Speaker 0 00:00:04 <inaudible>
Speaker 1 00:00:58 Good evening. Thank you for joining disability and progress, where we bring you insights into ideas about and discussions on disability topics. My name is Sam. I'm the host of the show, Charlene dollars. My research teams, Annie Harvey is my engineer. Thank you, Annie. And you are too. And two KFA 90.3, FM, Minneapolis and kvi.org. And it is indeed pledge night, one of two. And I want to start off by, um, letting people know that they can go to cafe.org and pledge, or you can pledge on your smartphone app if you have that already downloaded. So please feel free to do that. And we always appreciate your pledge. And I'm hoping that Charlene is coming on pretty quickly. Charlene,
Speaker 0 00:01:53 Charlene,
Speaker 1 00:01:56 She's not coming on pretty quickly. There she is. Hello everybody. I'll be right back. Um, all right, so this is pledge drive and our theme is, you know, we have themes each time. I know it's kind of goofy, but I think people do this and they make themes. And we, we are doing this and the theme is where community grows and it's true. We are a community in the station. We have several dozens and dozens of members that come that volunteer. Everybody who does a show like us, they're a volunteer. We are not paid. We are a community. We, we joined meetings together. We have potlucks together and you are our community. You are who listened to us. We, we joined you because we bring you hopefully insights into things you want to hear, want to know, um, learn. And, and so I want to go back to more, the in-store now a global station because we are online.
Speaker 1 00:03:05 So really our community is the world. It is a small world. And so we hope that you, you know, if we've been here through for you for COVID, which I know we have, because I've been here just about every week, we need you here for us to support us. And you can do that by going to kfi.org or going on the cafe smart app and donating there. And if, if, if it needs to get better, which it did, we got somebody who did a 250 pledge dollar pledge match. And if you don't understand exactly how that works, because I had to think about it and learn about it, um, they will match up to $250 that are donated by people. Now it doesn't mean that you have to get on, and if you don't do donate, um, $250 that they won't match it, that's not what it means. It means if you get on and donate $20, they will match it $20. And if somebody else gets on and donate $40, they will match $40. So it all adds up to the amount of $250. And if we can reach that goal, we get that matching pledge. And we would really appreciate if you, I E our community, which is everywhere would do that. So that helps us, um, kpi.org is where it's at. Charlene, are you back? Yes, I am.
Speaker 2 00:04:43 We would have the phone, but because of COVID there's limitations,
Speaker 1 00:04:48 We're not even there. We are hunkered down in our own little burrows and we are, you know, broadcasting from those. So if you can go to cafe.org or on your smartphone map, smartphone app, you can donate that way. Um, every little bit helps. And that is truly the cake. And I do want to already think a pledger because Tahmoh from Plymouth pledged. Um, he pledged $120 and thank you Tomo. We appreciate that. Um, so we're, we're, we're almost halfway there to our, our pledge match. So we need you, um, every little bit helps, even if it's $20. If you think about that, that's not too bad. And actually there's a little more relief coming from a sprayer for two, most of us from, from president Biden. So that'll be nice. All right. So I don't know, Annie, do you have, we're going to listen to some excerpts tonight from some, from various shows. Um, just so you can kind of hear a little bit of what we've done throughout the year of 2021. Um, I don't know if you have something cute. I sure do. Um, we, we are about to listen to what is an indoor map. Oh yeah. Cool. This was a lot, what's your definition of an indoor map? Like what would you, how would you define that?
Speaker 3 00:06:28 Yeah, you know, it's interesting, it's actually not terribly dissimilar from an outdoor map. It's ghost for the insides of a building, as opposed to the, the roads and the streets and the, and the mountains and, uh, the things that you traditionally see in a, in an outdoor map. Now, the trick is that for indoor mapping, it's significantly tougher to achieve than, than outdoor mapping, because you're constrained by the, by the walls and the, uh, and the makeup of the, of the building. And so historically, uh, even though we've done a wonderful job of mapping the outdoors, we've really barely begun the process of mapping the indoors. And that's what we're all about.
Speaker 1 00:07:04 So it feels like, you know, at outdoor maps, if you've done a good job with, with it, and what's your app that it tells you fairly basic things, you know, the street you're coming up to, uh, what might be around you, you know, as you said, the cross street, now you're announcing things like that. Um, but are there basic things that are just a given that the indoor maps are, that you are planning on having the indoor maps announced? Right.
Speaker 3 00:07:32 Yeah. It's a great question. The things that you care about indoors are obviously very different than the things that you care about outdoors. So for example, in a museum, you might be trying to find a particular exhibit or in an airport you're trying to find your gate or the TSA security line or in your office. You're trying to find where Steve is or where Mike is. Um, and we can't use the same kind of system that you use for outdoors, which is to really use a street-based approach. Uh, and so what you, what you do is have to get really accurate on your positioning. So as you tell somebody to turn right down a hallway, they can have confidence that there is in fact, a hallway there for them to turn down. And the POS that you searched for in the search bar, uh, rather than being street names or addresses are Mike's office, Steve's office, water, fountain, restroom, uh, you search for them the same way you would for an outdoor map.
