TDS Time Machine | Vaccines
Vaccines are one of modern medicine's greatest achievements. And Americans have never been more upset about it. Take a listen to The Daily Show's coverage of people being weird about vaccines.
Jon Stewart breaks down the H1N1 vaccine and the immediate fear surrounding it, then reports on flu shot shortages and theft. Kristen Schaal joins to discuss mandatory shots for women's health. Desi meets the micro-influencers hired to spread the word on Covid shots, and Trevor reports on a man who got vaccinated for covid 217 times.
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Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.
Speaker 2 You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 3 As you know, the H1N1, or swine flu season, is upon us.
Speaker 2 How serious is the disease?
Speaker 5 Well, it's especially dangerous to children and pregnant women, and contracting it has been known to turn healthy young men into old Jewish ladies.
Speaker 7 Our chief medical correspondent got the virus during a recent trip to Afghanistan.
Speaker 4 Sanjay said it was the sickest he's ever been.
Speaker 8 You were quite sick as well.
Speaker 7 The cough was the worst cough I've ever had and it like even hurt my heart while I was coughing.
Speaker 8 I could barely take a couple of steps without feeling really lightheaded and again those just profound chills.
Speaker 10 See, I did not have a fever.
Speaker 2 I had explosive diarrhea.
Speaker 11 How about you?
Speaker 12 Tony, my underwear looked like the mud flaps on a swamp buggy.
Speaker 13 Back to you, Anderson.
Speaker 6 But of course, the main symptom, as always, fear.
Speaker 15 A strain of flu that nobody has ever seen before.
Speaker 7 Health officials around the world are scrambling to contain the outbreak.
Speaker 16 There are 20 confirmed cases in five different states.
Speaker 7 40 now confirmed.
Speaker 3 The pandemic is imminent.
Speaker 17 Fears grow of a global pandemic like the 1968 outbreak that killed a million people.
Speaker 3 Ah, 1968, I remember.
Speaker 4 That was the summer of.
Speaker 5 But this time, just as the virus is about to metastasize, a breakthrough.
Speaker 19 The FDA today approved swine food vaccine.
Speaker 20 We're safe.
Speaker 13 Hail Zeus, the Greek god of timely pharmaceutical research. Back to your homes, people.
Speaker 20 Nothing to see here.
Speaker 22 The H1N1 vaccine will finally become available. is it safe
Speaker 9 we finally contained the swine flu outbreak but can we contain the doubtbreak questions about the vaccine should you get it should you give it to your kids is it safe will the vaccine harm your kids or pregnant women they worry the vaccine was rushed and not adequately tested many parents are concerned because the vaccine got to market so fast Is it safe?
Speaker 12 Has it been tested?
Speaker 5 Do we really know what the government wants to inject in our bodies?
Speaker 11 Oh, oh, oh.
Speaker 3 And one other thing.
Speaker 9 Will we have enough vaccine?
Speaker 9 What are you doing to us?
Speaker 13 Is this a deadly poison? Is the vaccine a deadly poison?
Speaker 11 And are we running out of it?
Speaker 6 Does anyone develop a vaccine that inoculates against scaring?
Speaker 12 Perhaps no one embodies this fear-mongering ethos better than Dr.
Speaker 3 Glennathon Beck MD.
Speaker 14 Will you take your chances with the swine flu or the vaccine? Will you take the vaccine, give it to your children? How much do you trust your government? I think that's the main question.
Speaker 4 Wait, when did that become the main?
Speaker 18 I always thought the main question was: does the vaccine promote the growth of H1N1 antibodies that could help ward off infection?
Speaker 5 I think the virus is more interested in killing you than the government is.
Speaker 3 But I guess I'm just one of those pasteurized milk drinkers, you know.
Speaker 5 I'm sure the vaccine isn't perfect.
Speaker 3 Science certainly isn't perfect, but does everything have to be so spooky?
