neither the el paso medical society its members nor pbs el paso shall be responsible for the views opinions or facts expressed by the panelists on this television program please consult your doctor [Music] we are two and a half years into covid19 here are some uh answers that we're going to give you tonight about a lot of myths that are circling around vaccines still there are boosters there's still the flu vaccine that we're not letting go of quite yet and this is a special program that specifically addresses why there may be some hesitancy of vaccines specifically in people of color covet 19 the delta variant the omnichrome variant the ba2 omniprompt some variant etc etc etc and i'm sure there's going to be a lot more that still comes around but we want to kind of talk about what is the new normal what does that mean what can we expect and what can we best do for ourselves to address our health going forward and i say going forward i'm not just talking about this year but the next decade the two decades coming up it's a science and we all know that and although we do wish it would all go faster as far as what's happening with what variants and how are we getting boosted and is this all going to work we need to respect that this is a science and it's still new and there are studies that are still constantly being done on every single aspect of this it takes a bit of time to get the answers again that's where we're asking for patients the medical community is asking for patients and it takes a bit of trust with experts in this area and dr abanda and i that specifically we're going to talk about quite a bit uh this evening there are some questions a lot of them and this is the show to ask your questions it's a great time for you to call in and ask those questions we have zaid zak lee hanging out with us and he is going to be taking your calls at the number of eight eight one zero zero one three uh he is a uh volunteer with the texas tech palo foster school of medicine and again we want to say thank you to the el paso county medical society because they've been bringing the show to you for many many months i'm kathryn many many years do i say months months yes but also 25 plus years i'm katherine berg and you are watching the el paso physician it's interesting is i'll have some of these doctors on the show and yeah they're doctors but i've known them for 20 years we've been doing the show for 20 years you know he talks about farts and he talks about diarrhea and he talks about all kinds of things that nobody wants to talk about and that's what's great about the show because you get to hear those things on the show and go i'm not the only one it's great see you'll pass the physician [Music] hello this is a special program we're going to be talking about covet 19. i know that's not new uh we're going to talk a little bit about the flu but we're going to talk about people of color and how the virus affects them but also how vaccine hesitancy affects this entire area so i'd like for you to join me in welcoming and i love your name this is dr mello banda and she is great we've been having a lot of conversations already before the show and i do want to give a little bit of background of where you're from because you are globally aware of a lot of what we're going to be speaking about this evening and i think it's nice for our audience to be aware of that uh yours from zambia which is south central africa and then you went to school in grenada and then you somehow landed in new york and then somehow landed in oklahoma and now you're here so thank you for joining us thank you for having me catherine you're very welcome you specialize in family medicine and i think for some people that seems like such a broad term but if you could to our audience kind of explain what you do all day every day so that as we're talking and as people start asking questions they're like okay well dr banda has kind of heard this from patients and she's heard this from schoolmates she's heard this from different places that you study around the world so in family medicine how would you describe that specialty well it's a very broad specialty we take care of newborns to the very elderly so we are we do deliveries we're in the hospital taking care of patients and we're in our offices seeing patients for appointments so very broad spectrum um really interesting field in the last several years i'd imagine it's just been crazy because you do covet affects everybody right it affects every age it affects every walk of life and so it's great that that's your specialty because we are looking at so many of those questions right now so when covet hit and again it's it's been two and a half years um actually of these places where were you at that time were you in new york at that time i was in oklahoma you had oklahoma at that time yes so talk to me about just in general what you were doing when covid hit and how that changed your life as a doctor okay i was in residency i believe um my third year my last my final year of residency during that time so everything was brand new um as residents at the time we were actually taken out of rotations with patients who had coveted 19 in the hospital and our attendings would actually go in to see the patients just because nobody knew much of what was going on at the time and so it was a scary time as a physician and as just a normal person and obviously having a family at home you don't want to take anything back to them so yeah it was a interesting time crazy yes so as a resident if you can describe to me some of the the residents that weren't sick that did get to kind of hang out and the reason i'm asking this is that i think so many people at home nor myself even though we get to do these interviews we don't really get to see it unless we have someone in our family that's in the medical field that's on the front lines that is right there in front of everyone so just having conversations with your colleagues with other students with doctors that have been around for 50 years and doctors that are brand new um how were some of the the mentors that you had around you how were they helping you out with how this was all folding out right um there was lots of support from my attending physicians at the time we would gather together at least once a week to listen to updates from the cdc together and then we would they would answer questions that we may have had at the time which is really good and then they would check in on our wellness as well mentally just to