Transcripts For CSPAN Washington 20240703

Host joining us this morning is dr. Georges benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. Lets begin with the new booster that was announced by the fda and cdc for covid19. What should americans know about this . Guest thank you for having me. Americans should know covid is still with us but we have much better tools we have developed over the last 2. 5 years. We know more about the character and the way the body functions. We have better teams and we know more about how to protect we have better vaccines and better therapeutics. We know more about how to protect ourselves and treat ourselves should you get exposed to the virus. Host if you get exposed today, what is the virus like, and is the booster needed . Guest i believe the booster is needed. It is an updated vaccine. What happens to most people is, we now that even if you had some degree of protection because you have been vaccinated or were exposed to the virus and are affected, in that environment the vast majority of americans , have some degree of protection but it wanes over time. And that means that this updated vaccine is important to maintain the high level protection that keeps you from getting really sick. Host who needs it . Guest everyone over the age of six. That is what is recommended. Everyone who is over the age of six and older should get this updated vaccine. Host what do we know about covid19 . You touched on that, but what are some specific things people should know about what we have learned over the past 2. 5 years about this virus . Guest we know that this virus mutates frequently and likes to change. But at least so far when it has , changed for the worse, it gets a little more infectious. Meaning that it becomes easier to pass from one person to another. We know that it is easy to pass from one person to another, even if you dont have symptoms, which makes it difficult to detect from one person to another when someone gets infected. We know that if you are older or you have a lot of immunocompromised diseases like heart disease, lung disease Kidney Disease or heart disease, that makes you more than likely to get really sick if you are exposed by this virus. And we know that we can protect ourselves. And by the way, we know this is true for adults and children. And so, even though children traditionally dont get as sick as adults, we still have children that got sick and died from this disease. Host what do we know about how long our immunity last . Guest it somewhere around three or four months after you get your vaccination that it begins to wane some. The waning is in such a way that you can still get infected. In addition, if you do get infected, at least so far, most people who have been fully vaccinated do not get really sick to the point people die. But we still have seen deaths. We are not seeing deaths in people who have been vaccinated because their immune status has waned. Host how concerned are you about vaccine fatigue . It seems like you would be concerned. Guest i am very concerned about vaccine fatigue. All of us want to be over this. But look, we still need to be vigilant. This is not a minor cold. Disease can still cause significant disease, and more importantly it causes a chronic Disease State in a number of people called long covid, as the chronic joint aches, brain fog sometimes persistent , weakness, just a range of the symptoms we are trying to get our hands around exactly all the things that it does. But we know this virus can affect almost every single organ system. In this long covid phenomena is in addition to the acute disease that we see when people get infected. Host what is the American Public Health Association . Guest it is a professional society of people interested in Public Health. We have been around since 1872, so over 150 years. Host host dell in springfield, illinois. Question or comment . Caller i have a comment and a question. My comment was with the ai we were discussing earlier on, i think science would be one of the benefactors of ai in terms of research and treatments. The specific question was i had , a question regarding the cdc. Gov listing that i saw, a post i saw that those who already had covid and those who have the vaccine and booster are more susceptible to this current strain. And i did not understand how that could be repaired and it was on the cdc. Gov website. Can you explain that to me . Guest we are not saying they are more susceptible. Im not quite sure the post that you saw. Let me tell you what i do know about people who have been infected and then got vaccinated, or got vaccinated and then infected, it does seem those people overall tend to do a little better. Because of the type of different viruses and strains of the viruses they have been exposed to. But i am not aware that there is any evidence that you are much more likely to get this new strain that is going around or that you will get any sicker. Host michael, deerfield beach, florida. I michael. Caller dr. Benjamin, i wonder if you would comment on the fact california has asked, to his credit, all pediatricians to conduct an ace study. If you are aware of the Kaiser Permanente ace study is really foundational. I am afraid you and the American Public Health Association are going to be found historically complicit in tens of millions of deaths. Not do to the covid issue but due to our support, your support of a discriminatory and classbased Health Delivery system founded on a false understanding that evolution is based on competition. Not cooperation. That a falsehood. Evolution is not synonymous with competition. It is not saying these classbased systems of our health care, education, and even our economics, which is based on science, come from herbert spencer, the founder of the American Educational system. Host are you following . Guest i am not sure of his question. Let me just say the American Public Health Association has strongly been in support of a Health System with everyone in and no one out. Host mary, nevada. Caller good morning. I had a question on, how much further would we have been ahead or how much better off would be have been, or how many lives would have been date, if we knew would have been saved if we knew the origins of covid, especially like patient zero . And the fact the cia covered up that it originated in the lab, instead of in the wet market. How much more information we would have gathered and how much faster . You have a comment on that . Host do you have some thoughts . Guest first of all, let me just say it is important we understand what the origin of this virus is because i think it helps us with outward forward leaning in terms of being able to protect ourselves in the future. Thats the first thing. Secondly, i think there are lots of delays in our understanding of this because of not