shall be responsible for the views opinions or facts expressed by the panelists on this television program please consult your doctor [Music] good evening well here we go again we're getting into the flu season and we're obviously dealing with a coveted crisis around the country the news is not all bad but we're here to talk tonight about the flu season and covet and how we avoid the twin democ we are of course live and we take call in questions all the time and we encourage you to please call into our show if you have any questions on this very very important topic the number is 881-013 again 881 we encourage you to call please this is a very very important and timely topic this evening's program is underwritten generously by the american heart association and we also want to thank the texas tech paul l foster school of medicine for always providing as volunteers wonderful volunteers to staff our phone lines and with us tonight is madeleine morris and madeline is a veteran and is certainly not news of this show madeleine thank you for what you're doing and uh you're a second-year medical student and going to be contributing greatly to to our society and to the health of our citizens so thank you madeleine for being with us again we also want to thank the el paso county medical society for bringing you this show on a monthly basis we're grateful to them as well good evening i'm john barella i'm filling in for katherine berg and this is the el paso physician [Music] back and thank you again for joining us this evening on a very very important topic uh the influenza season is upon us and of course covet 19 and the various variants continue to plague us not only uh here but around the country although as we'll see the news is not all bad through our discussions this evening but we have to continue to be vigilant and and i ever mindful about the threat that it continues to pose to all of us here in the region with me are two excellent well-renowned doctors in our region and we're really privileged to have both of them here today they've both been on this show before and we're thrilled to have them back and welcome them back first we have dr ogue olosi who's with us he is the medical director for sunset id care and he's an infectious disease specialist very very well versed on this subject and we're grateful to have him here thanks for having me absolutely and welcome back good to see you again time flies when you have fun and with us also is dr andres boardea who is a pediatric medicine doctor pediatric doctor pediatrician pediatrician who certainly works very very hard very beloved doctor here in town and you can see him working at las palmas and del sol medical centers and to get going i just very briefly want to ask each of you your course to get here to el paso and some of the things that you're doing very brief introduction for the viewers i know they already many of them already know you but i've been here 12 years i don't know how long allah born in nigeria grew up in minnesota did all my training in minnesota and then we moved to el paso in 2010 so it's going on 12 years now this is my home well well welcome back home so you'll be here a little bit of time it becomes becomes home very quickly it sure does it sure does and uh dr boyle yeah we were talking earlier you're in native el paso i'm a native el paso so i've been in el paso for 44 years a little bit longer than dr ogie but yeah native so um where'd you go to high school uh cathedral yeah i went to cathedral high school very good irish there you go go irish so uh we're really proud of you it's always good to see the local folks go get educated then come back and of course having the expertise of of dr lowsi is always appreciated so thank you both for being here again uh our topic uh is a very very interesting one and extremely timely and we can never be too careful about how we try to prevent the spread not only of the regular flu but of course the covet 19 and it's various variants now that are out rolling around the country and whatnot so i'm going to start off the questioning with uh with dr olosi one of the questions that i have is certainly in the back of my mind is this cold flu season and you know last year it seemed that maybe it was just because it was such a focus on covid that the flu the regular flu didn't seem to reflect or inflict many people or so it appeared from your experience in both anecdotally in the data is is that true and and why is that the case so the why is the hard part i think it's important to just say what happened which is that in the southern hemisphere and the northern hemisphere flu dropped around 98 to 99 across the globe we're not clear why that is um part of it was the masking part of it was the physical distancing part of it was that kids were in school right especially in the northern hemisphere um and partially in the southern hemisphere and so i think we were lucky and sometimes i said it's better to be lucky than to be good and so in that case it dropped off not sure where we're going to go with it and i think we can sort of talk as the evening goes along what a twin endemic would look like and what the potentials and the possibilities for that is into the future as well yeah do you expect that trend to continue this year we don't know i mean if we pull up slide one if we can i mean if you sort of look at the curves that we've had historically around flu right we expect it to sort of peak and then drop off what we realize is that in 2020 it didn't if you look at the southern hemisphere specifically they haven't yet seen flu right and they haven't been as restricted as we have in the united states so who knows i think what's important for people to understand is that in a good flu season 30 or 40 000 people die right and so that really is a concern not just this year but i think multiple years going down the line as we've realized that sarsko v2 or kova 19 is not going anywhere it's going to become endemic in our society and i think the real focus here is that the best way to avoid this is to get vaccinated not just for starscore v2 but also for influenza so for our viewers there was a slide up uh i don't know if we can pull that back up or not but uh maybe you can take the viewers through the slide that was up there right you'll see 2020 that's the sort of cherry red i guess and you see how it sort of dropped off as the course of the year went by the time we sort of locked down in march april you can see that flu influenza