Q&A with Lisa Gray

"If I’ve been vaccinated, could I still infect other people? Should I get the vaccine if you’ve already had COVID-19. So what about herd immunity? Can we achieve it if vaccines prevent sickness but not infection, so people are still spreading COVID? What’s up with those virus variants?" And more ...

Ben Neuman has a new title since this interview was recorded. He is now is a professor of biology, and Global Health Research Complex Chief Virologist at Texas A&M University. 

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Check out Dr Ben Neuman's Science Group on Facebook.

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Vaccine researcher Peter Hotez answers reader questions about the safety and science of the MRNA vaccines being distributed now. He also expresses his frustration with the current lack of capacity to administer the vaccines in sufficient numbers to beat back the pandemic.

So, can Texas vaccinate its way out of the pandemic? Here's Hotez's answer: "We have 30 million people in Texas, roughly. We have to get 75-80% vaccinated in order to interrupt transmission. That means 24 million Texans, right? And if we want to do that over a period of eight months, that's three million Texans a month. That's 100,000 a day we have to vaccinate. And then in some cases, some of the vaccines will be one dose or two doses. So,100,000 Texans means roughly 150,000 immunizations a day. We're not set up right now. We don't have that infrastructure in place. We're not going to do that."  

Read stories by Lisa Gray and connect with her on Twitter or Facebook. Questions, comments or suggestions? Want a sticker? Send Lisa an email.

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A spike in COVID-19 cases combined with the holidays makes for an extraordinary amount of stress. For ways to deal with it, Lisa called Alejandro Chaoul, an expert on the therapeutic effects of meditation and Tibetan yoga. They spoke with Chaoul sitting cross-legged on the floor of his wife’s family’s house in Costa Rica, where the family was quarantining. They discuss mindful ways to fight sleeplessness, loneliness and anxiety.

But first, as promised, a surprise for Christmas: Chronicle Op/Ed editor Raj Mankad talks with Houston singer-songwriter Glenna Bell about her 2008 Christmas song Be my Valentine (on Christmas) and how its hopeful-yet-melancholy vibe feels just right for Raj at the close of 2020.

Read stories by Lisa Gray and connect with her on Twitter or Facebook. Questions, comments or suggestions? Want a sticker? Send Lisa an email. 

Listen to Glenna Bell's music on Spotify.

Here's a list of Alejandro Chaoul's upcoming classes and meditation sessions. And here's where you can stream a free half-hour "Meditation for Crisis and Uncertainty" video with Ale, courtesy Rice University's Glasscock School of Continuing Studies. 

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New vaccines are on the horizon — but is it too late to blunt the pandemic’s winter surge? Might Houston fare better than the rest of Texas? And why could a traditional-method vaccine be better for kids?

Lisa checks in with vaccine researcher Peter Hotez. He’s a professor and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, and he co-directs the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, where his lab team is developing COVID-19 vaccines.

Read stories by Lisa Gray and connect with her on Twitter or Facebook. Have questions, comments or suggestions? Want a sticker? Send Lisa an email. 

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Forty-two percent of Americans say they're unlikely to get a COVID-19 vaccine. To end the pandemic, how do we persuade them? Tips from Texas A&M researcher Lu Tang.

Read stories by Lisa Gray and connect with her on Twitter or Facebook. Have questions, comments or suggestions? Want a sticker? Send Lisa an email. 

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The Army Corps of Engineers’s latest ideas on how to reduce flooding along Buffalo Bayou has riled many Houston residents who were expecting a more modern solution to flooding than the concrete channelizing of Houston's bayous implemented in past decades. Lisa talks with Jim Blackburn, an environmental lawyer and co-director of the storm-studying SSPEED Center at Rice University.

Read: Digging Buffalo Bayou deeper? Houstonians up in arms over Army Corps' 'old-fashioned' flood fixes.

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More: SSPEED Center — Severe Storm Prediction, Education, & Evacuation from Disasters Center

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UPDATE: Q&A with Lisa Gray now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and all the usual places. If you like the show, please follow and tell a friend.

With President-elect Biden pledging a science-based approach to wrangling the pandemic — and with record infections across the country — Lisa dials up world-class coronavirus expert Ben Neuman in his lab at Texas A&M University - Texarkana, and peppers him with questions: the state of coronavirus research? The safety of warp-speed vaccines and how they work? Would he take the shot? How long will these vaccines protect us? And ... what about that Russian vaccine?

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Welcome to this sneak peek episode of Q&A with Lisa Gray. This interview was recorded late in the afternoon of November 5, 2020.

As the United States nervously waits for this presidential election to be decided and we’re awash in discussions of the fine points of voting security, Lisa was eager to talk with voting security expert Dan Wallach to discuss the actual threats to American democracy.

Wallach is a professor at Rice University's Department of Computer Science where he also manages the university's computer security lab. He is currently on sabbatical with a nonprofit group called VotingWorks, making and promoting better voting systems.

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