Speaker 1 00:08:21 And it seems like you have, um, both hardware and software to, you know, that you're creating on an indoor map. So how does this work?
Speaker 3 00:08:32 Yeah, so the very first thing that happens is one of our mappers goes through a building with a, with a LIDAR backpack. It looks a lot like the Ghostbusters backpack
Speaker 1 00:08:41 Stop you there. Can you explain the term LIDAR?
Speaker 3 00:08:44 Yeah. So LIDAR stands for light detection and ranging. Uh, and if you think about it, there's like a little wand and it's got lasers at the tip of it, and it is shooting out pulses of light and then measuring wherever those pulses of light meet resistance. And it's doing that several hundred thousand times per second. And so the output is this really wonderful, what we call a point cloud, which is basically a collection of all of those little points of light, where they found, uh, where they found objects and that we're able to identify the inside of the building and map the building based on those points of light that we collected.
Speaker 1 00:09:22 Okay. Well, and that was our excerpt from Mike May. Oh, and Jose, um, Aston ball, Gaston Buddha, or something like that B day. I think that's how you pronounced it. I, as close as I can get without looking at the name, um, but I had a lot of fun with that interview because that indoor maps for people who cannot see are something we have waited for for a very long time. And, you know, when you walk into a department store like a big department store, not just any department store, but a big one, if you cannot see all the shelves and stuff, it takes just the, the general person a little bit to get organized and to figure out where is the shoe rack, or where are the groceries rack or aisle Isles, or where are, you know, wherever it is you're looking for, but for us, like we have no idea and less, we may be asked for an assistant shopper, or we have somebody cited with us, or, you know, we go wandering around the store and find it somehow accidentally, or by asking people.
Speaker 1 00:10:40 So to have an indoor map that actually gives you directions like you would get with Google maps. Outdoors is the amazing part of it to me. Um, it's something that just enhances independence and gives us a little more fair playing field. So, um, anyway, what did you, did you enjoy that interview Shailene? Because there's nothing worse than not, you've been in this space and you have no clue where you are and you're checking your spot. So you have to go use the restroom. It's like, okay, I don't have all day to figure this one out. That is so true.
Speaker 1 00:11:23 So again, you can go to cafe.org on the smartphone app, you can click on the cafe on the smartphone app and, and go pledge. Or you can go to the website, cafe ident, or org slash support. Don't break that slash support, and you can give whatever amount that it doesn't really matter to me, what amount you give, if you can give a big amount. Awesome. But if you cannot give what you can, that's the whole point to me give what you can. Yeah. Annie has done a marvelous job through almost the entire COVID time helping us. Um, she took over for someone and it has been just wonderful to have you and Annie is a true volunteer. So thank you so, so much for all your work, Annie, because it would be much harder to do this without you.
Speaker 4 00:12:20 Well, thank you so much, Sam, it's been really enjoyable, um, especially being familiar with the program, but never having worked on it before a friend of mine moved away and he gave me the opportunity to engineer on this show. And, um, I've just learned so much. I'm continually impressed by the variety that, uh, salmon Charlene bring in every week, the variety of guests, the variety of topics. We talk about everything from new technology to music, to personal histories. Um, and it's really amazing. Uh, just the amount of variety that can be encompassed in this and the fact that it's all done volunteer, um, to touch again and go back to our friends with the, uh, maps changing. Uh, so with the indoor maps, we have another segment from that show, which we all especially loved. Um, I had my mind a little bit blown. I do, I do some website work in my day job at the university of Minnesota. And this really got me thinking about, um, how indoor mapping could perhaps be something helpful to be implemented there at some point. Um, but now we have another, yes, we have another little segment about, um, indoor mapping again from, uh, our friend Jose, just like the previous one. Let's listen to Mark out some lighter maps.
Speaker 4 00:13:45 I'm just queuing this little buddy up.
Speaker 0 00:13:52 So
Speaker 1 00:13:53 Back to more the in-store or in business mapping in building mapping, maybe that's what we should call it a two, because it's fascinating. There are so many different kinds of places you're right. That it would be very difficult to make a quote mold and have it, you know, just plop in the things because there's so many different things that you might need for that. What happens, uh, let's just take target or any type of department store that you mapped. You might map, you can help me out here if I've missed important things, but like dressing rooms, bathrooms, drinking fountains, maybe break rooms, maybe although the public wouldn't necessarily need to know certainly customer service counters and the counters where you pay for things, what happens about the Isles shoes, clothing, and then what happens when they change them? That is such a great question, Sam, and it speaks to one of the
Speaker 3 00:14:52 Things that's really tricky about indoor mapping, the walls and the ceilings, and even the doors tend not to change, but the things that happen within those walls do change to your point like a target. Uh, and that's one of the reasons that we're really excited about the approach that we're taking, being camera based, uh, because with things like the AR kit and a lot of what we're seeing, uh, in, in artificial intelligence and image recognition are going to allow us to dynamically update the items that are in that map. So for example, I can tell you that there's a meeting room, but when you walk in that meeting room, how do you know what the table is? How do you know what the chairs are? How do you know where the available chairs are? And by using somebody's camera, what we can do is allow you to scan and actually identify where those are. That's a little bit more tricky in a grocery store, because there are so many dynamic objects, but so long as the store is actually tracking where they are moving things, which many of them are doing these days, we can reflect that in our maps.
