Back That Vax Up

looking at the time. I don't want it all. I'm just trying to get with my Yeo, hey yo, I spill what I have to say. Still gonna cross the name style so ill that you will get your back today drowning the trenches. You sound so ridiculous, act disturbed like you're down with the sickness, and I fucking get up. They just want clicks to make a quick buck. They'll post on Facebook talking about they want to shipped up you fucking microchips. Yeah yeah, that's my cycle ship that

I don't like a bit. They read memes and never recite a quick They're gonna mess around in this COVID ship going ignite again. A swamp certified to beating us just like I'm psycho lest Stope Knife, homie, you might guess what's up? What's going on? My name is Dope Knife. We are waiting on reparations. So what is what is going on in the world? I mean, obviously fucking white

men are killing everyone again? Are we did they find they find the person who did the Colorado That one white guy killed a bunch of Asian people and other people in Atlanta? And I actually do not know the details of the shooting that happened on Monday me neither the one in Colorado. Yeah, I haven't. I haven't heard too much about the suspect or or anything. It's it's really fucked up that whenever the ship happens, we're kind of waiting to hear what the suspect was before we

formulate what our opinion of the whole thing is. Right, It's like, what, like what pattern does it fit into? Does it fit into the lone wolf? Uh? You know an evangelical Christian who with mental health problems who had a bad day? Or is it like some scary brown person for whom we should then then close the borders and the band Islam or you know whatever, Like depending on whose narrative, Like both sides, you know, of the left and right are waiting for it to confirm the

pattern that that furthers their agenda. I feel. So we had it was ten people that were killed at the Colorado grocery store. Um, I mean, you know, it's again just going back to what you were just saying. It's like depending on what the what the details of the suspect are. It's like, depending on your political your plitical persuasion, you have an opinion of the whole incident. But at the end of the day, it's fucking that's eighteen people in like a week. Yeah, just gone over some stupid

ship in the common denominator. At the end of the day, regardless of what the motivation is, is like, you know,

there's more guns than people in the country. Yeah. And you know, something that I wanted to talk on this topic about briefly before we get into the meetup today's episode is um pushback from the left about the rights uh quick seizure of the narrative of mental illness and the importance of mental health in scenarios like these, and folks saying that, oh, you know, to to claim that these are you know, these are that mental health is to blame and not gun control. Fur their stigmatized as

mental health. But I kind of like, like, as I come to understand mental health care is also like behavioral health, like are you doing are you you like, do you have healthy coping mechanisms? Are you doing healthy behaviors? Are you doing health behaviors that hurt you and other people? And whine and like you know, health they like connecting people to health care that supports them in in like healthy behaviors as a part of the of the mental health um uh picture. I like, I don't really have

a problem with as much of anything. I think that like we need to just digmatize mental health and and behavioral health and think more like holistically about the ways

this influences crime and and myriad um instances. Um you know, like if somebody's stealing slim gems from seven eleven, like they ain't acting right and maybe there's some systemic and environmental factors like maybe they're hungry, maybe they're just acting a fool, and like connecting someone with mentorship or a doctor or who ever to talk through like you know, why are you doing? Function? Can prevent all kinds of

crime from happening. I believe as a part of like, you know, an abolitionist framework of how we stop these things from happening. And I wanted to get your take on on like the whole like the seizure of like the mental health angle for explaining why this happens, and like how you feel about it. Yeah, no, I I really don't like it, honestly. I mean, it's weird because I agree with everything you just said, but at the same time, I think I'm about to contradict that you

let me know. But um, I don't understand why there's a rush to associate somebody's willingness or ability to kill another person with mental illness. Like I think I think somebody can be completely sound of mind and take a life. Okay, yeah, I would disagree, but like, respectfully, like I feel that I understand. I feel like, if you want to take a life, you ain't right man, like, and I'm not

and I'm not just say that. And I want to make clear that I am separating this from like people who might say, like, oh, racism is mental illness or something like that. Like, I mean, I think there's a lot of education to be done that is in line with other preventative practices, akin to access to mental health care that helped I guess in a sense, d program folks from racist, misogynistic, otherwise hateful um ideologies that then

drive this violence. But at the same time, I feel like if you could, if you can look at another person to just take their life, like without coercion, not like you're in the military or something. I mean, in in the overwhelming majority of circumstances, I would definitely agree.

