It's Thursday July. I'm Oscar Mrors from the Daily Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America. Mask and vaccine mandates are coming. COVID cases are rising, and so is the anger. There's a growing frustration that the vaccinated are having with the unvaccinated as we see the majority of cases are all happening with those refusing the shot. Ronnie Rabin, health reporter at the New York Times, joins us for all the anger surrounding vaccines. Thanks for joining us, Ronnie,
thank you for having me. We're seeing rising cases of COVID out there right now. Mask mandates are starting to be implemented again. Vaccine mandates in certain form and fashion are starting to happen. As we see these rising cases and all of this stuff, we're also seeing something else rise, the anger surrounding all of this. And now this has been happening for some time. People on both sides of things. People are angry at the unvaccinated for not doing it.
The pandemic is ongoing still. We should be close to ending this thing, but we're not getting and as I said, tensions just continue to rise with all of this. So Ronnie, you spoke to a lot of people about this. What are we seeing, Well, we're seeing the people who have been vaccinated are furious at the people who are not, who are refusing to get vaccinated, which is a substantial number in our country. I asked him, one of you anger,
He said, no, I'm outraged. People want their lives back, and they see these hope outs as blocking the way to normality, back to normality and prolonging this and making it more painful. Another I know you have these people who are saying, I'm making an individual choice. I'm not
ready to make it. It's a personal choice. But people have been vaccinated and feel like it's not really just a personal choice because it has implications for society because when you get infected, you pass this on to other people. We need to think about the collective good, and so there's a lot of frustration, a lot of frustration. Sometimes it turns out it comes up in personal relationships you mentioned in the article too. Let's say a mask mandate
people hated whatever. That's kind of the easiest of all of these things that are going on. Wear a mask. But these rising case rates, really, as you mentioned, start having societal changes and impacts plans for school reopenings, workplace reopenings. That's huge right now. The CDC just recommended that everybody in a K through twelve, environment, students, two teachers, all of that have to start wearing masks. This starts changing
so much stuff. When these case rates keep going up and people do not get their vaccinations and we have a new very transmissible variant, you know, that's a big factor to consider. This new delta variant is much more infectious,
much more contagious than the early variant. Wise, and you mentioned kids and in detail, like people who are most concerned or parents of children who are under the age of twelve, and they don't have the option of getting vaccinated, so they are really kind of subject to the whim of other people around them. So parents are very concerned.
Another group are very concerned, our parents and loved ones of healthcare workers and healthcare workers themselves who are really not sure they can do this again, so draining, it's so exhausting what they've been through. They put their lives at risk. We're facing a shortage of nurses because of this. Nurses are just burning out, and nurses are the soldiers in the hospital they're the ones doing the real day
to day work. And a doctor said to me today, you know, to see a young patient come in so sick and know that it could have been prevented, that it was preventable, it's just heartbreaking. So you've got all these forces at work and people want brass tacks. They're tired of asking offering a lottery tickets, concert tickets, a hundred dollar toward college, whatever, all the stuff. They're tired of that. They say it's time for serious measures, vaccine
mandates or restrictions on people's movement. You can't go into this bar if you're not vaccinated. You can't go into the Seris concert. You can't get on airplane, you can't get on a bus, you can't come to work. You really serious things that would curb people's participation in life if they are not willing to get on the vaccination train. I want to focus on that just a little bit more. Right now, at seven percent of Americans ages twelve and
old are fully vaccinated. That's kind of current number that we have. But talking about how how people are fed up with it, right a lot of them are starting to have a lack of sympathy to for people, you know, if they get sick. It's almost like, well, you kind of deserve that. People that you talked to said, let's
start withholding stimulus payments. The people aren't getting vaccinated, and you know, a lot of this stuff won't happen, but this is how strongly they feel about it that we need to do some more coercive measures to start getting people vaccinated. Well, we took we with help federal funding from highway funds from states when we wanted them to reduce their speed limit. This is a matter of life
and death too. So you say it won't happen, and maybe there's not political will, but the federal government does have some things in its pocket that it can do if it wants to hold certain funds or you know, take especially against states that don't meet certain bars. There are things that can do that can be done if there's a will. I think many people feel like the
government is not ready to go there yet. And what we're seeing now in as cities and possibly federal government saying to work as well, we want you to get vaccinated and if not, get tested once a week. Those are not the equivalent, right exactly, And right now. Changing somebody's mind is is such a slow process. It's a very individual process. You spoke to somebody as well, who after some careful prodding, speaking to her doctor, she finally decided, Okay, yeah,
I'm ready for this now. She's actually a health home health age, she's a caregiver. The parent of the person she takes care of had been talking to her constantly about it. Most of her information had come from WhatsApp and social media sources where people have been sending her things that she laughed at. You know, it's a microchip, it's the market, the beast. She hadn't gotten any direct information from a healthcare provider, from a public health agency.
She hadn't gotten any clear, succinct information. All the information was coming to social media. When she went to see a doctor, and this as a doctor she had a long time relationship with who she really trusted. I think she's known her over ten years. She trusted that doctor. So yeah, we don't right now how doctors involved in this process very much. We've had these mouth vaccinations and we really need to get people now. Everyone has their
own personal doctor in America. Not everyone has access to doctor, but we certainly the healthcare providers stepping in use their doctors are trusted. Yeah, exactly, and a lot of experts say that's one of the premier ways to help somebody get the information and help make that decision. But you know, as I mentioned, as the pandemic continues to go on, that frustration continues to grow as well. So hopefully we can get a handle on it and get back to normal,
as a lot of people have been saying. Ronnie Rabin, health reporter at the New York Times, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you. I'm Oscar Ramirez, and this has been reopening America. Don't forget effort today's big news stories. You can check me out in the Daily Dive podcast every Monday to Friday. So follow us on I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcast.