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Every day, our newsroom’s call-in show,
AirTalk, welcomes a physician to answer listeners’ questions about COVID-19 and the vaccine. Earlier this week, host Larry Mantle spoke with
Timothy Brewer, M.D., an epidemiologist and professor of medicine at UCLA’s School of Public Health. Here are some of the questions he answered. (The conversation has been edited for length and clarity):
Do you have any concerns about restaurants in L.A. County moving to 50% indoor capacity, and bars serving patrons indoors?
We re getting increasing evidence that these vaccines actually prevent infection as well as disease. There s a study published by the [Centers for Disease Control] of healthcare workers across eight states with the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, both demonstrating while not 100% effective they did in fact prevent both infection and asymptomatic disease, and then probably interrupted transmission.
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L.A. County public health officials
confirmed yesterday that the county can enter the yellow tier of reopening, the least restrictive level of the state’s guidelines.
In the movie theaters, restaurants, fitness centers and places of worship can increase indoor capacity to 50%; museums, zoos, aquariums, retail, hair salons, barber shops, playgrounds and malls can open indoors with modifications; offices can resume work indoors (although remote work will still be encouraged); and more.
The biggest change under the yellow tier is that bars can reopen indoors at 25% capacity for the first time since the summer of 2020. The county’s public health director, Barbara Ferrer, said that while that may seem like a small change, for many former workers who’ve been unemployed, it’s huge.
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As anti-Asian hate spikes in the U.S.,
many academics who study Asian or Asian American communities are
rethinking their work as falling not just under the category of social science, but of racial justice as well.
My colleague
many told him the same thing: it’s becoming clear that
the racism faced by Asians, Asian Americans, and Pacific Islanders is the same as the racism and discrimination faced by other communities.
According to those researchers, there are several immediate challenges in terms of getting more Americans on board with fighting anti-Asian hate in this moment of racial reckoning. The first, they say, is
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Good morning, L.A. It’s April 29.
If you’ve gotten your second dose of the coronavirus vaccine, perhaps you’ve celebrated by opening a bottle of wine or mixing yourself a cocktail. But many of our readers and listeners want to know if that’s safe
do the vaccine and alcohol mix?
On our newsroom’s
Dr. Dean Blumberg, professor of medicine and chief of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at UC Davis Children’s Hospital, said that
drinking too much could cause an adverse reaction.
“We know that people who drink heavily are likely to have an impaired immune response to the vaccine,” he said, “and we know that people who are heavy drinkers also get more infections than those who are moderate drinkers or than those who abstain.”
Are you one of the thousands of Californians who’ve lost their jobs due to the pandemic?
It’s been hardest on people without a college degree, particularly Latinas and Latinos. And many low-wage jobs, especially in service and retail, are not expected to come back.
Maybe you’re trying to figure out what to do next if so, we’re here to help. We re hosting a virtual event,
How To Start A New Career, on Wednesday, April 28 at 6:30 p.m., where career and higher education experts will answer audience questions, live.
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