Speaker 6 O'Reilly, you've become Fox News's.
Speaker 6 You've become Fox News's sane guy.
Speaker 4 What's your main question?
Speaker 14 So now we have the swine flu vaccine. All right, so it comes to your town.
Speaker 14 Are you going to get the swine flu? I've decided not to share if I'm going to get it or not.
Speaker 11 Really?
Speaker 4 You talked about your ass surgery on YouTube, and now you're holding back on us?
Speaker 5 Now you've decided it's time to be a little bit more discreet and late alive.
Speaker 11 Come on, Beck!
Speaker 14
Oh, come on, Beck. I think this is important for everybody to make their own decision.
This is injecting something into your body, and there's great arguments for and against.
Speaker 3 He's right.
Speaker 4 On the for side, it protects against a potentially fatal disease, was found safe in clinical trials, and can keep you from infecting those most vulnerable to the flu.
Speaker 4 Whereas on the against side, the government's out to get you.
Speaker 5 Science is out to get you and oh sh ⁇ , look behind you.
Speaker 21 Hold it right back.
Speaker 2 We move on now to the subject of health.
Speaker 23 And believe it or not, if you've been seeing long lines of elderly people standing outside in the cold lately, it is not all-you-can-eat buffet-related.
Speaker 13 Rather, it was a product of the flu vaccine shortage fever gripping the nation with serum and short supply.
Speaker 2 State and local health departments have been forced to allocate supplies only to priority patients like the elderly, health care workers, and babies.
Speaker 18 In cases where there's still not enough vaccine to go around, babies and old people will ration the shots based on a best of three takedowns.
Speaker 20 You know what's interesting?
Speaker 18 That baby looks genuinely surprised.
Speaker 20 I don't understand what's happening.
Speaker 2 It's gotten so bad at a children's medical center in Colorado, thieves stole 62 boxes of the vaccine, which this worker was none too happy about.
Speaker 26 Could not believe that somebody would actually steal a flu vaccine.
Speaker 11 Really? You couldn't believe that?
Speaker 18 I guess, really, that's the difference between New York and Colorado.
Speaker 2 I live in New York. I once saw a guy get his prosthetic leg stolen while he was walking.
Speaker 11 tough town.
Speaker 2 The shortage arose after one of the two companies that make the vaccine had to throw out its entire batch due to bacterial contamination.
Speaker 18 Hindsight is, of course, 2020, but maybe we shouldn't have given the vaccine contract to Vincent Gallo's House of Vaccines.
Speaker 21 Now,
Speaker 23 I just feel it's not the cleanest place
Speaker 2 to manufacture vaccines.
Speaker 2 He is haunting.
Speaker 18 As the shortage threatened to become a campaign issue, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson sought to preempt panic.
Speaker 8 We've successfully worked through vaccine supply problems in the past, and we're doing so this time as well. We need all of us to take a deep breath.
Speaker 21 Don't exhale. Don't, don't exhale.
Speaker 11 We don't have any vaccine.
Speaker 20 It's the exhaling. Take a breath.
Speaker 11 Hold it.
Speaker 18 Vice President Dick Cheney offered his own unique diagnosis for the vaccine crisis, or as he prefers to call it, fluportunity.
Speaker 2 Campaigning in West Virginia, Cheney observed, quote, the problem we have run into, producing a vaccine is not a very profitable business.
Speaker 18 It's a dead-end street. Next thing you know, you're building houses for seniors, and all you got is a bunch of warm, dry old people with nothing to show for it.
Speaker 18 Yeah,
Speaker 18 we're going to get attacked.
Speaker 18 Hey, welcome back.
Speaker 2 If you watch this week's CNN Tea Party Americasm, you know that Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachman scored some points in the debate on Republican frontrunner Governor Rick Perry concerning his state-mandated HPV vaccine order.
Speaker 27 I'm a mom of three children, and to have innocent little 12-year-old girls be forced to have a government injection through an executive order is just flat out wrong.