But I just like you said, I mean, people jump on it so quickly that for me personally, I feel hesitant to just immediately jump into that because like if I don't know, if if somebody has like some fully written thought out manifesto before they do some horrible act, I don't know, I'm not quick to say that, oh, that person is mentally disturbed because like they had a plan. Yeah,

I understand. I guess perhaps the way another way to look at it, it's like therapy is a form of education, and like counseling and the form of education, it's teaches you about yourself, teaches you how to deal with the world, and so like educate, like people also self educate through YouTube videos about why should hit Jews or like as we're talking about today, like why vaccines aren't real and so like underpinning a lot of this violence is like

bad bad things people learn, they learn to hate, they learn to hate people, They learn to hate you know, women or Asian women or Asian people or or people, and um that can be unlearned as well. And yeah, and so like I think this is a longer you know, uh,

the conversation for a different day. We can delve into a more topic that are more and more in depth, and like I'd love to you know, if anyone listening has readings to recommend around either side of this issue, I would love to read them to become more informed.

But just like my feeling is that yeah, like you ain't like yeah, pretty much you ain't right if you shave be able to take about people's lives without coercion, um and either like d programming of some sort, be it like you need to learn some different ship or you're you have unhealthy coping mechanisms that could be classified as a mental disorder that you need like medical help with on learning. Like ultimately that is probably I wouldn't say a quicker way to stop this from happening, but

like maybe more realistic than taking your abode guns away. Well, I mean, look, you know, I'm not advocating taking anybody guns guns away. I don't think anybody who is like an advocate of gun control. It's actually now in a post Trump era, even like the most fucking milk toast isn't that hyperbolic. No one is advocated or taking people's guns away. All I'm saying is this, and this is just some I mean, just keeping a reel with you, Like it should be harder to get a gun than

a PlayStation, y'all, And it's not. You can get a gun. You can get a gun and go kill eight people in the same day. You can't register to vote and vote exactly. Like, Yo, this ship is just all it's all backwards. It's completely backwards. I agree. But yeah, let's get let's get into the what we're gonna or at leasta serve them up. What we got going on today. This is the second to last episode of season one of the Waiting on Reparations podcasts, and we got a

good one for you today. So, the early indications are that the Biden administration is comming along with their vaccination program. So far they've got a hundred and twenty seven million people have been given at least a ghosts and over forty million people have been fully vaccinated with the two doses, and you know they'll be good to go and some

weeks and months um. And this also included close to three million people getting a shot in a one day earlier this month, so you know it's it's it's moving along at a quick pace. Earlier this week, the Georgia Governor Brian Kemp announced that everyone under the age or everyone over the age of sixteen will be eligible to get their jabs starting today, so Thursday, when you guys

are listening to this. The US has ordered, optioned, or procured enough doses to immunize every single member of the population more than five times over, and all adults will be eligible for a shot by May one. By invoking the Korean War era Defense Production Act, Biden and Men's have forced the important Johnson and Johnson subcontractor into round the clock operations, so it's a variety of the vacs

got boasted faster. However, with all that, the scenari area has further inflamed vaccine debate, perhaps this time more passionate than it's been in the modern times. So today we're going to dig into that debate ourselves. Why do people feared vaccines, how do people why do people support vaccines? How prevalent is either sentiment in the black community, and how has this polarizing the subject been dealt with in the world of hip hop. We got all that and

more coming up after the jump. So we've seen how COVID has had the power to freeze the world in abstracts as of now, killing about two point seven three million people worldwide. One thing about smallpox. It was a disease that existed for three thousand years and was estimated to have killed three million people in the nine hundreds alone and have at death rate in people who got it.

It was truly discourage of people's entire lives for generations and generations, which is wild to me because I feel like we have no collective generational men marine for fear of the scenario. Like I really just feel like people don't understand how like before vaccines infectious to tea just like walked your shoot up and as a community disrupting

the economy just like devastated, devastated populations. You know, when people here are like talking about like, oh, how age expectancy has gone out, you know with times, so it's like, oh, back in the day, people used to live to be like thirty and ship like that. That's not like it's not like motherfucker's just got to be like thirty. And then it was like, oh, my heart's going out. It was disease was lifted off by pterodactyls and Yo had

smallpox and ship. And the thing I wonder is if people's treatment of COVID would be different if it killed one third of the infected today, or if Maga chads and Wall Street folks would just shrog and insists we reopened chilis. I think it's just a matter of how scary it was. I don't think COVID was scary enough to produce this efficient fear to not get people to

do stupid ship. It was for a while, like the first two months to three months of COVID, like when we thought it was gonna be like that movie Contagion for real, for real. Yeah, everybody was scared. Everybody was doing whatever the fuck, you know, medical professionals were suggesting, and then as it was like, Okay, it's not going to be that bad, that's when the dumb ship started.

