Part One: The Long Tail of Voter Suppression. As the growing number of Black and Latinx voters threaten the GOP’s stranglehold on power, attempts to limit safe voting options during the pandemic reveal a deeper sickness in Texas politics. We have a conversation with Michael Barajas about his research on voter suppression in Texas and elsewhere. We discuss the various methods of voter suppression, and what effect these methods have had on the current state of voter participation .
https://www.texasobserver.org/the-long-tail-of-voter-suppression/ HYPERLINK “https://www.texasobserver.org/author/michael-barajas/”Michael Barajas is a staff writer covering civil rights for the Observer. Before joining the Observer, he was editor of the San Antonio Current and managing editor of the Houston Press. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism.
Part Two: We talk with Adam Rogers, Senior Correspondent, WIRED.COM , about the problem with any possible vaccine.
What Does It Mean If a Vaccine Is ‘Successful’? The pharma companies are all using different playbooks to test their Covid-19 shots, so the first team to claim victory may not have the best formula. The FDA does not test current vaccine candidates. Instead, individual pharma companies do the tests, and report results. This make not take into account preexisting conditions, circumstances of the tests, or side effects. Different criteria for effectiveness may be used by the different drug companies.
Adam Rogers, Senior Correspondent, WIRED.COM, writes about science and miscellaneous geekery. Before coming to WIRED, Rogers was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT and a reporter for Newsweek. He is the author of the New York Times science bestseller Proof: The Science of Booze
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