Speaker 4 00:15:50 So talk about what that means to track where you moving things.
Speaker 3 00:15:54 Yeah. So, you know, let's take a Kroger or a grocery store, perhaps on Monday, the salsa is on aisle 14, and then they switched some things around. And now it's on aisle 20. Oftentimes there is a backend computer system that's tracking those. And so long as we can get access to that backend system, as soon as they reflect that in their technology, we can reflect it in ours
Speaker 5 00:16:16 To keep track of that for their own inventory purposes. And there, there are high-end industrial and systems, multimillion dollar systems. You mentioned target, of course, that's a Minneapolis company. And, and there 2000 stores, they have positioning built into their lights, into their led lights, also working with a camera and they don't use that much for consumers yet. We assume they will in the future, but it helps a lot in inventory tracking and the staff knowing where to stock things and so forth. And they have accuracy under a meter.
Speaker 4 00:16:56 And so your maps would kind of use that
Speaker 5 00:16:59 We can work with them, but those are such expensive systems that smaller venues, libraries, museums, and so forth. They can't spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on lighting systems. And we can provide an alternative to that
Speaker 4 00:17:18 This Sam and Carlene something that I often wonder, uh, just kind of be in a pal, hel helping out at this show, but not necessarily writing it in the way you guys do. How do you find the individuals that you interview? Oh, that is all over the board. You know, we have an emailing list and, um, sometimes I get listeners that email me and say, you know, this topic really needs to be covered.
Speaker 1 00:17:50 And oftentimes our right is not been covered enough. We should cover that. Sometimes people are doing things that they email about and say, Hey, this would be something good to feature on the shell. So we do sometimes Charlene stumbles across something, she's my research woman. And she says, you know, I just came across, you know, whatever, and we will feature that or other times I find it. So it's a whole variety of ways. Um, it really, it just, it, you never know where you're going to find the next, Oh, this should be featured.
Speaker 4 00:18:27 So,
Speaker 1 00:18:28 Um, that's, that's one of the things that we have constantly tried to do. It's been harder with COVID and because granted the whole, you know, opportunity of things going on, went down and it for everyone, for everyone. And so that made it much harder even to, um, to draw upon things, to talk about in the feature. We were lucky that we had, you know, we I've been doing the show for a long time, so I had a lot to draw upon, but it was harder to find new things. But I think we have found quite a few new things, even, even still, um, with a year of COVID we have had to go back into our archives, but it's been good because we have done play those featured shows again, and been able to get them, um, put into podcast, which is great. Uh, anybody who, um, is familiar with their show knows that they hear me talk about podcasting often. And that's something that we have really gotten ramped up. And, um, I want to thank Aaron Westendorf cause he does a lot of, uh, help with, um, putting our stuff in podcasts so that it does really take a village and, um, including our community. So, uh, please show us your support by going to that cafe.org/support and donating click that donate button, or you can go to the cafe app on your smartphone and donate that way,
Speaker 4 00:20:12 The amount of stuff that folks here at the station, including both of, you know, how to do really impresses me, for example, when I'm not engineering, when there is not a, when there's not a pandemic, Sam engineers, her own programming, people, people have all kinds of skills and, and do theater Sam engineers and speaks her own programming. It's really, yeah, it's really impressive. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:20:41 It's been that engineering part is actually, um, been that I really, really missed. Um, I am grateful that you're there, but I have so missed it, you know, because it's, it's that whole part of control and some of us were control freaks. You know, we, we miss that kind of thing, but, um, and everyone else can be their own control freak and go to the, um, website or app smartphone app and control how much you give. And hopefully we can reach that $250, uh, pledge match because that would be awesome. That would just be great. We would love that cafe.org/support or go to your smartphone app. Um, I think we have a piece to play, we sure do. Um, okay. The next piece along on our journey through the past few months is we have a conversation about direct support professionals. Uh, yes. Talking to wonderful friends, Steven, Heidi. So I'm all. And, and I want to talk about Andrew Senator Hoffman, Senator Hoffman. Yes. All right. This was a recent one. Yes. All right. And go direct support professionals or D S P's. And can you tell me about a little bit about what they do?
