GENESIS: Good afternoon.

The COBVID 19 pandemic has been with us for almost two years.

We have had to deal with closures, isolate ourselves from other, parents have had to homeschool our children.

Some have had to work with more precautions, sometimes also from home, among many other measures.

Efforts to limit transmission, such as social distancing, use of facemasks and more frequent hand washing have helped.

But still, this disease has killed nearly 700,000 Americans.

Doctors and scientists saw a glimmer of hope with the approval of three vaccines, which are now available in the community.

This hope has been overshadowed because despite vaccination efforts, there are still many who choose not to get vaccinated and unfortunately false information is spreading and causing people to They hesitate to get a shot, and this misinformation is part of it.

The reason for the increase in cases in our region and across the country, it's no secret that the Hispanic community has been especially hard hit.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that Hispanics account for 27 percent of Cobby 19 cases, even though they make up only 18 percent of the U.S.

population.

Similarly, Hispanics have received fewer vaccines than their proportion of cases, according to CBS.

Why is this?

Today we'll have some experts with us to talk about this and also to dispel some of the major misconceptions about the nitos vaccine that experts say are preventing our community from receiving this vital protection against COBIT 19.

Joining me in the studio today is Dr.

Leonardo Claros, a surgeon with the Saint Louis Health Network.

Dr.

Claro has been studying COBIT 19 and vaccines and has been a champion for educating the community with us virtually.

Jorge Fernandez, founder and CEO of Latino Connection, who runs mobile immunization clinics throughout the state.

Gentlemen, thank you for joining me.

Before we begin I want to share some data the Pennsylvania Department of Health says 97 percent of COBIT deaths this year and 95 percent of hospitalizations are from unvaccinated people.

Doctor.

What doesn't this say about vaccines?

DR.

CLAROS: Genesis is unfortunate in the sense that vaccines do work.

What these statistics tell us is that vaccines do work to prevent serious cases or serious variants of Koby 19.

But unfortunately there is still a very high percentage in our population, not only in the Hispanic Latino community, in minorities, as you were saying, but in general in all of the United States that have not yet been vaccinated.

And unfortunately we're seeing that it's these people who are not being vaccinated that are increasing.

That's the large number we have of new admissions to the hospital, with much more serious variants of the disease, patients who need to be intubated.

It is true that some people with vaccines can still be contaminated, but they develop a milder form.

The symptoms are very few or none, but the people who are not vaccinated, these are the ones who develop, shall we say, the much more serious variant of the disease.

GENESIS: Now, George, when you first brought out your mobile vaccination van you saw a good amount of people showing up to get vaccinated.

But how has participation been lately?

GEORGE: Once again, thank you very much for the invitation.

I love to see that kind of programming for our communities.

The mobile unit which stands for Community Accessible, testing and education.

It is a pleasure for us to do this kind of work and to have the partnership that we have with the Pennsylvania Department of Health.

Lately people are not sure or if they are sure they already know they don't want to get the vaccine and they don't want that shot.

Most people are looking for advice from a doctor, sometimes even a pharmacist or family member.

Recently we went to a bodega, to a Corner Store with our mobile unit and it was a pleasure to meet the owners of that bodega who were not yet vaccinated and they, in their own words said: "It's our turn, COBIT has arrived in our family, we have lost not only a relative, not only a neighbor, not only a family member".

And when the hobbit comes to a person so, so close, like that, like that, that's like their wake up, like their wake up call, their wake up call.

And now, it's their turn to get the Covenant Nightline vaccine.

GENESIS: All right, let's go ahead and talk about some of the myths surrounding vaccines.

These myths were compiled as part of a survey conducted by the Ligeia Hispanic Center.

Evaded Myth number 1.

There are natural remedies for Koby 19 and they are effective.

That is our first myth.

What can you tell us about natural remedies and whether they are a good substitute for a vaccine?

DR.

CLAROS: Not at all.

Ah, let me make something clear, but emphatically there is no cure for 19.

We have mitigation treatments for COBI 19 symptoms that we use in hospitals under scientific, medical and controlled guidance.

But there is not that we know of, at least not now in any report in the world, a natural medicine or anything that is going to combat COBI 19.

So the most specific, the safest, the most effective strategy to treat this disease is the vaccine alone.

GENESIS: George, have you heard of many people in the community who rely on natural remedies?

GEORGE: Of course they do, especially the Dominican families, the Puerto Rican families who are already at that point, who make their own remedies from onions, from chili, from a cat's claw, from crocodile, this and that.

And many times also many people talk about the VapoRub.