I think, Yeah, I feel like there was a small contingent who, like you know, who cloned to the former president's words like its gargols balls so deeply that they were like, oh, he says it's not gonna be a big deal. You know, they were doing rallies like reopened, reopen.

You know, it's state capitals, guns and ships. We also can't forget that, like almost it was like literally the day that it was announced, Hey, this COVID ship is affecting Latino and black people disproportion in Italy, like instantly, Oh, we're good, we don't we don't need mass We're fine, Yeah,

this is not that big deal. Back to smallpox. So smallpox was the first vaccine to be developed against a contagious disease after the British doctor Edward Jenner's experiments with cowpox material showed a way to immunity against the deadly smallpox virus in seventeen As with all of history, there can tend to be a bi slant towards the white dude, but there are actually you know a few accounts of the smallpox inoculations in the fifteen hundreds, and this was

practiced in Africa, China, and India since they started doing mass vaccinations of small packs back in the early eighteen hundreds. It was met with opposition for various reasons ranging from sanitary, religious, scientific, or political. According to very well health dot com, describing the discourse around vaccines at the time, pronoculators tended to write in the cool and factual tones encouraged by the royal society, with frequent appeals to reason, modern aggressive science,

and the courtesy subsisting among gentlemen. Anti inoculators purposely wrote like demagogues, using heated tones and lowered scare stories to promote paranoia and the process of the smallpox vaccine itself too was I mean, would involved was scoring flesh on a child's arm and then inserting the lymph from a blister of a person who had gotten the vaccine a

week earlier. So you know, you hear or maybe you see that ship, and naturally, as you know, parents aren't really going to be like, oh that's dope, I can't wait to do that ship. You know, back in the eight hundreds and ships, and this to me, I think echoes today in my own at least, uh sense of vaccine hasidency. I have my own reasons for like I'm gonna wait a little bit, but um, I am gonna get the jab at at some point. But as with

the smallpoxes, smallpox vaccines kind of ekey procedure. When I hear about the side effect the cup of job, it does make me feel kind of like, oh, like I gotta pick a good day and ago just kidd get sick. Some people have like weakness in an arm or like they're just laid out for a day, which does make

a little bit harder. Like I had a friend who was like shopping in a Kroger and they announced over the speaker that they had left everdoses that anyone could come in, come get in line and get the job. And she just like walked over to the pharmacy and

just got one randomly. And I feel like I couldn't do it so nonchalantly, to be honest, But I feel like this this um, this reaction, this public reaction to like what the vaccine can do to you, like in the like in the very real terms, like you know, knowing what the procedure was for getting smallpox at the time in the eighteen hundreds, or like hearing what the side effects are today. It makes me think of the recent controversy over am I coming out as anti vaccine.

I think she tweeted out, if I had to choose the vaccine or chip, I'm going to choose death um And in response to Twitter backlash, she explained in America then to be vaccinate my child before the school, before the school admission. It was the hardest thing to not have that choice over this as a mother. I never want to feel that again. He was so sick for three weeks then docs had to pump up with antibiotics

to reduce the fever from the three vaccines. So like seeing like real side effects that vaccines do you have, turning people off to their usage, I think is like a real source of vaccine hesitancy that we can't just

brush off. It was like, oh, paranoia or you know, I guess you can't appeal to reason, like the larger purpose of you know, well, it's better you're sick for a couple of like for a day, and then you're fucking dead, right and your families to burrow you with the money they don't have because four doesn't pay for ship um, like you know, I mean, I guess my thing is like I don't. I don't hold it against anybody for being scared of the notion of vat vaccines

and vaccinations. I mean I have like queasiness and worries and fears and the same thoughts that any of the

those people have to For me. Where it gets over the pale is when in order to rationalize that, you start coming up with like stupid ship like microchips in you know what I mean, Like if just be scared, even if like yo, I don't trust doctors or I don't trust modern medicine or whatever, like, even that to me is a whether I agree with it or not, it's a it's an argument that is like based it's you know, some reasoning I can understand, you know, I

just don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I think there's tangible things to be worried about that you don't have to stretch. Yeah, I was curious. So when we when we hear this description of during the smallpox era, of the types of red rick used by pro inoculators versus anti inoculators. Um, how how have you seen folks

on both sides communicate their perspectives? I feel I feel like impressionistically, I have seen somewhat of the same pattern of like actually a lot of people just like spitting facts if they're like I'm gonna go get the vaccine and this is the data on whye and like, you know, appeals to reason about you know, the good of man kind versus like yeah, yeah, kind of like just you know, demagoguery like scare stories or really more so than that, just like dumbass ship that I kind of can't tell

what people are joking, Like when I see people like posting about like yeah I ain't getting the micro chip, like I have. My initial reaction I was like, oh, this nik playing around. It's funny, like, you know, laughing at whatever. Somebody has to write l O L at the end of some ship like that in yeah, you gotta write l O L at the end of that for me to be like all right, you know, otherwise I'm just gonna just gonna assume because people believe all

type of ship. Now, the of courts that I've seen is like I don't want to say surprising, but just like I think personally, I feel like I've encountered more people that are hesitant to get the vaccine at least this early. And these are like people who wear their masks all the time and do all the things, you know what I'm saying, and that's how they feel, and I was it kind of makes me want to ask you.

I hate to answer a question with a question, but do you think that the vaccine would be coming out this soon if people were more um, if people were following COVID protocol more and longer, like if like, just imagine if the whole political divide on the issue was non existent and everybody was socially distancing and wearing the masks and taking the whole taking it seriously, you know,

like a life or death issue. Do you think that that would have kind of not made the immediate urgency to like get the vaccine out at an unprecedented I think that, Like, we are very greedy country. Even if we had had like fucking six deaths this whole time, we would have still bought up five times the amount of vaccine we needed to inoculate the entire population, just because we have the resources to do it. And like we don't give a shit about anybody else. Honestly, that's

how I feel. I feel you on that, so, gentleman. Smallpox. Once again. In that era, clergy thought that the vaccine was Unchristian because it came from animals. Some believe it would make you stick because it contained poisonous chemicals, namely carbolic acid. Though sound in the vaccine, just like now, there was a general distrust in medicine and people weren't

totally sold on generous ideas and methods. A section of people believe smallpox had something to do with atmosphere, but mainly, and this will sounds familiar, they felt that it was by halting their personal liberty. It's like today. Government mandates and rolledouts only hated up the tension. The Vaccination app ordered mandatory vaccination for entrance up to three months, all which would have Piste m I a off a great deal.

The the Anti Vaccination Society of America started in eighteen seventy nine, and then the New England Anti Compulsory Vaccination League of them Nigga's got a league at the end of their ship, and also the Anti Vaccination League of New York City came shortly after and they were launching court battles. Um they were trying to get vaccination laws repealed in several states, including California, Illinois, and Wisconsin. Playwright George Bernard Shaw, who was an aderant proponent of how

do you say that? Uh? Playwright George Bernard Shaw, who was an ardent proponent of homopathy and eugenics, was like one of the main voices of the anti vaxx movement during the time, did not know that. As more and more vaccines began to rapidly roll out. Um as the nineteen hundreds went on, whooping cough in polio means its three months in ninety sixty seven and rubella in nineteen one, the anti vaccination movement scaled up as well. So can you hear the cat in the background? Do I need

to throw him in the closet or something? So? Per the history of vaccines, at or anti vaccination positions and vaccination controversies are not limited to the past and the Midnight seventies. International controversy over the safety of the dip theory of tetanus and per TESSAs immunization erupted in Europe, Asia,

Australia and North America. In the United Kingdom, opposition resulted in response to report from the Great Ormond Street Hospital for six Children in London, which allowed that thirty children suffered neurological conditions. Following DTP immunization, television documentaries and newspaper reports drew public attention to the controversy. An advocacy group, the Association of Parents Against Vaccine Damaged Children. Yo, your

childe dammage? You got a damaged as kid? Sorry? Okay, damn damaged Okay also also peak public interests in the potential risk and consequences of DTP. Members of the a p v d C continued to argue in court recognition and compensation, but we're denied both due to the lack

of evidence linking the DTP immunization with harm. Getting even closer we got British doctor Andrew Wakefield recommended further investigation to the possible relationship between bow disease autism and the MMR vaccine, and today we're in the center of the current debate over this COVID vaccine. But what do you so, just generally, what are your what is your stance on like vaccines? Just in general, like would you describe yourself as pro vaccine. I don't know vaccine or anti vaccine.