make sure everybody was still doing good despite everything that was going on so when you what was your first uh several cases where you knew okay this is something that is going to be hanging out for a while and it's not going to go away and if you can just describe some case studies that you were involved with obviously there's no names no anything but you know the severity of what was happening because there was a while there that people thought oh this is this is going to go away it's you know i don't want to use words that will use the media but there was an idea for a while that it's just uh it's just a little thing right um the reason again i'm asking that is the severity of that and it's not just in el paso again you were in oklahoma you were in new york you were in grenada you were in africa i know you weren't there during the covet time but what were some of those cases like right no just the rate of death itself during that time was a big wake-up call here in the united states and i can speak about even back home where i'm from in zambia africa um i was obviously not there to experience it personally but i would get phone calls and updates the death rates were just incredible and at that time we unfortunately didn't have you know enough vaccines in the country so and we really do have limited resources in terms of health care so the death rate back there was really high and even here in america so just seeing that was an eye opener seeing you know the refrigerator is placed outside of the hospital it was just a very sad you know heavy time yeah yeah and we're here specifically today because we do want to talk about people of color and just disproportionately how the the virus hit and then also later on too when it comes to vaccines so i have a couple of statistics here and i know uh gracie we kind of practice this a little bit but what i'd like to do gracie if we can go to the third slide that you have which would be the el paso demographics because i want to start out in el paso because that's what we're most familiar with and then we're going to go around from there but the demographics here in el paso um horizon city we've got 22 000 as a population in el paso we have 800 some odd population again you can read it there on screen as i am to state of texas 29 million in united states 300 million and then this is where the breakdown is uh so people of color hispanic or latino in horizon city 89 el paso county 82 state of texas 39 so there's a big difference there we all know this already but it's just nice to actually see it on paper and the numbers as we're speaking about this in a specific format this evening black american for horizon city 3.5 black american in el paso 4.0 and then state of texas 12.9 so that again is a different type of a disparity in the united states 13.4 and what i'd like to do uh dr banda is just historically we've got some other graphs that we can look at too but just historically the way that treatments i'm going to see how i actually had that question worded originally the way that uh covet has affected african americans and i know in el paso we have a higher looking of hispanics we have a higher population of hispanics but you and your world coming from africa studying in different areas african-american populations i know there's not a big population here in america or in el paso but how have you seen that specifically as a person black american person somebody from africa again i'm repeating myself but you also see hispanics when you're in el paso and there's a different population as i'm giving these when you're in new york those are all very different in oklahoma those are all very different so just from your perspective and viewpoint right um why is it that there are disparities in different communities i um that's a really it's a question it's hard for me to ask is i don't know exactly how to balance the question yes um well just going back i want to talk first about you know vaccines and how people especially african americans are very hesitant to get to getting vaccines african-americans actually have one of the lowest the lowest vaccination rates among the ethnic groups about five percent i'm talking about the first dose of the primary series of the covet vaccine we have five percent who are black people compared with 60 who are white people so we ask ourselves why like why this disparity so looking back there has been institutional racism and you know historical inequities and health and these have played a role in vaccine hesitancy we can look back specifically at the tuskegee case or the henrietta lacks case you know what let's talk about that because i don't think a lot of people know about that yeah so let's do talk about that really quick right so just a quick summary the tuskegee case was about african-american men at the time who had syphilis were put into a study and there were promised medication for the syphilis which they did not get at the time and as a result of that um led to death and you know severe medical complications and um and do you remember what year that was oh i can't put my head okay in the 50s yeah in the 50s 60s so it was it was again this is a historical viewpoint of what you're going back to and referring to yes okay and and i want to say that henrietta lacks case was around the 1920s but this was a woman henrietta lacks who had cervical cancer at the time and her cells were taken from her but without any consent and her cells were actually used in research and i believe are still being used in research so today that brings up a big ethical dilemma so looking back at cases like this um the people's color are could be hesitant at getting the vaccine as it's so new on the market other reasons could be a lack of diversity among health care workers and also substandard services and care afforded to patients um who may be living with poverty or just uh are part of the people of color community yeah and i was reading to uh to prepare for this program we were talking about uh black americans are over represented in essential worker positions yes um so in the beginning of covid 19 with the essential workers there is more exposure to the to the black community um and if we can talk a little bit about that and you can i can i can i have fun with you yes because this is the way i roll this is dr banda's notebook these are my notes i love people that do this i do you're sick get it because i was going through i love so all of these and three because sometimes they just sit there and they