cases across north america essentially disappeared and that was the 98 to 99 you can see at the bottom i guess it's a purple i'm sort of color blind you can see that right now we're flat we do not know what's going to happen going into the fall and i think that's why it's important for people to be diligent it's important for people to be careful and for again get vaccinated when you can i don't think this should really be an argument i know it will be but it is what it is yeah yeah agree with you at that doctor unfortunately it's gotten politicized but the facts speak for themselves and so do the data the title of our show once again is the influenza season and covet 19 affection infections avoiding the twindemic and if you have any questions once again we urge you to call and call in at 881-013 again eight eight one zero zero one three i'm going to turn now to dr boardia who is a well-respected pediatrician here in town i hope so yeah absolutely we know so and once again welcome doctor we appreciate your being here with us this evening uh first question i have for you a really two-pronged question number one are you currently seeing a spike in coveted infections among your the folks that you see the young people that you see and secondly do you see this being a problem as we move into the flu season having the flu uh perhaps spreading the regular flu with young people and kids um along with covid um so what do you think about that so honestly we initially when when back to school season started everybody was uh concerned about the possibility of covet 19 spreading and spiking as as you know children are one of the main drivers of of viral infections and so um there was a big concern for kovid however i think that el paso has a high vaccination rate and that's helped a lot and and so uh looking back to early this year we saw how um the numbers started dropping drastically the hospitalizations started dropping um the amount of space available to patients at hospitals were more available and so that vaccine kind of speaks for itself that it was working and so because of that high vaccination rate that we have in el paso um we haven't seen a tremendous amount of covert 19 in in in the pediatric population in children however as dr olusi was saying we were apart for such a long time that we have other viruses that have started flourishing a little bit more rsv in babies that causes bronchiolitis adenovirus rhinovirus enterovirus all of these viruses which can also have respiratory symptoms have have driven patients to be hospitalized but not not so much covet as as we would expect it or thought that it would happen as far as my patient population goes there is a high vaccination rate in the pediatric population which is right now um authorized from 12 years and over so in that population there's a high vaccination rate and and you see the hospitals are full of patients that are below that age um [Music] and then the other part to your question i'm sorry was was do you expect this flu season to uh first of all see a spike in flu cases with young people and do you see a a corresponding uh spike uh with any variant that you see on the horizon affecting young people you know you've got the delta variant the move variant and all of that right right i i believe that we are going to have a spike in influenza um and why unless just kids going back to school with doctor if it mimics what is happening right now with rsv and rhinovirus and enterovirus if it's going to mimic what is happening right now there is no doubt that there will be a spike however we do have vaccines that are available now for this season's flu virus and so if we if we vaccinate maybe we can kind of not you know have that big spike in flu and it doesn't mean that you won't get it if you're vaccinated you can get it but it will be much more mild it won't drive you to the hospital and you know as you're saying uh twindemic and co-infection with covid and and influenza i mean i'm sure it's going to wreak havoc on you know respiratory systems and and and most importantly hospitalization so if if we vaccinate uh you know if you visit your doctor if you visit your pediatrician and and you follow the recommendation of your physician maybe we can maybe we can make the the influenza season a little bit more mild thank you dr lozie this is a question from my mom so she may be watching tonight but she's 83 years old she's already received the double dose back in march and her question really is now she always gets her regular flu vaccine in october the question is can she get a regular flu vaccine shot come next month in october that she gets every year and can she get a corresponding booster if that's recommended by the administration or cdc definitely so i think first bill i think it's a great thing that she gets it every year she's protecting herself i think that really to cut to the quick yes the short answer is yes she can get the influenza vaccine and yes you can get the coven 19 booster and so initially sort of when we were rolling out vaccines back in january february there's some conversation about don't get two vaccines at the same time the cdc and the fda have changed that so you can get both vaccines at the same time the reality is it's going to be about availability what is the availability of the booster to her when is she going to get the vaccine for influenza but i think if she's able to get it at the same time why not save her an extra trip saves her the trouble of going to her health care provider multiple times so you can get the shot at the same time absolutely uh the the regular flu shot to be clear and the booster at the same time and it won't have any adverse effects on her or anyone else in that age group absolutely and i think to sort of drive into the booster a little bit more she is in that population where the data is pretty clear in terms of providing extra protection not only against infections but also against hospitalizations and death for specifically sargo v2 and so i think it's important for her to go get it so along those same lines i saw an article read an article this morning where i believe it was moderna is trying to develop of course hasn't been approved yet but develop a one-shot covet and regular flu vaccine uh do you have any updates on that or is that is that going to be viable in the near future so i think it's exciting unlikely to be available for this season that we're going into because as you understand there's trials that have to