First hour: Monroe County Legislators on active shooter preparedness training
Second hour: What is the new "COVID normal?"
Several Monroe County Legislators have been organizing training sessions in their districts to help groups and organizations know how to respond if they are confronted by an active shooter. The sessions were pushed up the agenda following the mass shooting at the Tops in Buffalo and the announcement of the "Reawaken America" tour at the Rochester Main Street Armory. That tour has since been cancelled. As our guests will share this hour, members of their districts want to know how to protect themselves. We discuss the trainings and the conversations they are having in local government. Our guests:
- Felisha Buchinger, organizer with Rochester chapter of Democratic Socialists of America
- Carolyn Delvecchio Hoffman, Monroe County Legislator, District 25
- Wayne Rainey, chairman of the board of trustees for Mt. Olivet Baptist Church
- Mercedes Vazquez Simmons, Monroe County Legislator, District 22
Then in our second hour, the BA.5 wave appears to be the new "COVID normal," but how long will it last? Will the churn of variants slow down? Experts say unless the high rate of transmission is curbed, the current "new normal" is what we should expect going forward. But with pandemic fatigue increasing and restrictions easing, doctors don't expect the infection rate to decrease. This hour, we examine the current state of the pandemic with COVID vaccine developers and researchers. Our guests:
- Angela Branche, M.D., assistant professor in the Department of Medicine (Infectious Diseases), and co-director of the Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Unit at the University of Rochester Medical Center
- Ed Walsh, M.D., professor of infectious diseases at the University of Rochester Medical Center, and head of infectious diseases at Rochester General Hospital