I am pro vaccine. I mean like I am passively pro vaccine and that like I am not like a warrior out here on the social media, like you know, like screaming about how we all need to go get vaccine, and we I mean we do, but I do feel like I like passively accept that if like the CDC

says some is legit, then that's probably legit. They're very smart doctors, and I am not smartning my doctor, and so um I understand, Like I mean, outside of the logistical concerns about getting it with regards to like getting like recognizing that it can make you sick, and trying to like schedule around that with like having a busy ber schedule. I myself, like many people, I don't think I'm gonna get into this a little bit more later, you know, have a constant no take that into consideration

with how soon I will get the vaccine. But in general, like I trust the science ie like which is like such an interesting phrase because like it's not like people have read the studies. Like when I hear like my friends who have gotten like wasted with at the bar or whatever. So I don't trust the silence. I'm like,

you don't. I don't know the science. We're just stressing other people who saily dress the science too, who say they're doctors and so like, like like with every bit of information we get, it's like, you know, you're doctorally cool, you know, like, and some people just listen to the bad doctors. I guess, um, but I trust scientific consensus. I feel the same way with cove it, you know, I I trust the ship. I have like anecdotal stuff of like people I know who have gotten the vaccine

and my mom's gotten it. And but at the same time, I understand, like if if if the numbers reflect that some alarming number of people are skeptical or hesitant about the COVID vaccine, I personally understand it because if you tell people, yeah, it usually takes ten years or four years or whatever to come up with one of them, and you come up with the ship in like seven months, I would imagine people would be like, I'm a wait until the update, you know, Like you know, I I understand,

I understand it is what I'm saying. I I kind of hate when people are quick to de legitimize people like, oh you're crazy or oh you're conspiracy theorists. Yeah, I hate that we did come up with this ship pretty rad really, that it should be a reason to be like, wait, It's like when they come up with a new game console.

I'm not getting that shift first. I'm gonna let y'all motherfucker's get that ship first so I can hear how it is, and then you know, maybe wait for them to come up with the update because I'm like, oh, this version that should have bugs, so we updated it, you know, whether it's a game, councile or cell phone. I'm not just Russian. When they when they put out the first version of it, I want to, you know,

just my own personal peace of mind. I want to make sure that it's been you know, crowd tested, mother approved before I go and get it. So again, I'm just saying I understand people having I just understand where that feeling is coming from. So half the states in America I have seen a decline over the past decade and the take up rates among kindergarten children of vaccines against diseases such as means those moms happatitis being polio.

That was before COVID and Georgia. In Arkansas, the decline was more than six This is from the c d C. We know that a disease that is apparently under control can suddenly return because we've seen it happen in countries like Japan, Australia, and Sweden. Here's an example from Japan. Nineteen seventy four, about eight percent of Japanese children were getting whooping cough vaccine. That year, there were only three hundred and ninety three cases of whooping cough in the

entire country. Not a single person had a death related to it. Then immunization rates begin to drop, until only about ten percent of children were being vaccinated. In nineteen seventy nine, more than thirteen thousand people got whooping cough and forty one died. When routine vaccinations were resumed, the disease numbers dropped again. The chances of your child getting a case of measles or chicken pox or whooping cough might be quite low today, but vaccinations are not just

for protecting theirselves. They are not just for today. They also protect people around you, so of whom might may be unable to get certain vaccines or might have failed to respond to a vaccine or might be susceptible to other for other reasons. And they also protect our children's children and their children by keeping diseases that we feel we've almost defeated for making a comeback. What would happen

if we stopped taking vaccinations. We could soon find ourselves battling epidemics for diseases we thought we had conquered decades ago. And so that's like the over ar king you know. Uh, moral argument, I think is that it's not just for you, it's for society, which I think is is one of

the reasons why there maybe some nut skepticism. But just like nonchalance about getting the COVID vaccine, because you can still get COVID, you just won't get sick and die from it, you can still pass it to other people, you still have to keep wearing a mask um et cetera. And so like people who are young and think that they're invincible anywhere, like why should I get the vacs scene it's not gonna kill me anyway, And it's still gonna kill my grandma anyway, Like what's the big old deal?