But I also agree that the time has come when we have to start letting science lead us to science.

It tells us that the vaccine is the best way to protect against the Covenant.

GENESIS: Myth Number 2 If you have already recovered from Cobi 19, you don't need the vaccine.

George Let's start with you.

Do you hear this on your travels?

GEORGE: Of course if you listen to it every day for us we've already done over a hundred community events in wineries, in restaurants, in salons and we've also done over a hundred and some vaccine events and clinics in Community Based Settings in communities.

That is what we hear every day in our lives.

It is extremely important that we understand that after you have had COBIT, you can still get sick of COBIT one more time.

Even if you've had the vaccine, even if you've had the vaccine, you can still get sick from The Hobbit.

GENESIS: Dr.

Claro.

I want to ask you what you say to COBIT survivors who feel they have natural immunity and don't need to be vaccinated.

DR.

CLAROS: We talked about a matter in a sincere, honest way with them and explained to them that if the Cobby 19, the Gobi 19 virus behaves in the same way, a similar way of the viruses that we know from the last of the last 100 years.

Obviously there is a certain level of immunity that occurs once a person has recovered from an illness.

But as George specifically talked about many of these people, sometimes the level of immunity can drop and allow us to become re-contaminated.

If you remember, we have biological variants of the flu and other diseases that require annual booster doses.

We have to increase, we have to increase.

We have to improve our immunity level.

And the same goes for mobile phones.

The fact that a person has been contaminated with HIV, has recovered, may not have died, does not mean that he or she is completely immune.

They can become contaminated and especially now that we are seeing an increase with COBIT variants.

The risk is even greater.

GENESIS: This next myth I have heard a lot Myth number 3 Cobby 19 vaccines can affect a woman's fertility?

Dr.

Claro.

Is there any evidence to support this claim?

DR.

CLAROS: None.

Unfortunately this is the same information.

Missing information, but very big.

I feel very sorry for him.

So many Hispanic women, minority women who come to see us in the clinic, in the hospital, mention this to me as one of the most important reasons for not getting vaccinated.

They tell me Doctor, the government wants to sterilize Hispanic women, African-American women, because they don't want us to increase the population.

We are making an upturn and they don't want us to increase in numbers in the population and that's why they are making us vaccinate.

And I explain that there is absolutely no evidence that vaccines cause sterility.

What's more.

Hundreds of thousands of professionals, doctors, women, even pregnant women, have received the vaccines and we have extrapolated a lot of the scientific information based on these brave women who have received the vaccine.

If physicians and doctors in the medical community are getting vaccinated.

Why should we doubt that we are trying to sterilize women?

There is no scientific evidence that this is the case.

GENESIS: And for women who are pregnant or breastfeeding, it's dangerous.

DR.

CLAROS: No, as I was saying, we have approximately the last one, the last one, and there were more or less 15 thousand women, generally health professionals, not only doctors, nurses, technicians, technologists who, being pregnant, voluntarily put themselves in the study of vaccines to prove that this was safe.

So so far, as I say, we don't have any evidence that this has any problems for pregnant women, for breastfeeding, or even for children.

GENESIS: George, I would like to know what your response is to hearing this myth in your travels.

GEORGE: Our answer is always to the women and the people who ask us this type of question, sometimes it is a mother or a father asking for a, for a young person, because sometimes young people and sometimes even adults do not feel comfortable with having these types of questions and conversations in public with people they sometimes don't even know.

We always recommend to the person that they seek out a person that they trust, whether it's their primary care doctor, whether it's a doctor with a closer or family resource, or a community resource recommended by a neighbor, because it's very intimate conversations and very intimate conversations.

They are important to have with people with a resource they trust.

We see this a lot.

We have reached over 25,000 plus people across the state of Pennsylvania through our events and through our mobile unit.

And sometimes these conversations are extremely important and have to happen in a setting, in a space that is a little more intimate and sometimes not such an open community space.

GENESIS: George We're staying with you for this next minute.

COBIT 19 vaccines are dangerous and can alter your DNA.

What do you think?

GEORGE: In my humble opinion, the answer is clear that it is not a myth, it is highly incorrect, it is a myth that has been around in these communities for a long time, long before the young Einstein's vaccine, sometimes with other vaccines that already exist in our world.

It is a common myth that any type of vaccine is talked about.

I think the time has come and the time has come for us to start going with the science as you shared at the beginning of the program, over 700,000 Americans have died from young Einstein and the science is definitely telling us that we have to start going with the science and that the vaccine against the in China is the only way and the most effective way to take care of ourselves and protect ourselves against the Covenant.