Speaker 6 00:22:13 Uh, I'll jump in here hiding, and I think we'll both do a little on this one because it's such an important, uh, topic for discussion, but, uh, um, what am I a very dear friend of mine that used to be my supervisor said there's nothing, uh, the, the, the most important thing we give to the people that we serve or the people that we hire. And I, and I can't think of it being said any better way than that. Uh, the people that we hire are amazing, amazing, talented, and skilled professionals who have, uh, decided in their lives. I don't want to be an insurance salesman and an Iowa. Okay. I want to serve people with barriers to employment or challenges and daily living. And, and, uh, so the people that we provide that provide services, um, under the banner of Wilco's, uh, are, uh, patient dedicated individuals who are very, very talented at listening to individuals and hearing what they're saying, actually listening to what they're saying.
Speaker 6 00:23:16 So, um, they, uh, the team, uh, as we call it out, what CoStar, what goes to team are, uh, something of great pride for, for me, I think, uh, we're, uh, constantly looking for, um, new team members who want to be a part of it. And I think as we rebuild our services after COVID, we'll need additional, uh, folks. And so, uh, we're always looking for anybody in the St cloud area. You like to come and work, uh, but we're Cosa, you know, stop in and let us know what your thoughts are. But yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 4 00:23:46 Go ahead.
Speaker 6 00:23:48 It's warmer in Winona. So don't move to St. Cloud. Yeah.
Speaker 4 00:23:53 Oh yeah. We're the Miami,
Speaker 6 00:23:59 Our, the Miami of Minnesota. We have Palm trees and, um, you know, DSP is the heart of what we all do and, uh, DSPs do not get paid enough. Uh, and part of that is because our funding barely covers. And I think about, uh, what our job coaches in our DSPs do in the community. They go out and they do work at other organizations. We have a huge, incredible janitorial service. And we go into big manufacturing places and clean their floors and production areas. And I think, wow, you know, the people that we serve have this amazing advocate with them, working with them, teaching them skills and all that. And they're doing that. And the work beside them, and they're getting paid crap. And, you know, we do what we can as providers to make, uh, the best salary we can for them. But it ties back to funding. Like Steve said, we can't gouge our customers with, you know, $4 loaves of bread or whatever. You know, funding really is what drives the decisions for us and how, and how we pay people. And the people we serve deserve great people. I'm totally stealing that by the way, Steve, the most important thing we can do for the people we serve as the people we hire, I didn't even have nuggets of wisdom like that in you. I'm so great. I love our DSPs. I always tell them I don't have a job if you're not here.
Speaker 4 00:25:32 Well, the special connection, I mean, they do, right. They have a special connection to the client.
Speaker 6 00:25:37 They're amazing. And they all advocate stronger than anybody I know, and they, they are empathetic. They, they build relationships. Uh, they, to me, they build the foundation for what it takes to work in the community because we all have, co-workers no matter where you work and a big part of how to get along in the workplace is how to work with your coworkers and our job coaches and our DSPs that work with our folks, do an amazing job of being that good role model for that. And what I love is when people move on, because people move on, uh, they'll say the best thing about my job is the people that I work with. And they're not talking about me. They're talking about the people with disabilities that they have connected with. And to me, that is fine. I love that. So yeah, the connection is, I mean, and that's another goosebump moment.
Speaker 6 00:26:36 I mean, I started in this field a long time ago as a DSP and I fell in love with, and I, they can't kick me out. Steve might try, but I love, and the love comes from those relationships of the people we serve. It's an amazing, amazing field, leverage their DSPs partner. There's an, it's not a control or a power relationship. It's a partnership, uh, to again, to meet them where they are and move them along to whatever their dreams are, whatever successes they want to see for their lives. So, uh, that, and that's a challenge. That's not an easy thing to do, get to know a person well enough to be able to find out what makes them tick and, and help them move forward. In that respect,
Speaker 4 00:27:25 We have another little segment while we're on that roll. Um, speaking with Steve Howard directly about kind of the virtual side of things. Um, I know virtual has been big in the public conversation, especially with the, with the current ongoing pandemic. And another thing that I love about disability and progress is that, um, the conversations that have been on the show and that you can now go back and listen to in the podcast are very, very real about, um, cons and little upsides of things that are part of the pandemic world. Like obviously devastation of like severe illness and loss of life, extremely devastating, extremely devastating, but it's been really remarkable to see the ways that, um, people, regardless of, uh, disability or other life circumstances have been able to connect virtually. And yes, that's pretty in other environments. And, um, that's just something that I really value about this show.
Speaker 4 00:28:24 Thank you. Yeah. Let's let's let's yeah, go, Oh, let's listen to that. But let's also remind people that they can go to cafe.org/support and click on that smartphone cafe app to, um, donate to pledge week. You sure can. Also, I don't think we've mentioned the goodies yet in this hour and we have not. That's true. Yeah. Go online. Cause the, uh, goodies are different than they have been the past few years. You'll notice if you live in Minnesota, it's a little warm now and you get the light of day for longer, which is really nice. And the goodies for donating this year, I'll have a really lovely spring theme with some plants. They say where community grows because by donating you allow the community radio to keep growing. That allows populations of Minnesota and beyond to keep having important conversations. Like the ones we have here about, uh, adaptive technology and disability and community. Great. Excellent. Think it will be this year. This is the first year that you've guys have been virtual. Do you think it will be more, that will be happening because of that? Do you think it will give more people a chance to connect? Do you think
Speaker 1 00:29:42 This will be more difficult?