happen fda has to give approval the advisory committee on immunization practices asip they have to give approval as well but i think it's also important to sort of set the stage for what's coming into the future not necessarily this year but years to come as sarge kov2 becomes endemic as we continue like dr bordeaux said to have a return of influenza the winters are going to be tricky right we're not going to know is it influenza is it rsv is it sars cov2 and so i think people need to prepare for that and understand that on average even before kovid our hospitals hit capacity levels in the winter months because of influenza both on the pediatric and the adult side a twindemk that becomes consistent every year will be challenging and so we're going to have to enable people and sensitize people to realize that hey this is not going away this is not something that in december of 2021 all of a sudden kovit's going to disappear and so we can sort of push it under the rug we're going to have to learn system wise and information-wise and having programs like this and having physicians and clinicians across the community continue to remind people that this is not gone and so the best way to protect yourself continues to be by getting vaccinated yeah dr boyle are you seeing patients now young patients that are coming down with the delta variant here in town have you had a spike in numbers or has it been relatively flat the testing that is available to us will not differentiate just your regular coven from delta mu lambda whatever variants are out there we have no way of of distinguishing i don't know if there's labs here in town that can do that i know that sometimes we have to do send outs and then eventually you get your your results um however we can we can say if you have it or don't have it the coven with a with a covet test but it hasn't been available to us as far as the subtypes or the variants of of of coronavirus you know hopefully in the near future but again we as far as as the variants go we i have not seen uh you know the subtype of comet yet i don't know if dr lowsi yeah i know exactly what dr bardea said i think that um and we get these questions a lot right well i know i have the ancestral versus delta and i tell people it doesn't really matter it's not going to change how we treat you it's not going to change the vaccine right and so i get it people are worried and they're concerned but i think what's important is that the cdc data shows really clearly that 98 to 99 of all surveillance types in the united states are delta and so that's how we approach it and well what does that mean to individuals it means that it's more contagious it means that it's easier to get probably three to four times easier to get than the original ancestral variant was last year and so again we've said it before this is the most dangerous time to be unvaccinated in the united states i think we're blessed and lucky again sometimes we are to be lucky than good but we're blessed in el paso that we are not seeing the sort of rates that they have in florida or other places in texas or some of the midwest and so i think part of it is like dr birthday i said is the work that we've done in our community around vaccinations that's been critical but i also remind people that it's also sort of they always say sort of um on the on the shoulders of giants in this sense it's on the shoulders of angels right the people that we lost last year right we lost an immense amount of people and we infected a lot of people and so that plus vaccinations is really what has allowed us to have some of the best rates in terms of um infection and safety in el paso yeah you know there's a question i know you've probably answered dozens of times and i've certainly heard it being asked many many times and i think it bears repeating and that is simply this if somebody has had a covet in the past uh should they go get vaccinated yeah and if so why so i think here's the thing reasonable people can disagree but i think what has happened you sort of talked about this earlier is we've become so tribalized and politicized around views that we've forgotten that data changes right as an infectious disease physician what i used to treat hiv and bone disease a decade ago is very different today and i'm sure it's the same in pediatrics right what we've seen is that early on in the pandemic the conversation was you must get vaccinated i think that was fair right it's what we had the data both from the united states europe and from south africa is now showing that we need to sort of take into account virus-driven immunity right there's two pathways to immunity there's vaccine-driven immunity and there's virus-driven immunity and people that have been infected previously i think it's a fair conversation for them to say hey i just want one shot and i think the data is beginning to support that the cdc has some of that data it was talked about a few weeks ago on a cdc call europe is doing that in fact israel where we get most of our vaccine push and data around boosters from has actually created a vaccine passport and they now acknowledge previous infection plus one shot as being equivalent to two shots right so again are we there from a guidance standpoint from the cdc no not yet do i think we'll get there eventually yes so if i've been infected with the delta variant excuse me the original variant alpha variant i guess it is and now i have the the delta variant will my prior infection uh with the original covid variant will that offer the same immunity uh as as protecting you from a delta variant yeah and i think again great question i think part of the conversation is what does the human um immune system work like right the human immune system is not a carbon copy system right it's a lot different it identifies things and then it says well i can figure out all the cousins and aunts and uncles of this thing right to the antibodies of that first line of defense but the b and t line and this is getting way too wonky and i apologize this is very important yeah we have multiple other pieces of our immune system that actually now say you know what i can figure this out it doesn't have to be an exact replica and i'll give myself an as an example i unfortunately got covid on december 18th of last year was lucky and blessed didn't have a lot of symptoms actually got the monoclonal antibody because i was a lot heavier than and older well i wasn't older than than now but you know what i mean you look