just talk through but i'm like i need my cheat sheets to go through right thank you um so it kind of goes to so again essential workers on the front line yes exposure exposure exposure and from there too because we were seeing in the news just people that are watching tv or listening to the radio are like well why are there so many more african americans or hispanic or just simply put and all of that people of color that are getting coveted other than other representation right uh i'm not i'm trying to say this correctly but essential workers let's go with that because there we didn't know is there a predisposition physically to somebody is there a gene difference is there a dna difference what is it but then as time was going on it's like well hold on this is where this group of people is working and this is where this group of people is working right so that's where i'm going even though it took me a really long time to get there goodness you got there all right so when it comes to that like how has the african-american community be been affected by coven 19. um as we already know like you've pointed out the people of color community experienced a disproportionate number of cases of coven 19 compared to other communities some statistics like taken from march 2020 through may 2020 um for black americans showed actually that the average weekly rate per 100 000 was about 36 cases about 16 hospitalizations and about three deaths so um some driving factors for that were again african americans make up most of the essential workers okay yes so they were on the front line and being exposed but also pre-existing structural and uh social inequities you know and i want to talk about social inequities because we have that in again all the places that you've lived and then coming from again from africa then to granada and then to america and again america is not just one place i mean it's very different in new york than it is in el paso than it is oklahoma it is um and again i know these are we can spend 20 days on this i'm trying to cram it all in to give a picture of what we're talking about so the despair disparities in new york compared to el paso um what would you say that was like i would say in terms of social inequities you mean [Music] i would say it's pretty much um it would be pretty much the same okay yeah in comparison to here in el paso so far uh being here okay yeah and in africa i know you weren't there during covid but with family and just listening to everybody there you said there are fewer resources yes um in general kind of compare that with what was happening in america at that time um well access to care access to any kind of health care whether is covet or something else firstly is difficult and then once you get once you get seen by somebody it's very hard to seek let me say specialized care so specialists are very limited you be put on a wait list for years even you know before you are able to see somebody unless you have the money to exactly pay for it out of your pocket and we don't have medical insurance back home so it's self pay out of pocket or nothing and so social inequities uh going then that i feel like that's a perfect transfer to there and the way that federal and state governments help out with that the way maybe public health organizations if it's county health if it's city health how have you found that to be and i'm asking for el paso because i don't know where else to ask about right now right but just in general with all this in mind how do you think that el paso is doing on that front so today um the rates of vaccination are actually looking at the african-american community compared to the rest of the community the rates of vaccination are on par with other ethnic groups so that's great and that's because of efforts you know from different institutions from private to public to religious institutions kind of advocating um for this cause okay yeah so that's where you see the major change and do you see that have been happening in the last decade last two decades last five years uh how how would you rate that i think that's been happening over the last decade probably more but yeah okay and so here's that the next question where do you foresee that going the inequities do you see that balancing out more and more as we go further definitely um with inclusion even with inclusion of more people of color in the medical field maybe that makes the general public more comfortable they seek out care just because they feel like they have somebody in the field who is who's been where they have been and who understands them more so definitely i see things improving yeah like we were saying here uh there's a better uh better representation of diversity in the health care practitioners yes which is something that is more and more throughout the years too and i'd like to kind of go away from that for a little while and then talk specifically about you know all these variants i'm going to go back to the beginning of when we were talking so i wanted to make sure that we got that in because i know that questions from the audience are going to start pounding in really quick and so here come the questions about vaccines um we were talking about hesitancy and in the hispanic community we had quite a bit of hesitancy in the beginning as well el paso has turned out to have one of the higher vaccine rates um in the nation and if you can speak specifically to that i would love for you to do that at this point because we're so proud of ourselves right now right there is a big effort a lot of the hospital i mean all the hospitals got together um hospitals compete right but when it came to this they didn't it was time to make sure that we were doing well definitely um so brag about el paso if you could on how we're doing with our rates with vaccines definitely um so in the beginning of the pandemic el paso was one of the places that was hit hard uh with the conditions actually yes right before i moved here to el paso so since then healthcare organizations and just other organizations uh took it upon themselves to increase the number of vaccines available to the community and they went out as far as opening sites outside of the pharmacy or health care related places for people to easily access vaccines without many questions asked in terms of insurance or so people didn't need to worry about paying for the vaccine and this is where i like that word of inequity you know we're trying to make things more equal at that point so it really was and i