So we're getting some good
(13:01):
numbers out of that. And you know, obviously the country
is starting to slowly reopen. Regulations are starting to be
lifted in a lot of places. Some places still continue
the mask wearing and all that stuff, and and health
experts say we should be wearing mask still and social distancing.
But you know, everybody, a lot of people are still
waiting for that moment where you can rip off the
mask and don't have to worry about it anymore. But
(13:23):
even for a recent piece that you wrote, you spoke
to people who were calling the forever maskers, people who
say that even when the pandemic is over, they plan
on wearing masks for a long time to come. So
you tell me a little bit about that. So I
found some people who wanted to wear masks after the
pandemic ended, and they all kind of had different reasons.
(13:47):
Some people, it was as simple as they hadn't gotten
a cold since the pandemic started, Yeah, and they wanted
to keep it that way. But I think for others
there was more emotional complexity, and it was kind of
had to do with how traumatized they've been by what's
happened over the past year. Yeah, let's start off with
(14:09):
the first one, because I think that's the easiest one
to understand. A lot of people might even feel very similar.
I know I do. I haven't really had any major illness, flu, cold,
anything like that. I think we saw flu rates plummet
this past year, like almost really no flu season. That
happened in part because a lot of people were wearing
their masks. So there's a few people that you spoke to.
(14:29):
I think Michael Bizarro, he's a Colorado teacher in particular,
said Hey, this has been working for me. I want
to keep it going. Michael Bizarrow has a job that
involves interacting with kids, and I'm sure we can all
remember that when we were kids and went to school,
you just had got cold after cold. So I thought
that his reasoning made a lot of sense. And I mean,
(14:53):
my interview with him was longer, and I obviously didn't
get to include all of it in the article, but
he said at his fiance works in public health, so
it's something that he's been really conscious of and he's
been really focused on keeping their household safe. But that's
also been hard because he's the choir director for the
school and that's the one time at school where he
(15:14):
can't wear a mask. But still just this one change
for him. I mean, I think for me when people said, oh,
I haven't gotten sick since I started wearing a mask,
in my head, I was kind of wondering, well, there
are other things that play like you're during the pandemic,
you're just interacting with a lot less people than you
normally would. But I think Michael Bizarro kind of presented
(15:38):
a compelling argument because he's interacting with the same amount
of kids as he was before the pandemic, but there's
been this one big shift that has changed his life
for the better. One of the psychologists that you spoke
to about it says that the pandemic kind of gave
everybody almost like an anxiety disorder, and wearing the mask
is this safety behavior that can leave eat some of
(16:00):
those anxieties. You feel like, if I'm wearing the mask,
I'm at least doing the most I can to protect myself.
And there was a few common threads that people had
that kind of surrounded that they were trying to calm
those anxieties down. I mean, I think with the pandemic,
there are a lot of behaviors you can control to
make your risk of getting this disease less likely, but
(16:25):
most of it is pretty much out of your control.
And so I think that wearing a mask makes people
feel proactive. And the psychologists I spoke to a pearl
She said that it's a way of relieving anxiety in
a similar way that having a drink after a long
day at work relieves anxiety, or going running or any
(16:48):
sorts of behaviors that people do to be less stressed out.
But I think that she also made a really important point,
which is the psychological benefits of getting to see other
people's faces and how that can actually be something that
helps you feel more calm, because if you're walking down
(17:09):
the street and you see a stranger and you see
their face and they smile at you, it can kind
of put you at ease and say, Okay, Like I
see strangers all the time, and these people don't actually
pose any threats to me. I'm one of those people.
I'm ready to take the mask off, you know, just
to kind of go back to normal. But I've kind
of long posed that question. I never thought it would
(17:29):
be something cultural here in the United States, but we've
seen it in a lot of Asian countries where mass
wearing is just kind of part of their everyday life.
And I've long thought that there's gonna be a lot
of people that are gonna want to hold onto that.
Not everybody, obviously, but a lot of people still wanting
to keep those masks on. Yeah. I mean, I think
that the pandemic has shifted life in all these profound ways,
(17:54):
and it's made people be more insular, and it's made
their world smaller and made them afraid of the public
and like scared of strangers. And I think that even
as more and more people get vaccinated and rates and
death continue to go down, those feelings won't just go away.
(18:20):
One of the people I talked to, this really lovely
woman named robin our Gentye, had like a really traumatic pandemic.
She had a really close family member die. She didn't
really get to see anybody. She said, she hadn't touched
anybody in over a year, and she had previously been
(18:40):
kind of agoraphobic before the pandemic, and then the pandemic
affirmed all those fears that she maybe once thought were
irrational about being afraid of being in public spaces, where
she was learned like, no public spaces really are threatening,
and now she's going to do every things she can
to hold on to that safety net in the mask. Yeah.
(19:03):
She you mentioned that she's one of the people that
are going to be having this on for a long time.
So I think we'll see, you know, as all the
regulations do start to get ease, you know, we'll start
to be able to point out those people that are
going to be the long haul mask wears. Eve Payser,
writer at New York Magazine, Thank you very much for
joining us. Thanks for having me. That's it for today.
(19:29):
Join us on social media at Daily Dive pod on
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a rating, and tell us the stories that you're interested in.
Follow us and I Heart Radio or subscribe wherever you
get your podcast. This episode of The Daily Divers produced
by Victor Right, engineered by Tony Sarrantina. I'm Oscar Mires
(19:50):
and this was your Daily Dive
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