And so figuring out how to then argue that effectively you know without this, you know uh this this uh common good. Um. Part of the argument operating is strongly I think it's one of the difficulties that we're facing. So according to a few research poll only of African Americans say they would take the COVID nineteen vaccine. And

I think that says multiple sources. I think, yes, there's this misinformation, and that's why it's important for us to undertake grassroots educational efforts so that vaccine information is coming from people that we trust. From your neighbor, from your pastor you might see your auntie posting a selfie for her getting the vaccine, and it normalizes the idea for you. I think that's really important because getting information from the CDC, who the fund is? The CDC, you know, like who

like who? Who is the Department of Public else for Northeast Georgia like who? Like what? Who are you? Why do you care? But um, getting information where people who are you know, like trusted sources helps it feel like, it helps reinstill that sense of common good of like we're looking out for you, could we love you? And do we care about you? Know? But I think in an underappreciated problem stems from our general relationship as African

Americans to privatized health care. In America, black people are disproportionately underinsured or uninsured, and being underinsured having insurance but having exorbited an out of pocket costs attached to that may prevent one of utilizing health care services. Thinking about the fact that for African Americans, the average annual costs

for healthcare premiums is about of the average household income. Like, if you're spending that much to go see a doctor, even if you have insurance, you might not do it. Like you might then lean on insurance as a backup in the case in case of a health emergency, but shy away from taking preventative steps that you fear might

cost you. So even if you have insurance, navigating the complex web of premiums copais sobriet of pills, I mean you don't have a strong relationship with a primary care provider,

or have a primary care provider at all. So um folks that are underinsured are uninsured already just have like a weak relationship with our health care system such that you know they're not going to see a doctor and you know getting advice from them about whether they're eligible or whether it's smart for them to get it because they have underlying conditions, not even though they have an online conditions, because they're not going to see a doctor, you know, and so like the idea and then that

creates like a psychological barrier. So like just going to get the vaccine because you don't regularly go see doctors is part of the issue. And UM, I've argued this with access to the polls. I think the same applies to access to education and a good job. And yes, vaccination, UM, that acts the idea of access is really important to just access to anything. UM, it's really important to understand

and impacts of vaccination willingness as well. Think about people living neighborhoo it's underserved by public transportation, or being a person that lacks reliable personal transportation like a car. UM. Think about you know that impacts what you know, whether you will fucking get off work it's at you know, five thirty and try to catch the bus to make it to the Kroger by six to get your vaccine, etcetera. Like you said, it's just like with voting. It's just

like with voting. It's just like with you know why, oh, why didn't you go back to you know, community college and get your finished degree. You're like, oh, why don't you get a job to pay more? All like access like ties is tied many many issues in our community and to define in some of the following ways, think about also black people's overrepresentation and office support at food

service and production work industries. Off the long hours and no pay time off, are we really expecting these people to lose a day's pay to go get the jab and be laid out in bed because it makes you sick afterwards, let alone use your time off to scoutur six websites can call the Department of Hell to try and maybe fail to get an a point in the

first place. So access with regards to time like you know, whether or not you have the time to navigate these this uh you know these websites figuring out how to get the bus to place or where the places or calling the doctor's office, all these things. How to recover from the aftermath, right except to work sixty hours a week or whatever, which is disproportionately after America. And then digital literacy I think also plays into this and my

work recently on a grassroots campaign for vaccine outreach. We struggled with coming up with materials simple enough to reach folks who may be dropped out of high school or who are elders who weren't familiar with the technical terms. And I want to run this by you and just see, like to show you, like what problem like we ran into to the addition to like navigating a website or whatever, even if we were just trying to explain to people

who was eligible at the time. Thank for example, of the eligibility requirements for Phase one B of George's vaccine rollout, You'd be eligible if you are quote unquote an essential worker in critical non healthcare infrastructure sectors. That's what the Department of Health told us to tell people. Now, Mac, what then do you think that means? I have no idea. I'm sitting here trying to think about an essential worker

in critical infrastructure sectors non healthcare related. So I mean I would consider the grocery store worker in a critical right would that count? Right? Good question? So, even in trying to like get people the information they need to make these informed decisions about their health, like the like get any favors by talking in like this these fucking jargon. Man,