loved how you said well there weren't a lot of questions it's like you need a vaccine we're going to give you one right just tell us who you are so you're in the system so if there's a way that we can track you going forward exactly um and i thought that was to me that was impressive first i was like man that's happening fast it was almost scary but at the same time and it was time when for example i'm 55s and i had no underlying condition so i felt like it's going to take me forever to be able to get mine um but when you were ready there are places to go um and on that note we're about a year and a half a little bit a little bit more than a year out of the first vaccines how do you see i know that there's been a drop there was the first vaccine that was pretty high second vaccine pretty high but not as high boosters it's kind of dropped off quite a bit now that we are in the area of the second booster maybe talk us through that of what people's thought processes are um is it like oh it'd go away it's not as important i'd love to hear as a family practitioner definitely what your patients say yes uh yeah and talking to my patients about the code i think right most of them have received you know the primary series but a lot have not received the booster and i asked why for some of them it's because they were really they had side effects from the initial primary vaccine and they don't want to experience that again and they feel like if i have the primary series i don't really need a booster and even after the primary series a lot of patients have still gotten covered so that is another um a comforting thing to them in the sense that i now have immunity because i have gotten covered um oh there's a good transition here right yeah let's so let's do talk about that um we've done i don't know probably a six seven eight shows right now um during covid about covid about immunity and if you can explain why we have reactions to the vaccine it's a good thing right it's a good thing it is so if we can explain to the audience why it's good you're going to get the covet vaccine which means you get a little bit of covet but not like crazy covid right your body reacts to it which is good and if you can explain as a doctor why is that good right so reaction to a vaccine just means your body is building the immunity so once you get something foreign in your body your body sells like hey you know what is what is going on you know so the defense of your body is now awoken which is your you know white cells they're different kind of white cells and they start to try to get rid of this new thing that's in your body and that's um in the sense what builds your immune system so in the process of these white cells fighting off this foreign thing in your body you develop the antibodies you need to fight off a real covet infection exactly i'm glad that you explained that and i know earlier in the program when we were doing the opening statement we were talking about again first there was just cobin 19. then there was the delta variant then there was omnichrome and then the ba2 um and there may be other ones coming about right um and the reason i'm bringing this up is that okay now with the booster we're four vaccines in over the last year-ish year and a half and i know there's no crystal ball just like we said there's it's a science we're trying to figure out as we go um but it's also you know studied before we throw it out there but with covid it's not going to go away it's going to change and mutate and do this and that and the other um it tends to be getting weaker and weaker which is great but if you could describe why it's still important to when it's your time to get a booster when it does come time for flu season etc etc going forward this is like the golden hour of the show the golden five minutes like why do we keep needing to get these vaccines what is our body doing what is the virus doing that makes us need to get the vaccine right definitely so the virus i would say the virus likes to change clothes so i like to wear saying it right yes likes to wear a new coat every time it comes to a new potential host so our body will recognize the coats that it's seen before so if the virus comes and it's wearing a different coat that we've never seen before it's easier for the virus to attack more cells of our body and if more cells are damaged and destroyed um you have more severe symptoms and complications from covet even though you've previously gotten vaccinated or boosted the vaccine was against a certain kind of dress and so and the booster so um it is important to keep up with the covet vaccine just like we keep up with the flu vaccinations exactly and you know that's actually a good point i don't know if people know that the flu vaccine is a little bit different every year so this is a great time to talk about that too because even though we're talking about covid and mutating and changing the flu just influenza changes and mutates and it's a little bit different every year that's why people have to get a new flu vaccine every year exactly um and if there's anything that i'm saying that's wrong or off let me know because this is all the stuff that i was learning as we were going through this too i am a believer in vaccines always happen and some of my friends are like well i've never had the flu vaccine because it gives me the flu which is also why i'm glad we talked about these side effects yes if you do get sick for a day or two and you get the sniffles and your body reacts to it it means your body's doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing exactly um when we're looking at people who are now three vaccines in maybe four vaccines and when i say vaccine specifically on covid they the fourth vaccine is available but there are people that are in the position of you know what i've already had three of these pumped into me i'm just going to wait a while and and these are people past the age of 50 but not in a category where it would be dangerous for them not to is there any specific advice on that is there advice in if the fourth one one's available take it now or you can wait a couple of months still until we start getting in the flu season what are your patients asking you right and what are your you know you and your colleagues right because i know you're getting asked this all day every day in the grocery store you know wherever you happen to be standing there like hey dr banda how is this working so what's your answer to them well yeah i would say definitely