young and you look very you look in great shape so yeah but um and so because of that when i was ready to go off to curacao and do some work for two months there when they were having their coverage surge i actually deliberately got the johnson johnson right i wanted one shot i wanted to i needed to get out of the country and have for research reasons tested my bt and um antibody immunity levels and they're massively high right so i'm not worried personally but again i think that's where the data is evolving it's emerging i think that's sort of the the party line and i think dr would agree to this get vaccinated right 100 the funny thing is that i i don't think this is an argument in our community right and i think we get drawn into the press in other communities making a big deal about it in el paso and i'll defer to you i just don't see this i don't see immunizations as something that is contentious what do you think no i agree 100 i mean i immunize in my practice every single day multiple times over and over and over you know you have your childhood vaccinations you have your your teenage vaccinations of course you have meningitis and you have hpv vaccines and at the end of the day it works i mean they work they do their job um i don't know well i'm not going to get into you know politics and politicizing but it is a constant struggle um where people don't believe in it but i live it every single day so i just want to echo your sentiments for both of you we're very blessed to live in a community that really hasn't politicized this is an issue come from a political background a legal background and i mourn when i see communities being split our nation being split over this issue it should be a unifying issue for all of us and uh sadly in many parts of the country it's uh ultra politicized but i think we're pushing vaccination rates here correct me if i'm wrong of near 80 percent which is phenomenal we're leading the country in in that in so many ways and and it just really heartens uh should hearten all of us that we've come together as a community in southern new mexico the same thing uh it's just it should be very heartening and very encouraging to all of us despite uh the bad news here as i said during the introduction uh we're going to talk about some good news as well and that's certainly a a good news story that we all should be very proud of here in el paso and el paso county so i'm going to turn to dr bolvaya on a very very touchy subject i think um in in a different way i've heard a lot of folks say that young people who get the covid virus it doesn't affect them at all they shake it off no issues no serious side effects um is that true or or not and yeah we assume young people certainly have the ability to fend off uh infections more than maybe somebody who's more mature but is is that's a reason to not vaccinate a child that's eligible to be vaccinated absolutely not absolutely not um you have to remember again i i said uh before children are one of the biggest drivers of viral infections so just come to my clinic and hang out with me for a week and i guarantee that you're going to be sick by the end of the week but children have a little bit of a different immune system than adults children still have a thymus gland for example and so their immune system is is maybe a little bit stronger it's waiting to be programmed it's waiting to get you know it has to get to know these different types of bugs and viruses in order to have an immune response against them and so because of that you know thymus gland and it's a much younger immune system maybe you know that's why they don't get as sick however i have seen a couple of that kawasaki-like syndrome i've seen two patients have it both were hospitalized the [Music] the symptoms did not all fit kawasaki's disease however the cardiovascular involvement was there some of the features that you can see the facial features like the swollen lips the swollen tongue that was there and then you run and kawasaki's disease is is a is a disease diagnosed clinically not there's not a specific test that will say yes or no but there are parameters that you can follow that can guide your your your your diagnosis however not everything fit into kawasaki's disease and so that's how we knew that you know previous exposure to covin you know maybe weeks to months before was eventually causing these issues down the line so they would be covet positive you know they would take antibiotics and medications for fever and they did fine but further down the line is when they would hit and so initially we were at a loss we we didn't know what was going on and so that's how we came with the kawasaki like syndrome so it's it's not all good news for children i've seen respiratory distress in children i've i've seen children that have had to be hospitalized in the icu setting for respiratory support um so but it's a very it's a smaller population of of children being affected at that degree when you compare it to the adult population so kids are not young adults along those same lines have you seen or have your colleagues seen young kids who are long-haul or so-called long-haulers that's the first question second question is whether young people children that get coveted does that affect their developmental possibilities the pulmonary system lung development and that sort of thing it's too soon to say uh everything is so new that there's still a lot of what-ifs up in the air um i'm sure it's gonna have a you know a negative outcome at some point to certain to certain kids hopefully not but um we it's still too soon to say if it's going to affect their development i have seen though that a lot of kids were affected more with depression and anxiety and all these issues of of lost family members of quarantine of social isolation so you know a lot of people or when schools close down it was very traumatic to some because a lot of these children were depending on their school for either shelter food some type of attention so in that aspect i have seen covet affect the younger population but it's more of a behavioral issue that they're going through a lot of a lot of of uh children have lost family members including parents that i have had to tend to and help them cope with with these issues dr lozie have you seen this issue the covet issue is that a function of income or is it an equal opportunity in factor as it were and what what's your experience you said we weren't going to get into controversial topics