Speaker 27 I'm offended for all the little girls and the parents that didn't have a choice. That's what I'm offended for.
Speaker 20 Advantage Bachman.
Speaker 18 And she will give that Advantage back in 3-2.
Speaker 27
There's a woman who came up crying to me tonight after the debate. She said her daughter was given that vaccine.
She told me her daughter suffered mental retardation as a result of that vaccine.
Speaker 2 And now I am repeating that assertion unchecked, assuming there is a body of evidence to back this up.
Speaker 18 I'm sure there is, right?
Speaker 2 For more on the vaccine controversy, we're joined by Daily Show Senior Women's Issues correspondent, Kristen Chaw.
Speaker 13 Kristen, thank you very much for doing it.
Speaker 13 What?
Speaker 2 What is your take on this whole vaccine issue?
Speaker 18 What is the vaccine about?
Speaker 28 Well, frankly, I'm just excited people are are talking about women's health. Anything to distract us from the terribly polarizing circumcision debate.
Speaker 28 By the way, I vote yes, not crazy about turtlenecks. You? What do you think?
Speaker 20 How does the vaccine work? How does...
Speaker 28 Well, John, when a man loves a woman very much, he gives her a special close hug with his penis. It's called.
Speaker 28 that's the street term.
Speaker 18 Let's skip ahead to after the hugging, the vaccine part.
Speaker 28 Okay, when two people who love each other,
Speaker 28 you can get an STD called the human pablomavirus. In women, HPV has been proven to cause cervical cancer.
Speaker 28 Fortunately, now there's a vaccine called GardaCell that prevents HPV, which is good because one in two sexually active people will get HPV in their lifetime. And I don't have it, so...
Speaker 28 Don't worry, John, I said sexually active.
Speaker 28 You were scared to admit it!
Speaker 18 Oh, it's so cute. I was a little scared.
Speaker 2 You know, it seems ironic.
Speaker 18 Michelle Bachman came out against the vaccine for women while Rick Perry, the man,
Speaker 18 was sort of standing for, I guess, women's health fighting HPV.
Speaker 28
Well, it's not really that strange. In some ways, it's a regional issue.
Minnesota doesn't have to worry about HPV as much because they wear so many layers.
Speaker 28
Finding genitals is next to impossible. Take it from someone who wages at the St.
Paul Hooters, okay?
Speaker 28 But I'm willing to overlook Congresswoman Bachmann's regional bias because she's the last female candidate in this race. That's why I printed up 6,000 Bachman from my cold dead vagina bumper tickers.
Speaker 18 Is that your truck? Because you drive a truck with truck nuts on them?
Speaker 28 They're lady nuts, and I happen to like them.
Speaker 11 I understand.
Speaker 2 But isn't Bachman saying the HPV vaccine causes mental retardation?
Speaker 20 Experts have pretty well debunked it.
Speaker 7 And that is, by all accounts, just flat out wrong.
Speaker 1 It's not even something that has been suggested.
Speaker 7 There's no evidence that the vaccine causes mental retardation.
Speaker 11 What? Was that? No, no, no.
Speaker 18 Do not say his name.
Speaker 18 Oh,
Speaker 28
man. There goes the market for my Michelle Bachman.
I've got an eye on your vagina condoms.
Speaker 28 No,
Speaker 21 that's creepy.
Speaker 20 They're her eyes. That's pretty creepy.
Speaker 2 I'm not not sure those are those. They looked like they were facing the camera, so I'm not sure those were.
Speaker 28 Well, John, now I'm torn. On one hand, Governor Perry is taking care of Texas vaginas, but he did it with a government mandate to force it on young girls.
Speaker 28 It's like he's trying to turn Texas into some kind of Punani state.
Speaker 28 Michelle Bachman, on the other hand, is arguing for a woman's right to choose, but only if that choice is getting cancer.