would recommend as soon as you can get the next available booster do get it because like we know you mentioned earlier that the new variants are getting weaker so they're becoming less virulent but cases are climbing back up we're not seeing as many patients in the hospital because you know of our vaccination rates and probably the virus is less virulent but we still want to be protected especially if we still want to you know enjoy time with our family and not worry about oh do i have covet or am i going to give somebody or get covered myself so it allows us a kind of a sense of peace of mind to get back to what we call normal before the pandemic right so definitely do go for that booster if you have the chance to and i'd love for you to talk about uh just case studies people who again have no underlying conditions had covet it was relatively mild but it just kind of lingers and lingers and lingers um and i want to bring that up too because people think well again i'm 50 i'm in great shape i've had my three i'm going to wait a while but then maybe there's that magic sub-variant that for whatever reason your system doesn't like that one right and there's a lingering out there and go to town on the lingers that you've seen and just responses that you've heard from patients that are like i wish i had taken this more seriously definitely so that's the long covet what are you going to call it yeah even if it's long mild cold yes exactly so like i still can't breathe as well as i did prior to this cove but even though they're not really laboring or really not able to go to work or what have you exactly um but those those issues as well right so that will happen it doesn't matter if you had a mild covet it doesn't matter if you were you know moderate or in the hospital anybody who's had covet before asymptomatic anybody who's had coveted before could have what we call long coveted symptoms and these are symptoms that either linger on from an initial infection um you know they stay more than four weeks or they appear suddenly four weeks after an initial covet infection even when you didn't have symptoms so these can be anything from you know shortness of breath to cough to you know pain joint pain fatigue you can even have like some um psychological conditions depression anxiety uh ptsd um so all these things can happen and we don't know how long they last for but what we know for certain studies have shown that actually getting vaccinated uh reduces your chances of getting long covet um even if you got sick with covet right so and staying up i would like you to repeat that if you don't mind uh i feel that my mic's kind of scratching i just make sure it's still in the right place um but if you could repeat the uh people that have had covid that they think okay i don't need to get the new vaccine or a booster but they still do again those other variants there yeah i want you just to repeat what you said because i think that's so vitally important that people aren't getting it's like well i had it so i'm immune it's gone it's it's gone it's not and maybe we can talk about like we were talking about the flu the mutations and the way things change right it's not gone so you're still at risk of getting long covered if you are not up to date with your vaccinations and that includes the most recent booster so i highly encourage everybody to go out there and get get boosted get vaccinated get boosted so here's and this is again global looking and we may not have an answer for this yet so we are now on our fourth booster and um i could be wrong but did that i guess about two months ago is when people who had underlying conditions were available to get that right so we're about two months out of the fourth booster and in your mind and or what you see in the medical community in the research community what might you see going forward is there booster number five or third booster uh coming up maybe at the beginning of the year and if you don't have the answer that's fine or again there's a disclaimer at the beginning of the show yes that says we're doing the best that we can to answer what we know right um and again it's all changing constantly yes so i'm just asking as someone who's in the field and around it all day every day how often do you see let's say the next one and then from there i think we're going to find a lot more like it's going to be a regular yearly flu vaccine maybe flu and covid combination vaccine what are your thoughts on that yes so that's a good question catherine i think just like the flu you know it started as a pandemic and now we're here today and we need to get our flu shots every flu season and so the more we learn about covid we're gonna learn about when it's most prevalent is it there throughout the year are we gonna have to develop a vaccine that's um his potency is gonna last for the whole year you know or is it going to be a seasonal thing um so for the future i do anticipate we will be getting yes a year at least a yearly cova vaccine if if not more okay yeah and this next one um and in just maybe some of the circles that i'm in i think this next one will probably be around february march when we see that fifth one kicking in of when those of at-risk populations it's going to be available and then from there um and again i'm just i'm just repeating what i've read and and this is something too and this is i should talk about this regarding getting your information and as a doctor we kind of joke about dr google yes you know dr google's not he's not certified he's not peer reviewed dr google's out there but um if there's a website you want to go to see if you can have dot org behind there or dot edu dot org means it's an organization which means it's not a for-profit uh place for you to get your information or edu is an educational institution yes um in general i would love to hear your advice to the audience of if they're really looking for information and let's say they missed half of the show if they're looking for information where should they go to get true real information not that freaks them out and it's somebody else just saying oh i had this and i had that but easy accessible okay um i think i would say medscape midscape would be a good one i don't know that one i like that medscape dot uh or just i would say it's dot org but netscape.org most likely that's what i'm going to fly for the next one okay yes yes um i have up to date uh but that would be like a subscription you know if you want to get more information about what