Pandemic Nation Capital & Main

As pandemic-striken businesses return to life, employees face medical risks and uncertainty. Mark Kreidler speaks to Elvia Martinez, who works at LAX’s Panda Express.

What happens when pandemic fighters are at risk themselves with preexisting medical conditions?

Mark Kreidler speaks to Shenita Anderson, a nurse at Olympia Medical Center, a soon to be shuttered hospital in Los Angeles.

Mark Kreidler speaks with Dr. Coley King, director of homeless health care at Venice Family Clinic.

She has heard no plan for a federal relief package that might somehow lessen her burden. And, hotel worker Liliana Hernandez says, the whole notion of a vaccine getting the country back on track might be way too late for her and her colleagues. In a state of inequity, relief remains elusive.
 

While 57% of Californians in a recent Public Policy Institute poll said they would either definitely or probably take the vaccine, the figure plummets to 29% among Black respondents. Systemic and pervasive racism lies at the root of that deep distrust of the system, says our guest, Michelle Burton of the Los Angeles-based Community Health Councils.