this is a very weird flyer. Yeah, and this is so this is the fly so magazineon this flyer that we made to distribute to people at food distribution like mask food distribution sites and like churches and like going into the door talking to people. This is about the Department of Public Health told us to tell people. It's like, yo, do you all not know like what people like just life in these streets like like this is just not not even for like black people, just for regular apport

point blanks generally. Who the funk knows what this ship means. It's a bus driver critical infrastructure exactly, Like I mean, teacher is what is teaching? Is education infrastructure? Like I don't know, Like okay, So we see the issue. So there's there's interweaving aspects of access, transportation, literacy, wage labor that that flow into the vaccine debate. I think that it's the fact that of African Americans say that they

can take the vaccine. It's not that people have watched too many like whackul do YouTube videos doing fake research. Is that folks are often too burdened to give a shit, and we gotta work on that. I feel you on that. Yeah, although, as we're about to get into in the music discussion section, there are plenty of people that believe fucking crazy that are probably not helping the matter. We're gonna get into that. That was a damn good teaser for that. We're gonna

get into that after the job. Okay. So in the music discussion today, we're going to be discussing and showcasing some instances where the topic of vaccinations have come up in hip hop. Um off the bat, we want to start with an example of something that's completely current having to deal with COVID. So there is a YouTube channel called Hip Hop Public Health and they have a series of rap videos called Community Immunity or Rap Anthology. It's

about vaccines. It's like rap songs to promote COVID immunity, and um here we've the whole thing was featured on PBS The News Hour and for one of those, we're going to check out the track by d m C which is part one of the series. That's what are vaccines and why do they work? That's literally what the track is called. Trust Me, Believe Me. We're not gonna have another tusk oh Okay, Yeah, I mean it's like,

you know, like full special vibes. Yeah, and it's like I don't even think necessarily it would be like the subject matter alone would make it corny. Like aesop Rock just dropped a song this week about a frog, a crime fighting frog, and it's super adorable and the flow is really dope. And that's the critical thing is that they don't just do good rappers to do this song.

I love DMC, you know, but yeah, you know it's DMC spitten you know, some yes, some nineteen eighties wraps, and it's like, I guess it's just like not in today's like it's just but whenever you be like making like a rap song where it's like, hey, y'all should do this, it takes a very very particular execution to not have it sound hokey and after school special life, because that's that's that's mainly like the thing that repels me about this, it's just it has is it falls

into the I don't I think it's called the white elephant, not fallacy, but like the like if someone tells you don't think of an elephant, what do you think of exactly? Yeah, you're at so when They're like, it's it has nothing to do with race. I'm like, oh, someone said it

has something to do with race. M hmm. Like reinforces that idea in people's mind, even say oh, but this ain't no Tuskegee referencing the Tuskegee experiment Um where they studied the full progression of UH syphilis in primarily black sharecroppers down to Macon County, Alabama. So they didn't they didn't tell people. They didn't tell these dudes, and they were giving them cyphilists. They're they're only gonna hear snippets.

So I mean pretty much, you know, it's D M see from N D M C. And he's just like he's just like spitting a bunch of pro vaccination like facts. I guess you know what I mean. I guess it was. It's it's like almost like pre empting, you know, the arguments that are against vaccination dispel myths, but in doing so, it doesn't take any time to talk about why you should get vaccinated, like arguments. Now you want to hit the skating rink, you know, you're trying to go to

the family barbecue, like get the vaccine. It's just like, hey, it's like scolding you for believing its defense and it's defense. It is just like a minute in twelve second long, like schoolhouse Rock sort of. It's even got like an animated cartoon video to it. But again it seems like to me, I'll put it to you this way, it seems like it's for kids, like little kids, that's totally cool. But it's like, this isn't gonna get teenagers or young people to be like who who are otherwise like skeptical

about vaccinations. It's not gonna get them to get on board. And to even further illustrate that part, if this exact song was made by meges, it still wouldn't get them to fuck it, you know. I mean, it's just it's just hope. Like I said, it's hokey. It's for little kids, like no, no self respecting, I'm cool. Teenager is gonna look at this and be like yeah, But honestly, if they had they had they had a video of me gooes like in the club popping bottles, is like, yeah,

we're in the club because we all got vaccinated. We don't get fucks. We can like throw down because we can't get sick. Now, kind of think that would work better, but it would have to be like Amigo song. It would have to be like Amigos like it couldn't been and it couldn't be them over a trap beat going hey, y'all,