Speaker 7 00:29:44 That's a great question. Sam, in, in any, look at this going on a year now, let's go in virtual and stuff. We're doing a little bit of hybrid where you have, you know, some people in person and other people what having zoom or whatever the platform is made access to people in this position. A lot easier and a lot better because we never would think of this format when it comes to having a meeting. Um, look, there's, you know, seven of us gathered in one moment and we didn't have to, you know, park my car, downtown Minneapolis, knock on the door and wait for somebody to come down and bring me up at the elevator. And it'd be crammed in that little studio and go, I don't want to be here. Right. It's like, so now you're in an environment that is, you know, very, uh, normal and natural to you. And so it's opened up that access side of it a lot better. Um, but I miss, I miss having people here, I missed the, you know, when we would have our rally days, you know, ability day at the Capitol, it's huge. It was great that dozens of people in here, you know, and, and then I would say go out and, you know, make sure that your elected officials know you're here. And, and they would
Speaker 1 00:31:05 A sense of adrenaline when people are together. Right. It kind of calms people up and, and gets people going and get that energy to want to tell your stories and, and help reach out about these things.
Speaker 7 00:31:22 We're social beings. That's for sure. Right. Social beings. Yeah.
Speaker 4 00:31:27 That was Steve Howard from our episode about direct support professionals in the Midwest and, uh, advocacy day on the Hill. Um, that was just from these past couple months, uh, you could hear the pan pandemic era virtual versus in-person conversation. Uh, it goes on, um, Sam, do you want to add anything about that one?
Speaker 1 00:31:50 I think it is really has been amazing too. How people have made, you know, we get slapped or something and still we bounce back up. And I want to say that that is the same with KFA. We care for has been through some tough things through the years, changing of things, things changing, you know, um, 2008, we had that big dip and the, the, um, the whole amount of people losing jobs and, and everything else. And we still bounced back up, you know, we, we always can use help, but we really strive hard to change with what needs to be done. And, and we did that with the pandemic. Somebody told me once that, um, growth is optional and or growth is change is inevitable and growth is optional. And I feel like we have really grown because we've gone from where we used to never have online stuff.
Speaker 1 00:32:51 And we have that. We now have podcasts and, and we've changed. We've decided to stick with it. We didn't let the KPI, the pandemic close us. And we, um, had everyone go home and record from home mostly. And, um, a few select people are starting to come in, but it's, it's a soul thing, but cafe has, I think, raised to that bar, you know, and, and then what it needs to do. So we're asking you to do the same and go to cafe.org/support and click on that donate button. I want to jump in here. I think having to do things virtually actually we were able to get some guests that we might not have been able to get because they couldn't get to the station for other reasons. So I think in some ways we've created a new level of, of, uh, diversity within how we can do our programming.
Speaker 1 00:33:54 Yeah. And the last thing I'll say about that too, is, um, I used to do all my things with Collins, with the phone and, and that is great, but it is not near the, as good as sound as doing zoom or something like that. Doing the, having the pandemic really did push everyone to have some kind of decent sounding, you know, platform that they could communicate over. And so, uh, thank you zoom, even though I know you were here far before pandemic ages, but, um, the pandemic really pushed them to be better and to be more commercialized and to be everywhere. So, um, hopefully KFC is everywhere in your world, be it on the phone or on your computer or on your radio. Um, especially radio people listen to the radio. Yes, they do. They do. Yep. See, and a lot of people still do when they're in their car. So it's great. And you can, you can keep that going by going to cafe.org/support. Annie, do we need to take another commercial break?
Speaker 4 00:35:09 We sure. Do. I just want to say one more quick thing before we fully pivot away from that Steve Howard episode, something that was really cool, that was actually made possible by zoom, uh, was the variety of people who are able to be on one call. Like when we're running, when we're running phone lines, we're running two phone lines, but if we're on zoom, we can have so many people because we can just fill up that zoom call with whoever. And it's really fun to get people not only across the state and region and country, but get a bunch of people and get a D like get a variety of voices all on the same call. Um, and I think that makes for really great programming, both here on, uh, right on. And then, I mean, here on disability and progress, and also on the other shows, I work on Somali link radio and right on radio.