you're looking for okay up to date is always a good source as well i think i may have uh some here from other shows so the ones in texas specifically here is the department of we have dshs.txt coronavirus okay yeah so that's a good one too it's the department of dshs health sciences not sure what that is but dshs.texas.gov and then slash coronavirus and then that might be a place you can go to then so gov is one of those edu dot org and gov cdc is always a good one to go to so that's cdc.gov and then from there usually you can find a search engine but usually a backslash and then throw in the word coronavirus or you can put in sub-variants etc and then the world health organization which is who w-h-o and that is dot int on that one so sometimes it's just nice to have that and of course with el paso um we've got ep strong as well so that always has information on what's going on here um and on that note uh for vaccinations say people who are getting the fifth booster where can they go at this point for the fifth booster sure yeah um i would say pharmacies okay walgreens uh cvs but for most of them you would have to book an appointment online before you walk in um but yeah that's the fastest and easiest way i know okay and as far as infrared and if you haven't had your original vaccine yet either again the questions are it's free yes that's the biggest thing we need to say it's free um if you have insurance they do take your insurance information right because and that is good for you because you want the insurance companies to know that you are being diligent and and trying to get this done um but they're absolutely free and so please do that what are the ages now um i am not completely kept up on that so for the for the second booster where the application of ages at this point okay so you're talking about the fourth one okay the second yes the fourth one so forth and i should talk about what each one of them contains that's something too that's a question okay so go ahead so for the fourth one for ages it will be for the ages 5 to 17 we're looking at those people those children who have moderate or severe immune compromised conditions okay for example are suffering from cancer or or on any treatment that reduce their immunity for any reason and that's perfect and thank you for saying that we have slide number one gracie and that might kind of help us walk through some of what we're talking about here because some of the questions also come in with uh was it the pfizer shot first was it moderna and now that we're talking about boosters the joe johnson johnson doesn't have a booster approved yet so this might be something to talk through this as well so i don't know how good your eyes are my eyes are not that good but here's my cheat sheet if that helps um but it shows there the five through 11 years if you did get a pfizer and again these are biotech and that's do you want to go into what biotech is okay that gets to be too complicated uh for a short show but uh so those are the three doses at this point and then johnson johnson has the two doses for 18 and plus uh but again that's where johnson johnson doesn't have the booster shot right uh recommended yet and and for for someone who doesn't understand that do you have an easy way to explain that well it was it went through testing and i guess it was not approved yet um so i believe there's still some testing going on which again is something that we talked about earlier um this is where we need to have patients there is testing and they're not going to throw something out into the market that hasn't been tested that's why it took a whole year to get a vaccine right if they're throwing stuff into the market that isn't tested it would have been out there immediately and so uh that's important for for people to know um and it has just here on the doses too of how long you should weigh again you can get this on any of the websites that we show to and as you know the american heart association is underwriting this program and so the american heart association american cancer society a lot of the medical organizations non-profit organizations have coveted related information for example the american cancer society will be specific on covet vaccines any certain type of cancer that you have also very dependent on who your doctor is talking to your doctor and making sure that your healthcare provider walks you around that when it comes to that so um let's talk about since you are a family doctor let's talk about little ones okay and when i say little ones let's say 12 and under because they really are little yeah you know because i've got teenagers and they're not that little um but in the beginning of kovid it seemed like there was this false immunity or this false thought of immunity um and then as time started going it was the fact that kids are not immune children are not immune and then also too with testing it also was the idea of why has it taken so long to get a vaccine for little ones because again there's more testing right so when we're looking at children going to school all day every day mass no mass there's there's controversy there and that's one thing we don't want to talk about on the show is politics but again as a medical provider how are you advising families who have generations at home like that literally could have four generations at home there's great grandma grandma mom and dad and the kids and that's not uncommon especially in our hispanic community families really all live together so you're looking at some that may be immunocompromised some that are going to school every day and you know getting their five and six-year-old hands on everything and you know moving their nose and what are some of the questions you get and what advice do you give yeah so is it safe for my children to get the cova vaccine even if even if it's so new it's out there you know what are some of the side effects are there any serious side effects from the vaccine in this age group um what are some of the reactions after they get the vaccine those are some of the questions that a lot of parents have asked and like you mentioned um if you live in a household or even if you don't you just uh kids and with your parents or their elderly in the house there's somebody who's immune compromised you know we want to kind of achieve herd immunity for your family oh there's that word yeah let's talk about that um you know actually i think that means different things to different people i love that you're here so herd immune