he hit me with the hard one i think it's both i think that early on in the pandemic it was an equal opportunity infection i think what bears understanding though is that look at how our communities not just ours but across the country changed right so as dr bordeaux mentioned when we went to in-home everything work from home everything who are the people that are best able to adapt to that it's people of higher socioeconomic status they have stable internet stable housing stable food their children have probably multiple devices a phone an ipad a computer at home that's the population that can protect themselves in a bubble and can continue to thrive in it think about from a sort of financial standpoint who made the most money in this economy it was companies and technologies that could quickly adapt to staying at home and working from home zoom became bigger than the top eight airlines in the world right and then to speak to dr bardea's point the people that didn't the people that had to be out front right now i'm going to take out our healthcare worker community because we're a little bit different we had to be out front but socioeconomically it was different think about the people that are driving at stores at restaurants at albertsons whatever it is they continue to have to go to work and that's not always a high dollar amount of income they were challenged their parents were challenged their children at home were challenged right and so what you have now seen is that initially it was equal opportunity but over the last six to eight months it has really skewed to who's gotten part of it has been social economic part of it has been political ideology unfortunately and that's what we're seeing a lot of now and again people often say well it's the vaccine resistant it's not necessarily vaccine resistant is the vaccine misinformed their sources of information are not quality sources of information and unfortunately that's what they've relied on and that reliance on poor information has led to a lot of times their demise and their sickness and so i think that's really what we've seen in the country and continue to see we're blessed in this community that if we're if we hit 80 percent i think it's about 80ish percent according to dr alcaranza that tells me that 20 percent are sort of the vaccine misinformed right and in all reality they are taking the benefit from us right they're taking our benefit of getting vaccinated that's protecting them as well well it's incredibly important information you just you just gave to our viewers and very very valued information i know dr oluse you wanted to show a map of the united states and it'll give our producers some time to pull the map up and you might be able to explain the significance of that map and i believe uh it is uh illustrative of the infection rate uh if i'm not mistaken and we'll give them a moment to pull that uh that map up and i want to talk about it specifically because you hear a lot of misinformation about herd immunity threshold or hit and people talk whether it's 60 70 80 and that's great i think one thing and really call this to attention because it's a two-pronged approach to where we are today part of that and this comes out of the nih director of the nih dr francis collins published this a couple of weeks ago and this shows what the assumed infection rating communities were across the country as of december 20th 2020 right and so you can see the tip of texas out there it's estimated that we were somewhere in the 50 to 60 percent had already been infected so you take that 50 to 60 percent on top of whether we want to call it 70 or 80 vaccination you can very clearly see it explains really easily where we are in our community right and sort of that um again it's you stand on the shoulders of greats right we sort of paid the price up front we did the work after that and that's why our community has not seen the rates i think there's actually an article in the texas tribune or texas medical magazine a week or two ago and it showed the rates of texas going almost vertical and it showed all password kind of very slow increase right and that's the protection you're in the hospital i'm in the hospital host of our colleagues yes do we see people with covet they're intubated that are very sick absolutely on average i would comfortably say 95 percent are unvaccinated and there's still space now what we haven't seen i'll not budaya talk about this too um a lot of our issues around space are nursing right it's not that we don't have rooms but there's a nursing shortage across the country and so that's part of our problem right we're having to import nurses from other cities in order to help to help out so we're still doing that yes sir absolutely yes okay the other article i read this morning in preparation for this show was an article it was very interesting the apparent thesis of this article that we're on the verge of having a vaccination for children or the approval for vaccination of children 12 and under but what really captured my attention is that might include a vaccine for newborns for va for covid and potential variants what do you know about that what can you tell our viewers about that possibility uh it's still under research uh there's a colleague here in town dr science who's running a research project for uh vaccinating the the pediatric population and as far as as vaccinating a newborn right now the only vaccine that is that is provided to a newborn is a hepatitis b vaccine um i i don't know if if if the research would be there i'm not sure how many people would be willing to give up their baby to to research right unfortunately some of the of the testing does require some testing in the lab in in other beings but the research is not there yet it's it's almost there there was say that that the research would be completed by september we haven't heard anything as far as i know the guidelines are still recommending 12 years and over and so that's where we're at right now this is this is everything is again so new that it's still under research and development and and so we need to study more and find out more and and so we're learning as we go along but that's what we have we have a question now from the audience and again we have a few and if you have a question please call us at 881-0013-881-013 this question really could be for both of you but we'll start with dr olosi dr one of the viewers has asked the question that they had the moderna shot and had some