getting early information from china that we really needed to have. I think that did inhibit this and our understanding quickly enough. We did have a lot of international cooperation. Some from china, scientists in china. But it is clear we were not getting good information right away. All of this contributed to part our problems here in the United States but we also did not do , this well in the United States. There were many things we did not do well. But there are some things we did do well. But there were things we did not do well. I think that had we been more collaborative and had a much better Public Health system that we had built to respond to this kind of emergency, had we had consistent leadership and a consistent message and kind of an allin with everyone being sleeves rolled up in the same direction all the time, every time. In less politicized asian, unless and less politicization, lives would have been saved. We need to think about how we, as a society, trust these kinds of societal threats and focus on the real enemy and stop letting each other. Host ray is in suri cruise, new york. You are talking with dr. Georges benjamin. Go ahead. Caller my first comment is, i will Never Trust Anything that comes from any Health Provider again. I heard so many lies during covid. Being an elderly person, i am 66, fairly intelligent. I have worked in science my whole life. And i was lied to every which way. I cant even count the ways. And they are still lying about it by the way. Of course, dr. Fauci was the public one we we saw lie. He is still lying. But i cannot imagine trusting anything ever again. I do not even trust my doctor of 40 years anymore because he went along with it. Host lets get a reaction. Dr. Benjamin. Guest i am a physician. What i can tell you is that i will give you my best advice and i encourage you to check it out. I encourage you to go to trusted sources, find someone that you do trust and talk it over with them, someone who is knowledgeable. Then follow what i hope is good advice that you would get from m. Trust has been a problem during this pandemic. And i hope we can earn Peoples Trust so we dont go through this again. Host elliott in new york. Caller thank you for taking my call. Dr. Benjamin, i have a couple brief questions just to sort of amplify my understanding. And i am not looking for precision to the tenth of the decimal or whatever. First of all, you talked about long covid. Do you have a range of percentage of how many people who get covid end up with long covid . Guest i dont know. There are a lots of estimates out there. The challenge we have is we dont know how many people are actually getting infected. As you know, now that we have gone to self testing, we had a lot of people who are positive and do not report it. And they have mild symptoms and they do just fine so we do not pick them up. In terms of a percent, i dont have a good number for you. Secondly, we are still trying to make sure we have a good Case Definition for long covid. Somewhere around 10 weeks or 12 weeks out, most people are fine get covid. But there is a population of people beyond that who have persistent symptoms that can go on for months or years. We have only been doing this for 2. 5 years so we are not sure what the longterm duration would be. But it is substantial enough that we know we need to pay a lot more attention to it with a lot more diligence than we are doing right now. Host we are talking with dr. Georges benjamin about the upcoming covid19 booster that is now recommended. It is cdc recommended. Where can people get it and is it free . Guest the good news is almost everyone to be able to get the vaccine. The updated vaccine. Now, we changed the system now that the emergency is gone so if you have Insurance Coverage you , should be able to get it through your insurance company. It should not cost you anything. If you are uninsured and do not have a regular source of care, the federal government has an Access Program now that will allow you to get this vaccine for free through local health departments, Community Health centers, through certain pharmacies, private pharmacies that have contracted with the federal government. Our understanding is that those contracts are in place in the vaccine should be available in the next day or two. Host chris bonita springs, florida. Caller good morning. Thank you for taking my call. I was wondering if you are familiar with aerocleanse. Com . Aeroclenz. Com. You can go to get information on new technology for disinfections in aircraft cabins and labs, and hopefully other areas, which is a novel idea. It is in the process of being approved. It would eliminate viruses and many other pathogens that are airborne. It is an awesome product. It gives you all the white papers and journal articles, etc. I would love to see cspan invite dr. Gary allen or someone on to discuss this. They have been involved in this and it is imperative for people to know about this. Thank you so much. Guest thank you. I am not familiar with that particular company or organization. I can say that we now know there is a certain degree of aerosolization the occurs with the virus. And air quality is important. Obviously, places like airplanes and commercial buildings and schools are always concerned about having good air quality. That is certainly something we ought be paying attention to. By the way, it is something that we need to pay more attention to, as well as new tools, to protect ourselves against airborne viruses and bacteria. Host john, massachusetts. Good morning. Caller i have a question. Now, we have people that pretty much are not voted into office, has nothing to do with our governor. I basically know, because i was around back then, that in 1965, there was a virus created by our government which is the coronavirus. In that virus was pretty much held up in government labs until it was the perfect time for the world health organization, schwab and all your globalists, blackrock host we are going to move on. Anton, florida. Good morning. Caller i have a question and comment for dr. Benjamin. I called cspan at the very beginning of covid. It is not even through may be it was weaponize. I called cspan and john was the host. I cannot find him now. John reported at the time that 291,000 americans had died of covid. And i talked to john that day and said, it cannot be true. How do i know . Thanks to cspan because four days earlier, a caller had asked one of the scientists or doctors like dr. Benjamin if anybody can dive a covid itself alone in the answer was basically no. Of course i never got the shot and i had a chance to talk to dr. Schaefer on cspan later on. I said a man like me, 80, i have never been sick in my life. What would happen if i got the shot at the time . And he kind of warned me against it and said i was not prepared