Speaker 1 00:35:57 Great. Yes, that is absolutely true. I didn't think of that, but that is very true. Um, yes, we've had quite a number of people involved in our shows at once, which is great. It's like having the studio right with you. Yeah. All right. Uh, do we have anything by Dr. Jill foster in there? Or is it still,
Speaker 4 00:36:18 I don't see anything from,
Speaker 1 00:36:20 Oh, that's too bad. We did do a recent one on vaccines, which was a lot of fun. And a lot of it is on the podcast. It should be. Yeah. It is a podcast. Yeah. So if you have, if you didn't get a chance to hear that, go on the podcast and hear that, that gives an incredible amount of, of knowledge and what's going on in the vaccine world. And I know there's mixed feelings of people being nervous and people excited to get it, and people who don't want to get it, um, everything in between. But really, if you have any doubt, you should go listen to that because that's, uh, it just gives so much information that I think people don't always, and aren't always aware of. So, uh, let's listen to the next fit that you might have.
Speaker 4 00:37:13 Yeah. Charlene also made a point that I love a fair before this program, which is that the vaccine episode, the person, the doctor from the, you who gives the episode does such a good job. Uh, we were thinking partially because maybe because she's a pediatrician, but she does such a good job of breaking it down into something. That's understandable to someone who maybe hasn't taken a science class in a while.
Speaker 1 00:37:37 Right, right. Yeah. And that's some that is, it really is a show that's for everyone. So if you haven't heard it yet and liked to do podcasts, go, um, query disability, pod, disability, and progress podcasts, and you should be able to find it
Speaker 4 00:37:58 All right. Now we're going to throw it back to an old episode. This is Joan talking about transportation.
Speaker 1 00:38:06 So, um, as you know, when we, we discussed that the show is all about disability topics. So to me, this was, um, dear to my heart because you know, so many drive-thru places are popping up this <inaudible>, you know, places that just are not conducive to people with disabilities. Like some people don't drive people with disabilities, but elderly, maybe they don't drive. I'm sorry,
Speaker 4 00:38:33 I'm laughing. I just is mislabeled. And it, okay. This is actually the vaccine episode that we were just talking about how good it is. So FOMO no more. This is the vaccine episode, nine radio books, huge life.
Speaker 1 00:38:49 Um, they can't wait outside tell it's their turn because of temp. You know, the weather is not a temperate climate. It's freezing cold or whatever. How are they doing? You know, how are they going to, um, do right by these people?
Speaker 8 00:39:06 I advise people to go through their primary care doctor and tell them, you know, and talk to their primary care doctor about their specific, um, specific barriers, whether it's not driving or, you know, having a place that's not wheelchair accessible or big. And that a lot of the times, those places, especially if somebody is going to, you know, one of the big universities that have the freezers, um, you can make arrangements for a small number of people with a specific reason that they can go in and get the vaccine.
Speaker 1 00:39:37 So theoretically, but right now there's not a lot of vaccines going out of these. I mean, they seems to be done in either drive through or are huge places where people are. Do you think
Speaker 8 00:39:51 That's a really good question? I mean, the, one of the things that's happening right now with the vaccine is there's a shortage of it. I think everybody is hurting with that and there's this urgency to get it into people's arms. Um, and so people are really looking at what's the easiest way to get it in the most arms possible. And so, you know, a lot of people are getting left behind, you know, people are getting left behind who don't have transportation because it's, you know, it's 30 miles away because they live in a rural community. People are getting left behind who don't have a car or don't have a ride, or, you know, can't wait outside the convention center where the mass vaccination site is, because at this point there's just, you know, and it's not right. I'm not agreeing with it. Um, but at this point there's just this, like what is the way that we are going to get the most people vaccinated most quickly to try to get this virus knocked down on the population.
Speaker 8 00:40:49 And so anybody who falls into that sort of an exception to the rule, which the disability community is probably always imagined, or very frequently, at least in that exception to the rule, um, group have to do, you know, the clamoring, the, you know, calling, you know, the health department and saying, what are you going to have, you know, a special time for this, the health, the Minnesota health department does have an advisory council, um, to try to think these issues through, I don't know if there's somebody from the disability community on it, but I know that they advise that they brought in a pretty wide group. So one of the questions that I would ask the health department, which in general, I really have to say is doing a great job on gargantuan task. I would ask them if they haven't disabilities rap on their, you know, ethics advisory group
Speaker 4 00:41:43 Was our, uh, excerpt from, uh, our, uh, epidemiology COVID backseat. What, what a life we live. And, um, though that piece was about the logistics of the vaccine, which are amazingly important and a huge limitation. There's a bunch in that episode about getting the vaccine and, uh, what it, uh, the science of the vaccine and how it was made. It breaks it down so well. Um, I don't know, Sam, if you have any other thoughts on doing that interview, we also have a sweet little clip about testing for COVID, but do you have any insights that you want to throw in? Oh, you know, it just, it, it really did break it down pretty well. Um, I have another story non-related to tell, but go ahead and play the little bit I'm testing. And meanwhile, maybe people will go to cafe.org/support and donate. Yeah. You could get socks with flowers on them. That is one of the practices. Everyone needs socks. It's still not warm enough for flip-flops soda. You're going to be in socks for months. Pledge get some socks. It's good stuff. Testing seems to be kind of a big deal. Now, as we get into, when we're talking about these current vaccines for the Corona virus, but in, in general, how does testing work?