fairly serious side effects apparently after taking the second modernist shot the question is is it possible that one could overdose on a booster shot should that be approved i understand that pfizer is on the verge of getting or has been approved for a third booster shot and i know madara is working on it but when that comes if when that comes would a third shot or a booster uh have that same possible side effect or would it in fact be an overdose yeah so i don't think there's an overdose and to be clear the data that exists right now what we call the safety signals doesn't show that right and so what the booster does seem to show is an increase in the antibody levels of persons now again that will wane over time and so i think what the vaccines have been consistently remarkable in showing is their efficacy against hospitalizations and death but to answer the specific question no there's no safety signal around getting that third shot that will suddenly um pick a new side effect or a side effect that's that concerning a booster shot for for children is is that something that we can expect as well uh based on what you know and same question and would it have an overdose effect on somebody who's much younger much smaller if that were to occur and be approved i don't believe as far as overdose i don't i don't believe that that could happen the side effects you know the common side effects are fever the soreness of the arm you know you may feel sick for a couple of days but it won't go as as as far as that um i don't think there there's gonna be an overdose and as far as as uh a booster shot i do believe that that it's gonna happen as far as the pediatric population goes um you have your vaccination schedule uh in the pediatric population that starts at two months four months six months you know one year 15 months and and so on and so on and so on and most of these are boosters right so because of the ever-changing uh immune status of the pediatric population again going back to thymus glands and all these technical issues um it is very likely that that the booster vaccine will be required and as previously dr lozie was saying covet isn't going anywhere so just like influenza we still do our yearly influenza each season we have it you know ready so very likely that there will be a booster another question from the audience uh maybe to both of you as well again starting with dr olosi one question came in from an audience member asking if someone were to get the regular flute would that make that individual more susceptible to getting a covid infection conversely if somebody got a coveted infection does that make them more susceptible or more likely to get a regular flu infection during this this season yeah hard to tell i think that the really sort of the background question i would ask is are you vaccinated right if you're vaccinated unlikely you may get infected but again you're protected from those severe consequences i will say though that getting one virus doesn't preclude you getting the other we see year after year where people get multiple viruses whether it's rsv or influenza some come in with two infections at the same time and i think the other thing to remember is that when you get sick of my phone when you get sick and you have that damage to your lungs it actually allows other viruses to enter your lungs other bacteria tend to your lungs i think the real sort of take home here and again i feel like it sounds like a broken record is get vaccinated to protect yourself against getting it and again i say this all the time if the riddle is how do i protect myself against influenza how do i protect myself against sars kov2 then the answer to that has to be vaccinations right and so i think we have to continually repeat to people that this is the best way out of this because the truth is this what we're trying to do is change sars cov2 into a flu level threat now that doesn't sound necessarily great because like i said 30 to 80 000 people a year die from influenza but it's much better than it is right now in the threat and so we need to change that into a flu level or a common cold level threat and the best way to do that is to get vaccinated lots of questions from the audience this evening there was a question about herd immunity and and i'm going to ask a little bit of a variation of the audience question or one of the viewers questions and that is you know the magic threshold for hurt immunity has always been said to be 70 80 percent um is or are we close to being at hurt immunity at least for this county if we're reaching a vaccination rate of 80 that coupled with the natural immunization that people might have of those who've gotten it i'll take it just because i heard some stuff in the press last week that was wildly inaccurate here's the deal i think that one of the problems is in communication and at some point in time maybe i was responsible for this maybe others were i feel like we gave people this illusion that herd immunity was a wall that you hit and once you hit the wall everything disappeared like magic and i think that was the unfortunate part right herd immunity all it means by definition is the amount of immunity in a community that reduces the transmission of a virus to under pandemic levels right and whether you want to call it sixty percent seventy percent eighty percent the fact that we had sixty percent potentially infected last year 80 vaccinated this year we passed whatever definition of herd immunity months ago i think i've been saying this since probably june or july now the delta variant probably changed some things made it more transmissible but again people need to sort of recalibrate that hitting that herd immunity wall does not mean that kova disappears it just means that it's not as transmissible in your community um along those same lines i guess then dr boiler under under that definition or that description of her immunity that if a child in under the age of 12 cannot get vaccinated uh i guess herd immunity becomes almost an irrelevant point correct because of the transmissibility issue correct so just to be clear about what hurt immunity is especially with young people because you know nobody's been vaccinated under 12 right right and and correct me if i'm wrong but when you say like kurd immunity it to me it sounds like you're saying oh i'm giving you the responsibility to get vaccinated so that if i'm close to you you're not going to get me sick and i think that here everybody needs to be