What you need to know for this year's flu, cold and COVID season

Hi there, it's Tisiana Dearing. I just wanted to let you know that starting this week, this feed's going to sound a little different. Every Friday, I'll catch you up on the week's news and then we'll have a conversation that dives into an issue facing Massachusetts to help us make sense of this place we call home. This is Up Next. I'm Tisiana Dearing. It's September and that means kids are back in school. The weather's getting a bit brisk and we're approaching cold and flu season. You've likely seen signs at your local pharmacy or doctor's office reminding you it's time to get flu and COVID shots. I spoke to Dr. Ashish Jha, former White House COVID-19 response coordinator, about how scientists plan for the viruses. You know what we learn every year is the virus sometimes surprises us. What you need to know to help protect yourself and your family this fall. You'll hear that conversation in a bit, but first let's start with some of the Commonwealth's big stories this week. A City of Boston surveillance report revealed new concerns about the city's pilot program with Flock Safety last year. Flock produces a nationwide network of cameras known as automated license plate readers. In the Boston pilot, Flock was supposed to limit the data it collected to a small number of local police officers. Instead, the company made it widely available at the outset to other law enforcement agencies. Larry Calderon, president of the Boston Police Patrolman's Union, told us he's not surprised, but it's troubling. Any company that's gathering data on citizens around the country should be questioned and watched. I mean, when is over surveillance too much? Flock didn't respond to a request for comment. There's a special level of scrutiny on this company because of its massive network. The tech basically could allow someone to piece together a car's movement across the country. Police say the cameras make it easier to catch dangerous suspects and respond to amber alerts. Critics call license plate readers surveillance on steroids. Boston police say they won't use Flock cameras moving forward, but they have launched more recent pilots with competitors. Also this week, artificial intelligence could be an existential threat to humanity. That warning from a former employee of Anthropic set off a firestorm. And then the heads of the biggest AI companies admitted they've caught AI agents acting on their own. That scared a lot of people. And Massachusetts Congresswoman Lori Trahan raised her voice. She's been outspoken about AI guardrails for a while, but she went especially hard this week. And if this administration is serious about leading the world on AI, it would work with Congress to set the rules of the road for this technology, just as we have with the most dangerous technologies throughout history, nuclear weapons, chemical and biological weapons, aviation safety, just to name a few. