Dr. Mel discusses COVID 19, it’s variants and its effects on Black Men with her guests.

What are some things to know about the Omicron variant?

Dr. Mel: This is a new variant of coronavirus. It has multiple mutations in the spike protein. Which appears to be giving it an advantage of being more transmissible, more contagious. And it’s been found in multiple countries throughout Africa, Asia and the W.H.O.has called it a variant of concern because it does appear to be more contagious. So it was first spotted or detected in South Africa. That doesn’t mean it originated there. It just means that the south Africans have an excellent public health surveillance system. They picked it up there first and they saw that their case rates doubled in like a week – just shot up exponentially

How has COVID affected Black Men?

Dr. Mel: Figures from a CDC report earlier this year showed that life expectancy for black men during the pandemic thus far fell by three full years between 2019 and 2020. And that’s compared to one and a half years for whites, at least half of that was due to COVID 19. You know, there was an article in ProPublica published last year. That was actually the inspiration for this show. It was entitled “How COVID 19 hollowed out a generation of young black men”. And it states that black men aged 35 to 44, at one point in the pandemic were dying at nine times the rate of their white male peers.

If a person is getting monoclonal antibodies treatments, why get the vaccine?

Dr. Goodjoin: What you want to do is avoid getting COVID in the first place. Come on. And I think that, you know, and, and also, you know, like we talked about, there’s a window in which getting monoclonal antibodies is effective. If you’re outside of that window, then you know, you are likely not to get it also. I know at one point there was a limited supply, so there’s not a guarantee, even if your hospital has it, that you would be able to get it in a timely enough way to actually get protected. I think the important thing is to let people know vaccines are an inexpensive, easy way of preventing disease and disease spread. So that is why you wanna opt for that. There’s even the pill that Merck is developing.