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Did you get your annual flu shot? In case you need the extra motivation to do it, officials are bringing back mask requirements for the staff members at hospitals in many cities, in response to a growing number of respiratory illnesses around the winter months, specifically the flu, Covid and RSV. Dr. Arthur Caplan, professor of bioethics at NYU Langone Medical Center, joined 710 WOR’s Len Berman and Michael Riedel in the Morning program to remind people it’s not too late to get the shots before you get the sniffles.
“There is a huge return of the flu, there’s a mumps outbreak, believe it or not, in Suffolk County, and there is all manner of Covid,” Caplan told an incredulous Berman and Riedel. “People didn’t get vaccinated; they just didn’t do it, and what we’re seeing with the mumps outbreak is, it means tat they’re not vaccinating their kids. That’s the DPT shot that kids are supposed to get, and so, we got a little crisis going on behind the scenes.”
Dr. Caplan also addressed the story of Peter Thiel, the billionaire who announced he plans to be cryogenically frozen when he dies. “It’s nonsense. Let me put it this way- mush in, mush out. We don’t know how to freeze bodies. You can barely freeze a steak or not get freezer burn on things you put in your current freezer, much less freeze your whole body and then figure out how to defrost it. So, I don’t care how good the scientists are a thousand years from now… they’re not going to be able to do anything with this.”
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