Speaker 28 The truth is, neither one is the strong pro-vadge candidate women women are looking for. But you know who I feel the worst for? The children.
Speaker 18 Because
Speaker 18 they'll be more likely to get cervical cancer?
Speaker 28 Well, that. But also because they'll never get to play with my Michelle Bachman big mouth Billy vagina.
Speaker 29 Take me to the clinic.
Speaker 29 Take me to the clinic.
Speaker 18 Did you just turn a big-mouthed billy bass into a
Speaker 18 singing vagina?
Speaker 28 Yes, and I have 10,000 of them in my garage.
Speaker 28 They all go off at once. It's a nightmare.
Speaker 11 It'll be very wild.
Speaker 8 Welcome back to the Daily Show.
Speaker 30
A big challenge of the COVID pandemic has been, well, A, breathing, and B, convincing people to get vaccinated. But one place in America thinks it has found a solution.
Desi Leidik went to find out.
Speaker 1 This last year has shown us that Americans don't trust any authority figures anymore.
Speaker 31 The government, scientists, doctors, even the English language.
Speaker 32 Maybe that's why we're ranked 46 in COVID vaccination rates.
Speaker 16 Nice job, Mauritius.
Speaker 1 But there is one group that can still convince us.
Speaker 32 Social media influencers. At least that's what the Guilford County Health Department was betting on when they partnered with 41 local social media influencers to spread some fresh fax facts.
Speaker 33 Our communities
Speaker 33 are more
Speaker 33 likely to follow guidance from people that they truly trust. So we decided to do an influencer marketing campaign.
Speaker 26 But you're the expert. Why aren't they listening to you?
Speaker 33 Well, over the last year and a half, a lot of individuals became overnight public health experts. So I think that it also depends on personal ideology on who's an expert and who's not.
Speaker 26
Yeah, I get it. Sometimes it's better to watch the amateurs do the job rather than the pros.
It's just more authentic and natural that way.
Speaker 33 I don't think that we thought about it that way.
Speaker 34 And as a self-licensed juice therapist, I am all about avoiding public health experts.
Speaker 16 But why would influencers use their powers to fight COVID instead of their regular no makeup Mondays, throwback Thursdays, and fro yo Fridays?
Speaker 35
Most of the time, I'm just talking about food. So it's like, you guys can check this pizza out if you guys want to.
But now I felt like I actually had a role that was beyond myself, you know?
Speaker 35 So the caption of that one just says, hey, I got my vaccines. You guys should probably get yours too.
Speaker 34 Yeah, okay.
Speaker 32 But why are you wearing a shirt?
Speaker 35 We just got to get this vaccine together because we're a team and that's the only way we're going to get back to normal.
Speaker 1 Yes, that's it.
Speaker 36 We've We've had a lot of cases where medical professionals have looked aside African-Americans' problems that they may come in with.
Speaker 36 And for a lot of people in my community, it's just all-encompassing no trust in that. But as an influencer, I can influence my audience to go through the steps of getting vaccinated.
Speaker 24 I'm like the sock puppet, I guess, for those experts that they can speak to that comes off a little bit less big brother-y.
Speaker 26 A sock puppet? That's a good idea.
Speaker 29 Get the vaccine.
Speaker 16 The influencers were obviously buying the hashtag Bax Life themselves, and they've been spreading the word on their accounts.
Speaker 1 But is anyone hashtag listening to hashtag what they're hashtag saying?
Speaker 35 On Instagram, I have nearly 20,000 followers.
Speaker 36 About 2,000.
Speaker 24 I have like 1,400 followers.
Speaker 25 Basically, just like a public account.
Speaker 24 Yeah, I mean, if you're going to take advice from someone on the internet, are you more likely to take it from someone that you know? It's a community.
Speaker 24 It's not like a, I am Jesus and you are all my followers.
Speaker 16 To be fair, Jesus had 12 followers.