y'all get vaccinated because you know what I mean? Like no, no, no, like no no no, all right, um, Which is funny that we just lamdbasted like the one attempts in our lists for someone to like educate people about Hey, I mean, I had that fear, but we gotta cepe it real ship wasn't hot, yo, you know, I mean it was. It was hot if you're in like preschool. Kevin Gates told Rolling Stones in two thousand sixteen that he doesn't

vaccinated his children. Gates claimed that his son and daughter were growing up in an evanced fashion and accelerated school. The largely believe this was due to them not getting vaccinated. He stressed that his stands on vaccines didn't come from bearing needles, considering the amount of tattoos he has. Rather, he explained that his children were born at home instead of a hospital. A lot of children that was born in a hospital experience a lot of difficulty that they

didn't have to experience. So again was casting doubt on traditional West traditional you know, Western medicine. Um. If you have in linking um citing causation, correlation is causation. So like, oh, my kids were born at homes, have a hospital, and then factor is looking at them growing up. It's like Kevin Gates, like, you don't think they're growing up accelerated and advance the ship because like y'all living good? Yeah, Like, I mean, there's there's no other there's no other reason

that your kids are doing good. None. It's just totally because they weren't born in the hospital. That's It's not because you're Kevin Gates and a millionaire. It's it's definitely the vaccines word. It's a roast to five nine on trick lets. The hospital they target our children, say they're gonna name May somehow get artism. So yeah, it's like it's I just don't know how else to describe that other than cringe up. Next, we got Royce again with the track on the same album Uhood Oh yeah no

this this this was on his last album. UM. This is from his last album that came out early Allegory, and it's it's crazy because I remember listening to this back in January, you know what I'm saying, And it's just like a couple of months later, we'd be in the COVID ship. But he was getting he was getting heat on him. You know, well I mean by heat, I just mean motherfucker's was complaining on Twitter, you know

what I mean. But but people, he was getting that kind of heat over that line before we were even in the COVID pandemic. But um, in the track fubou, let's let's check that out. Really not even a documentary. My son got autism from injection by syringes autism. Um, I just looked at up again, like you know, it's this correlation equating causation, like jumping the gun thing, despite the fact that no research suggests that there's any link between MMR vaccines that are given to children and austin

subtractant disorders. But like the same way that like oh I saw my friends get the COVID vaccine and I saw they got sick and now I'm nervous, or oh I saw them score my child's arm and inject like a blister from a vaccinated person, Like give make sure they don't get smallpox, and I'm a little freaked out. Like you, you search, you search for answers to make me feel more comfortable, or to like, you know, explain

away things that are unfortunate. I guess you could say no that I don't think having contentsm is unfortunate, but I clearly roys to five nine does. Let's get onto this last example from NASA off everything. A parent hates to watch his baby's face taking his first immunization shots. But this is great Chiles and direction of suffering pain understand without nothing, nothing has explained or rushed to the brain looking up at his parents face, Like I thought

you would protect me from the scary place. Why do you let them inject me? Who's gonna know? How? He said, effects gonna affect me. I feel like this is like the most reasoned, Like it's both like narratively, it like paints a very realistic portrait of just like how hard it is to watch your kids get vaccinated and like what the kids thinking, and just like yeah, I think it is very least like photo realistic in a certain sense.

I love this line. I I think that this is super dope because, like you said, it's a it's a legitimate nuance, like idea, you know what I'm saying. It's not just one line or just like an assertion you you you know you might. I could even learn that Hey, maybe like nas personally does feel that vaccines lead to autism. Maybe he really believes something like that. But I feel that concern is reflected in this line, but without an assertion of like you said, cause a ship and ship.

But I don't, Yeah, I don't. I don't find that. I don't find this problematic at all. Yeah. I think that's a realistic portrait of just like the struggle without espousing of viewpoint that then can be problematic and influence people to do a certain things that might actually negatively impact um, somebody other children. Yeah, and then is he kind of technically like rap it a little bit from

the perspective of the child? Do it's? But yeah, that that that that sounds it sounds like that nick spitting right there. All right, So that's gonna do it for us to today. Um, everybody, have a good week. Be safe out there. I'm dope Knife. We're waiting on reparations. We'll see you next week. Waiting on reparations. As a production of I heart Radio. Listen to Waiting on Reparations on the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.