responsible and especially because of the of the child population not being able to be vaccinated i think that we have to take care of our younger ones and be responsible about it so that we don't get them sick because they're the vulnerable right ones right now right so we're leaving um the vulnerable population you know you can't really have that coin in the air and say you know it's a coin toss and oh leave it to hurt immunity and go from there i think i think we all need to be responsible for for um you know as a community for each other and and try and take care of ourselves as much as we can the exciting thing though in protecting children is that in the cdc and a host of other organizations released this data a couple weeks ago in communities that had the highest vaccination rate the child rate of infection was the lowest right and so as a community because we're able to vaccinate 12 and up my brain just went away on me for a second 12 enough we are protecting even those that are younger now when the time comes to get them vaccinated absolutely vaccinate your child protect them even further but again i think that um sort of community responsibility has taken hold and again we should be thankful that we live in the community i mean you probably saw some of the news of some independent school districts in austin and some other places that were literally fighting that police had to come in and separate people and cancel school districts meetings we haven't had that issue now people get vociferous right people have they're passionate about their views but we haven't had that in so we should really be thankful yeah another viewer question just came in i think you've already answered this one dr losey but uh out of respect for the person uh asking this question they may have signed on late it is if someone gets a coveted 19 booster shot how long should they wait to get the flu shot i think you answered that earlier you can get you can get them at the same time if for any logistical reasons you need to space some space them as well but don't be worried about getting them together yeah yeah and another one that i think you uh answered earlier as well and it's simply this is it safe for someone who is over 65 years old and has underlying medical conditions to get both the flu and covid19 vaccine that's the person that needs examples right there they're at the highest risk in our community and so yes please protect yourself yes and uh i think you alluded both to uh this earlier question there's another audience question last year it seemed like the cases of the flu again were were very low and i think both of you have given the reasons why um and expect that probably to be a trend potentially into the upcoming upcoming flu season right and and that that same uh that same point just proves it over and over again face mask work uh hand washing works uh distancing works vaccines more than anything work so i mean the the the facts are there and it's been proven over and over so yes yes um you know at this point i i think it's it's really important to point out to our audience i think we've established the case uh not only anecdotally but through data that if you haven't been vaccinated that now is the time to go get vaccinated and we've heard that resoundingly from a number of medical professionals and two very well respected local doctors please go get vaccinated if you have that opportunity soon and it's very very important for not only your own health your family's health but the health of the community dr elozie where can these uh individuals who have not been vaccinated to go get vaccinated i mean it's really everywhere at this point right um the walgreens cvs the county texas tech has events that they've been doing on multiple times they're focused on boosters right now more than anything else call your physician right call the county go on epstrom.org right and look at where those locations are but i think there are more than enough places to get vaccinated in our community now are there potentially some pockets that we haven't reached potentially i think it's on the margin and i think with some of the mandate conversation um different places will have different strategies for people to get vaccinated going forward as well i assume uh doctor boy they can come to the hospital or your office to get vaccinated i mean yes they but we have our regular pediatric scheduled vaccines i have not been able to get the covert vaccine to distribute uh it's it's uh there's some logistics that that that that you know require for you to be able to hold the covert vaccine one of those initially pfizer the temperature of the vaccine was way below zero so there was some special freezers that needed to be had and and so it just makes it a little bit more difficult for for us to keep it in office so a question new question from our audience uh the question is can you take tylenol uh before uh receiving a booster shot uh or your vaccine uh if you haven't been vaccinated short answer yes yeah and i always get it in the office where uh can you give him tylenol before vaccinating my child sure absolutely absolutely yeah we have a little less than 10 minutes remaining in the show i want to again uh if you have a questions the audience has questions please uh call us at 881 0-0-1-3 you think i'd have it memorized by now 881-001 we do have a little less than 10 minutes so please take advantage of these two brilliant doctor's expertise in getting your questions answered one question that that certainly has been raised or people are horrified by these new variants that are coming out the alpha the delta the moo the lambda based on everything i've seen in red right now we have nothing to be horrified over but we still have to be diligent is there anything on the horizon dr ellosie that scares you any new cutting edge information or data that scares you of any variant that might be emerging anywhere in the world right now i don't think there's anything that scares me right i think that surveillance is surveillance and the reason for surveillance is to look at what's going on in other parts of the world identify what those variants can possibly do and you know again i think that um there's this term called fear porn and it's unfortunate that the lay media has decided to drive fear porn as opposed to rationality and so is mu a variant absolutely has mu been shown to have a percentage of vaccine evasion as they call it also absolutely but as of we know right now