Speaker 8 00:43:11 So first testing occurs in animals. So you find an animal that you can infect with chicken pox, I'll go back to chickenpox. So you need to find an animal that can get chickenpox. And then you come up with what you think is a good vaccine, and then you give it to the animals and then you infect and try to infect the animals with the chicken pox. And then you see how successful the vaccine is. And you look for, do they have some, you know, bad side effect, you know, in the animals, because that's what you will always want to start first. Then the next stage of it is you start in a smaller number of humans that you look really closely at. But as opposed to humans, though, the humans, you're not then going to try to infect them and check a box that would not be at all ethical and not a good idea.
Speaker 8 00:43:58 So with humans, then what you do is you then draw their blood to look and see if they develop antibodies to the, to the Vera cell, to the chicken pox. And you also observe them, did they get any bad side effects from it? Um, did you know how many of them, you know, develop chickenpox from it? You know, how many of them had some, you know, unusual, you know, thing happened that they developed, you know, a neurologic disorder or, you know, something like that. So then if you pass that stage and all of these stages, the, um, the company making them has present paperwork to the federal, um, drug, uh, drug agency, the FDA. So after stage one, they say, these are our animal studies. Is it okay to go to humans? The FDA says yes or no. Then they say, well, okay, we tested it on a hundred humans, you know, it's based on our data.
Speaker 8 00:44:48 Is it okay to go ahead, to do a large number of humans? And then the FDA says yes or no. So then they open up clinical trials and then this is when we're going to now test tens of thousands of people. Um, and at that stage, we're dependent on the places advertise and say, we're looking for volunteers to take this experimental vaccine and, you know, and then it's all based on who signs up. Um, and so then that is the based on those numbers. Then it goes to the FDA for, is the FDA going to approve it? Or is the FDA gonna say, now you got to go back to the drawing board. And either we don't like this vaccine at all, or you need to go back to the drawing board and you didn't do enough older people, or you didn't do enough, you know, women compared to men and sends them back to redo their trials.
Speaker 1 00:45:37 How much time in general, not in counting this, the vaccine that are currently being made, but generally how much time does it take to test a vaccine and get it through the FDA? Okay.
Speaker 8 00:45:52 So that first stage in animals could be decades. I suppose you're coming up with a totally brand new type of, of vaccine. If you're using kind of an old type of vaccine that like, we knew it worked in measles, but we don't know. That's not good. I think as long I, then you do your animals stage where most times that's probably going to take a year to 18 months cause you're kind of fine tuning it. And like how much of that do we put in the vial and that type of thing, then you get to the clinical trials part and back take another year or two, you know, assuming that all goes well, that could, you know, you probably all goes, well, you could probably do it in six months, but it usually doesn't go well. Um, cause you do have to go back and fine tune your data, or it takes a long time to get people to sign up for an experiment. Um, and so that usually takes between six and 18 months to do that part of it. Um, and then in between, remember I said, he had to put all this paperwork into the FDA that the front of someone's desk for six months at the FDA and then they to wait for a committee to meet and then they all have to talk about it. And so that paperwork stage takes up an incredible amount of time in this process.
Speaker 1 00:47:08 So when they're taking, um, subjects for their testing, um, when they're asking people to come and test, they don't just, usually it seems like they don't always take anyone. They have kind of a protocol. They want you to be healthy. They want, how do they decide who they're going to take in to their test? A
Speaker 8 00:47:30 Lot of that is determined by the MTA. So usually when you're doing a vaccine trial, um, you don't want to include somebody who's horribly ill. Um, and you don't usually, um, children aren't included in the first round and also pregnant women. Aren't included in the person first round because we want it. And we're looking partly for doesn't work. We're also looking for safety. So we want to, you know, we haven't, we haven't determined that it's safe and a large number of people. So generally we want healthy people. We also want a range of people that are going to be the same range of people who are going to get, get the vaccine. So we want to have, you know, some people in their twenties, but you also want to have some people in their seventies.
Speaker 1 00:48:09 Gotcha. So in general, and I think you might agree that most vaccines that we know, uh, there's really little to no side effects. You know, you might get a sore arm. Sometimes you, you know, babies get their vaccines. They might spike a little bit of a fever and be uncomfortable. But in general, there's no, there's not much side effects. What happens when somebody does have a side effect, how's that handled?
Speaker 8 00:48:36 So there's something called the vaccine adverse event reporting system called hubs, call it bears. Um, the, what is asked is anybody who's given a vaccine who the patient has sort of something funny that pops up, that they report it to this bears group. Um, one of the problems is that people don't always do that. Um, but certainly for something serious, people are usually going to do it. And then the people that are at the various agency at the party, you know, at the government, they're sifting through these things and they've got then a big map. So somebody pops up with some unusual, you know, we'll say something neurologic. So somebody pops up with something unusual neurologic in Maine and somebody in Texas and somebody in, you know, Washington state, somebody in Minnesota. Then they're going to say, wait a minute, like, let's look at this again. And then they can start digging into, you know, what happened in those.
