Vax Issues podcast explores info, myths, misconceptions round vaccines

Vax Issues, a brand new podcast collection from the Louisiana Division of
Well being’s (LDH) Immunization Program, has launched the primary three episodes in a
deliberate 36-podcast collection over the approaching yr.

The podcast, with a brand new episode being launched each two weeks,
will take a deep dive and discover the historical past and way forward for vaccines, as effectively
as deal with info, misconceptions and myths on quite a lot of immunization subjects.

In every episode, host Diane Deaton, a former TV character and
weathercaster for WAFB 9News in Baton Rouge, together with a visitor host, will
converse with medical and infectious illness consultants from Louisiana, in addition to
throughout the nation, to handle that episode’s subject.

In a two-part episode simply launched, Deaton and visitor host Deon
Guillory converse with Dr. Frank Welch, a number one nationwide knowledgeable on immunizations
and former medical director for Emergency Preparedness at LDH, on the historical past
of vaccines. In the course of the episodes, Dr. Welch walks listeners by means of the origin
of contemporary vaccines starting with smallpox by means of the polio epidemic. Welch explains
why some vaccines are grouped and the way it's determined which flu pressure can be used
every year for the vaccine.

Dr. Welch additionally discusses how vaccines are developed at present and the
progress we've got seen in the previous couple of years and the medical analysis and exams
which might be carried out earlier than a vaccine is ever accredited.

“I believe it is necessary in society that we acknowledge the
distinction between an opinion and scientific analysis and scientific reality,” Dr.
Welch concluded.

In one other of the episodes launched, Deaton and Guillory converse
with Dr. Joseph Kanter, the state well being officer at LDH, to debate the COVID
vaccine and recount the previous two years of residing through the present pandemic.
Dr. Kanter will take us behind the scenes as LDH and hospitals responded to the
outbreak over the previous two years, how the pandemic has impacted our lives and
the position vaccines have performed throughout that point.

“To have a vaccine developed from begin to end with full security
and efficacy testing in lower than a yr from the time that this virus entered
this nation is nothing in need of miraculous,” Dr. Kanter mentioned in Episode 1 of
Vax Issues. “I believe these firms deserve loads of credit score for serving to save
lives. We'd (have) misplaced 1000's and 1000's of extra lives within the second
yr of this pandemic if we needed to take care of it with out the device of those
vaccines.”

Dr. Kanter additionally talks concerning the significance of the vaccine and
different FDA-approved instruments which might be out there or will turn into out there within the
coming months to battle COVID.

Future subjects will take a look at vaccine distrust amongst minorities,
vaccines and fertility, how outbreaks occur, and extra detailed seems to be at our
most typical and well-known vaccines.

Within the trailer for the Vax Issues podcast, Deaton introduces the
podcast by saying, “For many years, vaccines had been one thing most of us in all probability
didn’t give a lot thought to. Then COVID occurred and out of the blue vaccines had been all
we thought of. At present, info about vaccines matter greater than ever.”

Vax
Issues may be discovered and downloaded on all the highest podcast platforms together with Apple, Google Podcast, Spotify, Audible and
Stitcher.