GENESIS: Doctor, let's speak clearly here.

Is it true that these vaccines are altering our DNA?

DR.

CLAROS: Not at all.

Genesis I fully agree with what George just said.

Unfortunately it has been a myth that has been propagated in a way, but very responsibly, in a false way.

It is a fallacy to say that vaccines alter DNA.

I think the problem is that the two vaccines that have been approved in the United States, that have been developed in record time because they put a tremendous international effort into it.

They have been developed with a technology, but really cutting edge, with the m rna messenger.

Many people when they hear messenger RNA automatically associate it with DNA or DNA which is, let's say, the information or genetic material between the nuclei of cells.

I don't want to get into very, very technical things, but the RNA is just a little genetic code that is introduced with the vaccine that tells our cells that they have to produce a certain type of antibody against a very specific fraction of the virus.

So it is impossible to get the disease with NAM vaccines.

Historically, vaccines were attenuated viruses, they were introducing us to viruses that could not produce infection and our system produced antibodies and defenses against that virus and we were protected.

The technology with these new vaccines is so incredible that now we only put a little bit of information.

A small part of the genetic code is exposed to the cells.

The cells recognize it, produce antibodies, we have no infection and in a matter of days that genetic material is completely denatured.

It leaves, it does not stay in the cells, it is not incorporated in the DNA, it is not in the nucleus.

So this thing that they say that it's altering our fertility, it's altering our core and our genetic information is totally false.

The third vaccine does not have MRN, it is more of an attenuated virus, not the COBIT virus, but of a DNA or virus.

So none of the three causes disease, none of the three alters genetic material.

We have to stop spreading these falsehoods because it is totally wrong.

GENESIS: Thank you, Doctor.

The next myth Cobby 19 vaccines may have an adverse effect on children's health.

Doctor, we have been administering vaccines to children over the age of 12.

Have we seen any evidence of these adverse effects caused by the injection?

DR.

CLAROS: None to date have been administered, but hundreds of millions of vaccines we have to eighty-three million people fully vaccinated with the two doses fully vaccinated in the United States since we started.

That's about 55 percent of the population in the United States.

Since we started vaccinating children, we've vaccinated almost 64 percent of people over the age of 12.

Unfortunately, only 40 percent of these children have received their vaccinations.

If we extrapolate the numbers and the other people we have 2.3 billion people vaccinated in the world, we don't have any adverse or nefarious reports of vaccines in children.

There are some adverse effects, muscle aches, fevers, symptoms that we have common like the flu or like a common cold, but greater than that.

There have been no adverse reports in children.

A lot of people come to me and say Doctor, people are dying with heart attacks, they have clotting problems, they've died with bleeding, or they've collapsed after the vaccine.

These things are totally isolated incidents and if you put it on the epidemiological side one, two, three, four, five or six cases out of 2.3 billion people vaccinated.

This is really, shall we say, negative.

In other words, it does not represent a serious health risk at all.

GENESIS: George, I want to ask you on your travels around the state.

Have many families come in with their children or with questions about vaccinating their children?

GEORGE: And to see those kinds of questions and to see that kind of action from family members, fathers, mothers, sometimes even grandparents, brothers, sisters, bringing their little brothers and sisters, sometimes even neighbors, bringing other neighbors.

That is the kind of action and the kind of love and action that we want to see in our community events and in our outreach through our mobile unit.

Here is the mobile unit behind me as you can see today we gave the whole team a break and were able to reflect and learn about the new changes that are happening with the CDC.

But if that's the kind of action and questions we're seeing in our community.

As the doctor said, those are the most frequent types of symptoms, which are also the symptoms that happen with any other vaccine.

What I want to make clear is that every year I get the influenza vaccine, I suffer from asthma, my family suffers from diabetes, hypertension, high blood pressure and the symptoms that I had with the young ningin vaccine are exactly the symptoms that I have had every year since I was a child with my influenza vaccine.

GENESIS: This next myth I have heard not only in the Hispanic community, but in every community in the United States.

What is the vaccines against?

19 contain a microchip or tracker that will allow the government to spy on us.

Doctor, is this real?

Is this really something we hear from the community?

DR.

CLAROS: No, that's not true, not at all.

I've listened to it a lot.

I've also done a little bit of research on some of the information panels that we had had this roundtable discussion.

And I think it comes from the following in an effort to try to keep an adequate, reliable, accurate count of people who are being vaccinated, one company was developing a syringe that had a microchip that indicated that when a person was vaccinated, the syringe gave the information to the computer that the dose had been administered.