immunity what does that mean from a medical standpoint okay um yeah i'll just stop there because i could go into sub-variant areas too so what does that mean what does herd immunity mean from a medical standpoint right it will mean that the majority of the population that is eligible to get vaccinated has received the vaccine therefore the chances of spreading a certain disease or infection within that population is significantly lower compared to if the population that is eligible for the vaccine has not gotten the vaccination or is not where they're supposed to be with the vaccination rates and that leaves chance for more spread of the infection and complications right so here's a question and i didn't prep you for this and i didn't prep myself for this either but we are on the border we've got mexico right next to us and when the vaccines were first being rolled out there was talk about inequity there there was not vaccines all around for people were in the borders were closed at that time but for families that live on both sides um and i again i don't know this but do you know where we are in that world of mexico juarez vaccinations compared to el paso unfortunately i don't okay but that's a very good question it is and that's a question that i will ask um and you guys are welcome to to call the uh either call the uh el paso county medical society or somehow you can uh get a hold of us through here at facebook cause i will ask that question myself and i should have asked that before uh coming here because that would make me curious as we are um and on that note too again coming from africa uh studying in um nicaragua um is that where you were grenada no grenada yeah i was going to say studying there so i'm imagining you kind of follow different areas around the globe and how are people doing globally and and where are some of the disparities around the globe oh good question um so i'll speak about zambia because i have a personal attachment to that right so so far much better vaccination rates have improved they've been donations from like who and other organizations who have brought more vaccines into the country so the vaccination rates increased and more people went out to get vaccinated just seeing other family members either having severe covet or passing away from covid so the numbers have reduced significantly from the beginning um very nice of the pandemic and so the hesitancy idea in in say specifically where you were born where you grow up the hesitancy does that like you say does it go away as other families are also now taking that and there's a i forgot the the the joke of it but there's always one lady on the street and if that lady does it everyone on the street is going to do it if that lady says no nobody's going to do it so i feel like every neighborhood has that and when i say neighborhood every community has that maybe every city has that maybe every country has that right um and so is that how you see it kind of working with hesitancy so because i know we're looking at people of color specifically hesitancies why the hesitancies and i love the way you were talking about that is starting to little by little get better to where it's the inequities are starting to dissipate right definitely so yes um it's much better back home in zambia i would say even when other people saw other people get vaccinated they didn't want to get the vaccine because they were still scared about it being very new and you know complications from that but it had to take and this is very sad to say but it's the truth it had to take a lot of people you know to die from covid for the nation to actually wake up and say okay maybe i need to get this vaccine myself to protect me and the rest of the family um and it took us back in you know spanish flu times was that 1918 i think i'm wrong somebody correct me but um that was a good three-year turnaround until things got hurt immunity i guess um but that was mass there really wasn't a vaccine situation at that time either and it was a whole different world of research and trying to figure it all out um so when we're looking at this it's it's still again it's still a science that we're looking at globally i'm going to stop my questions for a minute because i know that you brought all kinds of stuff in your notebook and i want to see if there's anything that you'd really like to get across this evening that maybe we haven't talked about yet um if there are just some ideas or again whatever advice you get but this at this point on it's your show um because this this hour goes by so fast you know and we've got a whopping like 10 minutes to go yeah so whatever it is that you'd like to talk about uh before we wrap this up because it goes so fast right yeah well i would say just going back to the vaccine it's very important for you for your children for you know your friends if you're watching this show and you have friends who you know who have not received the covert vaccine to talk to them about getting it and if they're unsure to have them visit with their primary care doctor and discuss you know what are the risks and what are the benefits of getting this coveted vaccine which hopefully would encourage them to get it eventually but if you have children that are at the age that are eligible to receive it i highly recommend that you get them vaccinated as well it just gives you a sense of you know peace of mind when you send your kids off for now summer camp or whatever activities they have going on that you know they'll be safer they still might get covered but it might not be as serious as it would be if they did not get vaccinated i'm going to ask you to repeat that again because i just see i just find these little golden nuggets that you're saying you may still get covet so you know the idea the myth of well i'll get the vaccine but i know people have gotten the vaccine and still got coveted yeah but they're alive right and maybe they didn't go to the hospital and maybe and maybe and maybe and that's the whole thing about when we get the vaccine flu coveted whatever it is our body does react to it so yeah you may get sick for several days which means your body's working for it right um so i just again i just feel like the more that we can say that because a myth is out there i'm going to get the vaccine i'm going to get covered or i'm going to get sick and i don't want to deal with having a fever for a day or two i don't want to deal with being lethargic or tired for a day or two it's better than what better than