does set i would suffer. Does covid really exist . Host what do you say . Guest i am glad you are 80 years old and you sound like you are doing quite well. Sounds like youve got good genes. So far you are doing good. I still encourage you as you are older to get vaccinated for this disease because it does tend to impact people who are much older. , look, we know that over one Million People have died from covid. That is probably an undercount because of the way we capture people in our system would die and the way that we diagnose the cause of death. So that is an undercount for sure. There has also been a big debate between people who died of covid and people who died with covid. And getting those numbers straight. And so as we go forward, we need to do a better job of differentiating between death that were directly attributed to covid and people who die with a heart attack with covid and pulmonary embolism with covid or another disease that was secondarily affected after they got covid. We know at least one Million People did die from covid. Host kevin in oregon. Guest and that is just in the United States. Over 6 million worldwide. Caller host kevin, your television. You have to mute your television. Caller i just had a really quick question. Last october, when i got my fourth vaccination, they said i was good for a year. So i was scheduled to get it again october which the new Covid Vaccine would be out. But it sounded like maybe it was only good for six months again so i want a confirmation. Is it good for a year or do we go back to six months . Guest i do not think we know for sure to be honest. We are seeing that your immunity seems to wane after five or six months. I think practically, most people will probably get the shot, assuming we do it annually, it will get an updated vaccine that will be available every year and that is probably what most people will do. I cannot promise you that is what we are going to do. We are learning as we go along to some degree. But practically, i can tell you that what i planned to do is at least get i will be getting the updated vaccine as soon as i can and it is available and i can get to the store to get it. And if it turns out that five or six months from now we are seeing another upsurge and we attribute that to significantly waning immunity and that is the key word. Significantly waning immunity. Then i would be game for this being a twice a year shot. But i think practically once a year is certainly more likely what we will see. Host thomas in pennsylvania. Good morning. Caller good morning. Dr. Benjamin, will there be another mask mandate or will it be that we need to stay six feet from each other or is it up to the individual to wear one or not . Guest i do not see more mask mandates. Let me tell you how i think about masks. Masks work. Absolutely do work. Nothing as 100 . You have to wear it properly and wear masks very tight around your face. The difference between the n95 masks or multilayer cloth masks each have their benefits. I do think that if you are going to be going to a large event, and you are in a community where there is a surge in covid that is occurring, if youre going to be around people who are potentially immunocompromised, if you go see grandma or someone that is sick on chemotherapy, then i would encourage you to wear the mask because it protects you from them in them from you. And at them from you. It is a little inconvenient but wearing a mask is not a big thing. Tragically, we have allowed this very simple protective device which offers a significant degree of protection, pending on depending on the situation, we have allowed it to become politicized and it makes no sense. There are other societies around the world that have become mask wearing. Whenever you have cold and flu seasons. By the way, it also protects you from the flu and the common cold. It does offer protection so i encourage people to mask up. When it is appropriate. Host speaking of the flu, shouldnt americans get both the flu vaccine and latest Covid Vaccine . Can you get them at the same time . Guest i absolutely think americans should get the annual flu shot and updated Covid Vaccine. As well as, if you are over the age of 65, contact your Health Care Provider and see if the vaccine for rsv is something you ought to have too particularly if you have a live chronic diseases. I can tell you i have had my flu shot already. I have had my rsv shot. I am over age 65. Again, as soon as i can, i am going to get the updated Covid Vaccine as well. And you can get them at the same time, one in each arm. The flu shot and the covid shot. Host what are your concerns about the rise of flu, rsv, and covid as we head into fall . Guest as they said, it is respiratory season. Fall and winter. So we are going indoors more and we are going to be around each other more. We are sharing our germs more among each other. Kids are going back to school and sharing their respiratory germs with each other. So we are at a higher risk season. So, washing your hands, not coming to work when you are sick. If theres any way possible to do that. Wearing a mask in appropriate settings and being properly vaccinated is the bedrock of protection. That is the best thing for us to do to have a more healthy society. Host all right. Dr. Georges benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. Thank you for your time. Guest thank you. Cspans washington journal, our live forum involving you to discuss latest issues and government, politics and government across the country and washington. Coming up monday morning, Bloomberg Congress reporters zach cohen talks about the week ahead in congress including the september 30 government funding deadline and Associated Press National Politics reporter meg and are on the latest in the 2024 president ial race. The committee for responsible federal budget Senior Vice President and senior policy director mark on the report on the u. S. Deficits. Cspans washington journal. Join the conversation live at 7 00 eastern monday morning on cspan, cspan now or online at cspan. Org. Cspan is your unfiltered of governments. We are fund by these Television Companies and more including buckeye broadband. Buckeye broadband supports cspan as a public service, along with these other television provider, giving you a front row seat to democracy. The house and senate are in with both chambers continuing work on the spending bills to avoid a september 30 Government Shutdown deadline. On wednesday, attorney general Merrick Garland testifies examining the Justice Department under his adship. Transportion secretary pete jude Buttigieg Pete buttigieg testifies on his Department Policies and programs. Wednesday, Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell holds his Quarterly Press conference. 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