can mu out compete delta absolutely not in all the geographic locations where mu has been identified it can't out-compete delta delta is still the most contagious variant and so that's why a majority of the country door has been identified it makes up 80 to 99 of the virus circulating right so is it possible possibly but i think the other thing too is where i get to geek out on virology a little bit viruses only have a certain amount of sort of road that they can mutate through right you can't just mutate into this massively infectious virus then probably you're not going to be able to replicate as well right the ones that replicate the most on average are the ones that are able to transmit the most and so this virus probably doesn't have a lot of places to go it will continue to mutate because that's what viruses do every time they replicate they create errors and so those creates problems and again i think my back story is if you're worried get vaccinated because here's the thing that we can't control and i think doctor would have well agreed to this you can't control the future you can control today and the best way to protect yourself today is to get vaccinated now we can't lose sleep on what's going to happen in 2022 23 2324 with mu theta epsilon kappa i don't know what i do know is that if you're vaccinated the chances of you being hospitalized and dying reduce by at least 25 times and in some communities up to 40 times and i think that has to be the key they will repeat over and over and over again and it bears repeating okay certainly bears repeat right doctor boy they uh um i've been reading with some interest and this would be especially true for parents of young kids that there might be an oral vaccine or a pill vaccine coming is there any new information on that so that the child would not have to undergo the pain of a shot i have not heard of an oral vaccine however what i do know is that they're going back to variants the rotavirus vaccine is an oral vaccine and so that automatically contains a weakened variant along with the most common strain to avoid variants causing infection i know that they're trying to mimic the rotavirus vaccine by adding that weakened or attenuated variant and as far as the the method of application i haven't heard of it being oral i still believe it's going to be injection just like measles just like varicella you know all your comment shots and what's the fun out of taking a shot out of a kid anyway right [Laughter] well uh thank you for that goodbye the along the same lines uh dr lozie of painless painless solutions to the virus um is the therapeutics and the breakthrough on therapeutics so somebody gets it you know maybe we can uh nip it in the bud what do you know about that there's a couple things i will add that there is some research going on in an intranasal vaccine right to sort of reduce the transmission since we get this from the air i think that's important it's probably not going to be available this year next year but i think when you sort of think about the therapeutics i tell people all the time if you get covered have a conversation with your physician i feel like a lot of people have sort of forgotten how healthcare works right that they just worry about oh wow what does google say what should i do oh google says i should take ivermectin and zinc and then but there are a lot of things at work we know that the polyclonal antibodies they used to be monoclonal antibodies right they actually seem to help to reduce hospitalizations we know that when you get into the hospital there's a host of things that clinicians icu id whomever can use to treat you right but i think again here's the thing and we don't get this in the united states they do a lot better job in europe and other places prevention is better than cure it's also cheaper than cure right it's a lot cheaper for you to get a free vaccine than for you to get a 200 000 hospital bill if you come to our hospitals and so that again i think we need to sort of focus on that okay only a couple minutes left this is going to be the speed round one or two uh seconds on each one number one uh dr olosi who is qualified to get the coveted booster right now caller said they are over 65 years old and immunosuppressed but we're told not to get the covet booster yes or no check wrong um immuno compromise are available to get the covid booster right now okay one caller asked if there's research on the side effects and complications of the covid19 vaccine we know the answer is yes potentially is there a short answer that you can give us in about a minute i would say yes i mean just by by learning what we've done so far that's research enough we've given out over 200 million vaccines we have safety signals right i mean again it's kind of like the whole at the met gallon nicki minaj says he wasn't going to get it because of testicular swelling it was so bad that the president of that country and the minister of health said absolutely not they talked to her cousin and he didn't have particular swelling stop believing the internet believe medical professionals get vaccinated man well put okay well those are the closing arguments i'm a recovering lawyer uh full disclosure uh i did not do plaintiffs work you'll be happy to know uh both of you so uh but uh we wanna probably close on those very very strong closing arguments for today's program dr bolvaya thank you very much for spending time with us today this evening is very very great information thanks for coming back to the show and uh dr elozie uh our famed guest here who's always here and we can't appreciate what both you know we owe both of you in the community a whole lot of thanks the lives you save the advice you give is truly appreciated by yours truly and should be appreciated by many in our audience madeleine thank you very very much for your volunteer work and we appreciate you very very much uh thank you and best wishes in your your future uh academic endeavors in medical school and uh you know i just want to thank the american heart association again for sponsoring this program the el paso medical society for many many years sponsoring this program and being the prime sponsor and i've been a very poor substitute for katherine berg you've done a good time we have to thank her for over 20 years and her host of doing this and at this point i want to say thank you to her thank you to all of you and stay safe stay well and have a good evening you cut that perfectly [Music] [Music] you