Speaker 1 00:49:36 All right. Thank you, Annie. That was a great bit there. And you are tuned to Kathy I 90.3, FM Minneapolis and cafe dot O R G. Um, and I really enjoyed that part Charlene night. I know you really seem to like how the doctor did with that. And I thought she broke it down really well and especially talking about testing. Um, and you know, we did have a conversation later on it, you know, uh, with her and that, and the reason they had that they have been able to go so quickly with the virus. Now you think, well, why are they, they, you know, how come they've been able to go so fast now? Because usually it takes decades. They've cut corners. You know, it's not as safe, but that's not true because if everyone remembers a while back, we had the SARS, but we were lucky enough not to get SARS.
Speaker 1 00:50:36 We really dodged that. But China didn't, um, and they worked just incredibly hard on the vaccine there. Um, only thing that the government did not buy the vaccine from them. They worked really hard on that vaccine. And the government said, Oh, sorry, I started just kind of disappeared. We're not going to buy it from you. But they kept that. And lucky for us, they did, because this is kind of like a derivative of, or somewhere in that, um, family of, so that they pulled that vaccine out and started working in testing and tweaking it and to, to deal with this. So we were lucky. We were very lucky that they had started that work because otherwise I think we would not have that. We wouldn't be where we are. We'd be waiting much, much longer.
Speaker 1 00:51:28 Um, I, with me, Charlene, I am with you. I was, I took a breath and you started talking, well, I paused too many seconds of pause and radiant. We don't get the visual cues here, folks. So please donate to keep, keep us on the air. Keep the other shows on here. I think we've been a big part of everybody's survival during the pandemic because we're here. We're still here. We didn't go away because the pandemic happened on the topic of the pandemic. We have a little quick PSA from the state about COVID-19 that we got to throw in here. Kind of like a station break. Um, we, we good with that. We are good with that. Awesome. Thank you, Sam. Here we go
Speaker 9 00:52:20 For Minnesota native news. This is your COVID 19 daily update Buju Anine I'm called Primo Huser daily update, Minnesota governor Tim walls has announced the expansion of COVID-19 vaccine eligibility weeks ahead of schedule, which means over 1.8 million, more people in the state will have access to vaccines. It comes after the state hit its goal of vaccinating. 70% of seniors, a goal that was originally set for the end of March. Governor wall says the state is expanding eligibility to the next two phases of Minnesotans. Vaccinations will prioritize the first of the next two phases called phase one, tier two. This phase includes Minnesotans with specific underlying health conditions like sickle cell disease down syndrome, and those in cancer treatment. Also those with oxygen dependent, chronic lung and heart conditions, the group also includes food processing plant workers. The second of the two phases is phase one B tier three, and includes Minnesotans 45 years of age and older who have one or more underlying medical condition identified by the centers for disease and prevention. It also includes those 16 years of age and older who have two or more underlying medical conditions. This phase also includes those 50 years of age and older in multi-generational housing. Lastly, it includes essential frontline workers like airport staff, childcare workers, not previously eligible first responders, food production, food service, and the U S postal service and more for more information. And to know when you're eligible, Minnesotans are encouraged to sign up for the COVID-19 vaccine connector
[email protected].
Speaker 1 00:53:59 Okay. And this is Kathy I 90.3, FM Minneapolis and cafe that org, where you can go online to KPI D or G slash support and make your donation. And, um, just so you guys know, yes, we do donate to our show. Um, KFI does have kind of a, uh, a long standing sort of requirement that we give to the show that we're doing, which I think is fair because we do get to host the show and talk about whatever we want within limits, obviously, but it's a good topic. You know, it's a good idea to, to have all the, the volunteers support their shows. So, um, as we hope you will support a show as well. Um, that was, I know I've signed up with hopefully every state has some kind of does have some kind of COVID connector type thing because, um, I know how some States have been easier to do the vaccines and others have been much, much harder. So if you're getting sick of hearing about vaccines, that it will probably be the topic of most radio stuff for awhile. Um, since you know, we are in a pandemic, so I guess that's about it. Any, any last parting thoughts, Charlene Oni up folks, let's get to our $250 match, at least do that. And then everything else is just icing on the cake.
Speaker 1 00:55:45 Andy, thank you again for your assistance. And I guess we'll see you next week. Oh yeah. So happy to work with you. Thank you so much, Sam. This has been disability and progress. The views expressed on the show. I'm pretty sure are of the board of directors this week. This is, um, Kathy I 90.3, FM, Minneapolis and caveat at org. We are. If you want to be on the email list, you can email me at disability and progress at Sam, jasmine.com. Please pledge. We need your support. Good night. <inaudible>.