Speaker 24 So I do have a little more than that.
Speaker 31 More followers than Jesus?
Speaker 16 Easy there, John Lennon.
Speaker 32 But is all this nano-influencing only micro-effective?
Speaker 33 We believe that those particular influencers connect on a more personal level with their community compared to some of the larger ones that can have hundreds of thousands of followers that might not have that really
Speaker 33 personal and intimate connection.
Speaker 34 So you're using the least viral influencers to stop the virus?
Speaker 33 You can say that.
Speaker 26 Okay, so how effective is this program? Are we talking Pfizer level effective or are we talking like Johnson and Johnson, it's better than nothing?
Speaker 33 So we think that the campaign has been incredibly successful. Within two days of that content being posted, we have also seen the increase in vaccination rates.
Speaker 1 That's good news.
Speaker 25 Unfortunately, these micro-influencers are up against heavy anti-vax propaganda casting doubt on the vaccine.
Speaker 37 How many of you guys are going to be among the first to inject this experimental vaccine that's been rushed into your arms?
Speaker 1 And this anti-vax content is more infectious than COVID itself.
Speaker 33 With a social media and other platforms, it's really easy to fall into this world
Speaker 33 of
Speaker 33 personal truths.
Speaker 26 So maybe the most effective way to clean up the mess that social media has made is with more social media.
Speaker 26 Like a hair of the dog, when you have a hangover and you drink more alcohol to make it feel better.
Speaker 26 Or like when you're trying not to catch a virus and you treat your body with tiny amounts of the virus so you don't get it.
Speaker 16 What's that called?
Speaker 1 Vaccination. Yes, that's it.
Speaker 25 If the only thing to stop bad influence on social media was good influence, I wanted to give our influencers one more shot at going viral.
Speaker 11 Okay.
Speaker 29 If you're tired of staying inside,
Speaker 11 I'm very tired.
Speaker 16 What's up? I'm sorry.
Speaker 29 We want our people to just stay alive.
Speaker 29 Now's the time to roll up your sleeve sitchy now's the time to go get the vaccine vaccine vaccine get
Speaker 29 the vaccine
Speaker 11 vaccine
Speaker 16 it's okay we'll workshop it we'll get there
Speaker 9 let's begin with the COVID pandemic yes remember that
Speaker 9 next week will be four years since the day we started to take it seriously because Tom Hanks got it.
Speaker 9 Oh no, not Tom. Take Chet instead.
Speaker 9 But everything's fine now. The CDC just issued new guidance saying that you don't even have to isolate if you get COVID anymore.
Speaker 9 That's right, you can go ahead and keep coughing into people's faces as long as you feel a little bad about it afterwards.
Speaker 9 It really feels like no one's trying to avoid COVID anymore.
Speaker 10 Well, almost no one.
Speaker 19 A German man has puzzled scientists after he deliberately got more than 200 COVID-19 vaccinations. 217, to be exact, over two and a half years.
Speaker 15 That's a shot every four days, roughly.
Speaker 38 Of course, scientists are wondering what the effect was on him. First of all, he didn't report any vaccine-related side effects at all.
Speaker 38 Secondly, his immune response did show an increase in immune cells, but not necessarily a better or worse immune response. And finally, guys, he never got SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID.
Speaker 9 Sorry, 217 shots, an approach also known as the immune system bukake.
Speaker 9 If you laugh at that, you are disgusting.
Speaker 9 I mean, I know anti-vaxes are stupid, but let's not overcorrect here, all right?
Speaker 9 I will say this, though. A lot of people did their own research.
Speaker 9
This man became his own research. That's...
That's commitment. And also a nice change of pace to see Germans doing human experiments on themselves.
Speaker 9 And also, hey, I'm glad that he didn't suffer any major side effects.
Speaker 9 But sadly, for this guy, doctors still haven't found a cure for being weird as f.
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