If you think about some places where it's hard to keep an adequate count of unvaccinated people, that.

That bit of technology could help.

Unfortunately it has been misrepresented in a way that microchips are being injected into the vaccine.

First, there is no such technology, we don't have a microchip, a nanotechnology that you can inject into a vaccine.

And then after we've once again been 187 million people in the United States, none of them are being monitored.

2.3 billion people worldwide.

I mean, this is really a way of perpetuating the distrust that some people have and are exploiting.

Unfortunately, the naivety and ignorance of others.

There is no money data that says this is true.

So let's stop doubting.

Let's trust the people who are watching over our health and vaccination.

Unless once again, the only way we're going to get out of this of this pandemic.

GENESIS: George, I'd like to ask you, have you been all over the state?

How frequent is that myth when you go to talk to people?

GEORGE: It is one of the most frequently heard.

It's gotten to the point where the very people who see us and who hear us are laughing with us, where our staff members and our Community Health Workers, our health promoters are telling Miss or Mr.

Sir, but do you think the government has the time to track you or me?

I mean, it's gotten to the point where we're laughing ourselves and the same people in the community are starting to laugh with us.

Indeed, it is not true.

The Government is not entering into a chip of any system to track through this Covenant vaccine or with any type of vaccine outside of what is Copy Machine as well.

GENESIS: But I imagine it's also more dangerous for undocumented communities as well, right, George, that maybe they hear this and they're afraid.

GEORGE: And so, through our of our partnership and partnership with the Health Department, people who come to Kate's mobile unit if they don't have an address or a phone number, or they have that information and they don't want to share it for themselves, feel like they're protecting themselves a little bit more.

There is no need for that information at Kate's and our community health events and our other mobile units that we are operating throughout the state.

We don't even ask for any kind of identification.

We just ask for your name, phone number if you have it, address if you have it and want to share it.

And your date of birth is the only critical information we ask for in our registration information.

GENESIS: Thank you both so much for sharing your knowledge and experience.

Below we would like to share messages from community leaders.

Getting vaccinated is an act of responsibility, getting vaccinated against HIV 19 is an act of love that salutes Alpha Lopez.

I was going with him to protect My family, to protect me and my community.

Vaccine te?

SPEAKER4: I imagined vaccine.

No, we are not here to protect our students and our community.

I vaccinate to protect my patients.

Vaccines, vaccines.

GENESIS: We are now joined by Victoria Montero, who is the executive director of the Lively Hispanic Center.

Victoria, you are doing everything you can to get the vaccine into the arms of the Hispanic community.

What progress has been made SPEAKER5: Since the beginning of this year?

The Hispanic Center has been working to bring the vaccine to the community.

We have collaborated with local hospitals, with local Latino Connections pharmacies and have brought the vaccine to the community to this day.

The Hispanic Center vaccinated more than 1600 people, in collaboration with different local organizations.

We have made sure that the Latino community knows that the vaccine is free, that the vaccine is now available in many, many more places.

At the beginning, when the vaccine became available to the community.

The Latino community did not have access to a computer.

They didn't know what to call a hospital.

They did not speak the language to communicate and the Hispanic center has worked with many community members to assure them that the vaccine is available to the community.

GENESIS: With the nature of certain jobs.

It could be an obstacle for some to get vaccinated and it may be difficult to take time off, to get someone to take you to get vaccinated.

What is the Hispanic Center doing about this?

SPEAKER5: There have been many, many obstacles for Latinos to get vaccinated.

The jobs, the language, the transportation, the vaccine myths.

We have been working now.

At the beginning, when the vaccine first became available, 200, 300 people would come to a clinic that we did today at 8:30 pm.

But what we are doing is bringing the vaccine to the community, not waiting for the community to come to us.

For example, in the next few weeks we will be working with Latino Connections and other community organizations to take the vaccine to neighborhoods next to a bodega to a bodega ready in Payment Arlington and listening to where the vaccine is most needed, hearing from the community where the vaccine is wanted, they want it, but they have it available.

GENESIS: Thank you so much Victoria for all the work you are doing.

Thank you.

I want to thank Dr.

Leonardo Claros and Jorge Fernandez also for participating today and the work they are still doing.

And thanks to all of you for being with us.

There is a lot of information that is partly correct and partly incorrect.

We hope this has helped you to distinguish between the two.

For more information, there are resources in Spanish on the Pennsylvania Department of Health website.

If you would like more local information or to get vaccinated, you can contact the Ligeia Hispanic Center.

I evaded.

Stay healthy and stay healthy.

Good evening.