getting those symptoms and having them last for months or ending up in the hospital and having a disability because of covet or even dying from covet so those short term symptoms of just sore throat cough you know they can go away within a few days if you have gotten vaccinated and again the beautiful thing is it means that your body's working yes so if anything thank your body for giving you a little bit of pain for a couple of days i have a question here from the audience um dr banda provides primary care at texas tech physicians at el paso at trans mountain when uh oh please say that when i'm wrapping up the show so that's what i'm saying that you provide uh thank you very much is that you patrick you're hilarious i love it there's another question here from the audience um and i'm not familiar with this but fda advisors back uh the nov novavax covid19 vaccine do you know what the and if you don't know what that is no sorry yes so that's fine um as a fourth option for you as adults i'm not familiar with that i know that was a question from the audience um but i am not familiar with that one either and um trying to see what this one is here so this is how we're we're doing life these days with covet in the old days i was actually joking with someone is that i'd have my kids or somebody else's kids would write down the questions behind the scenes they'd sneak them up to us but with covid we're keeping our distance i'm getting all the questions right now on uh my telephone but medscape medical news so thank you very much patsy slaughter sent this my way patsy slaughter is the director of the el paso county medical society and when she heard us talking about that she sent the information away so medscape if you just put that in the search engine there's all kinds of great information here meet the fda agents who who help out with different things but this is a really good website to go to and on that note i'm going to give out these websites once again one of them is dshs.texas.gov and again with all these once you get to the website you can go to the search engine and find out what specific issue you're looking for i know we're talking about coronavirus today flu but really any other issues that you have a question of you can put into that as well cdc that is a really nice website to see what's going on up to date what mandates are um and maybe you can talk a little bit about the role of the cdc because we hear about cdc on the news all the time we hear about world health organization on the news all the time what do those organizations do okay centers for disease and control when we have things like pandemic they're at the forefront trying to see what rules and regulations to put in place to keep people safe so you have researches and you have a physician all kinds of medical personnel just working together to safeguard the entire community against whatever infection is going on and then the world health organization is kind of similar but it's more expansive it it looks at different places around the globe and you know what i want to see if and this is editorial what i'm going to say um so i hope it's not bad but i think that we need to give a break to both of these organizations because the beginning of the show i said again this is all new yeah and world health organization i get it that there is do this no you know what no do this no do this we're not sure and it confused the public fine we get that but at the same time take yourself out of your couch at home and be a person who works at the world health organization and they're all trying to do the best that they can with what they've got at any given time and at any given time again there's mutations and there's variants and things are moving around and um if we all just kind of sit back a little bit and give people a break i think we'd all just breathe a little bit better and i would love your take on that in general because you're probably getting shot at all the time too you're well is it mass day or is it not a mass day is it do we where in the airport do we not why do we have to wear them in this city and not in the other city right so what do you tell people when they ask you about that um i would say do what is safe for you i still say covet has not gone away it's still around um we can keep updated on the numbers in your community at that time so if the rates are high at that time you certainly wear a mask if you're going to places that are crowded for sure wear a mask if you're in the outdoors you know it's okay to not wear a mask because people have cloven and they don't have symptoms just because they're not coughing or don't look sick doesn't mean they don't have it and if you get it doesn't mean you won't have symptoms you might still so you just want to protect yourself and your family especially in tight spaces airports buses public transportation um i think of that is just and that's just me as a mom right when you're looking at the the school bus yeah you're looking at in any of those situations and anywhere there's a mom you thought okay if it's flu season what are you gonna do anyway so it's just it's just kind of stepping back even ten years ago right when our kids like i said their hands are on everything their hands are all over their mouth and their nose and they're they're eating this and they're eating that they're drinking this and that and the other just try to step back and re you know refrain from doing that um we have less than two minutes i want to give a couple of shout outs here again to the american cancer society for underwriting this program um a shout out to the county medical society to patsy slaughter specifically and elsa shapiro because they're watching and they're on the uh the case when it comes to medscape and the different different websites that we have and again the cdc is a website you can go to and also we had here medscape and uh who the world health organization so i always think of that as the w.h.o and zaid thank you so much for being here from zaid what year are you in school third year second year third year third year medical student and zaid's been here before and so i thank you so much for helping us man the phones and again this is our 25th anniversary of the el paso position um and we will uh be around for quite some time they're counting me down so i just want to say thank you dr panda thank you so much for being here and it's hard to do it all alone i'm katharine berg and you've been watching the el paso physician [Music] [Music] you