COVID-19 AMA: Pfizer Asking For Approval Of Boosters For All Adults, A Look At Case Rates In LA, California, And Nationwide And More
In our continuing series looking at the latest medical research and news on COVID-19, Larry Mantle speaks with Huntington Hospital's Dr. Kimberly Shriner.
Topics today include:
- Pfizer seeking FDA approval for boosters for all adults
- L.A. County sees 34 percent spike in cases over two weeks
- California's COVID-19 fortunes reverse as cases begin to climb
- After weeks of decline, COVID-19 case rates have stalled at a high level
- Nearly 1m kids age 5-11 will have their first COVID-19 shots by end of today
- Why people with depression and mood disorders now qualify for booster shots
Los Angeles City Council Has A New Redistricting Map
Every ten years, city council district boundaries are redrawn using census date results with the goal of keeping each district’s population roughly equal. On Tuesday, The Los Angeles City Council voted to approve a new draft of the map, advanced by the city’s ad-hoc redistricting committee. The map’s reshaping comes with a bundle of controversy, as council members vie to represent particular communities and key economic assets. Take for example, USC and Exposition Park, which the new map has placed in Council District 8 and Council District 9 respectively. Council member Marqueece Harris-Dawson who represents district 8, which has the largest concentration of Black residents, called this a “travesty” and asked that Exposition Park be restored to his district to help economic development in his district.
Today on AirTalk, Larry is joined by KPCC senior politics reporter, Libby Denkmann, and professor of political science at Loyola Marymount University, Fernando Guerra.
With files from LAist. To read Libby Denkmann’s full story click here.
A New Report Highlights Disparities in Attendance And Graduation Rates For California’s Latino Students
About 50% of students in California are Latino, but only 14% of Latino adults have college degrees. That’s just one finding from a new report by the Campaign for College Opportunity. Discrepancies also appear in Latino students’ graduation and transfer rates from community colleges. The campaign hopes their report will inspire change from state leadership, college admissions boards, all the way down to the classes made available to highschoolers.
Today on AirTalk we’re joined by the campaign’s senior vice president Audrey Dow to learn about what they uncovered in their report. We’ll also hear from Erica Rosales, executive director at College Match LA, to hear how this report will impact current Latino college applicants.
Author, Journalist Sam Quinones Returns To Look At Systems That Need Reimagining To Deal With New Wave Of Synthetic Drugs
Last week on AirTalk, author and journalist Sam Quinones joined us to talk about his new book “The Least of Us” which explores how a new wave of synthetic drugs like meth and fentanyl that are much stronger than their predecessors have pushed many Americans into the grips of addiction. But in our limited time with Sam last week, we weren’t able to dive as deep as we wanted to with Sam into how he sees certain systems being reimagined to deal with this new wave of drugs.
Today on AirTalk, Sam Quinones returns to the show to talk with Larry about some of the ideas from his latest book “The Least of Us” on how these systems might change to adapt to these powerful new synthetic drugs.
The Controversial Study That Divided Twins And Triplets, And What It Teaches Us
The 2018 documentary “Three Identical Strangers” tells the story of triplets, separated at birth, who randomly found each other in 1980. But as Cal State Fullerton psychology professor Nancy Segal details in her new book “Deliberately Divided: Inside the Controversial Study of Twins and Triplets Studied Apart” they weren't the only siblings with a story like this. The triplets were part of a large scientific study in the 1960s engineered by psychoanalytic psychiatrists Viola Bernard and Peter Neubauer. Through the New York City adoption agency Louise Wise Services, an unknown number of twins and triplets were separated, placed in different homes, and subjected to home visits for years. Segal’s new book includes extensive interviews with the twins and triplets involved in the study, as well as their families and researchers, to look at the consequences of the social experiment.
Today on AirTalk, Larry talks with Segal - a leading expert on twins - about what she found and the lesson we can learn from the study.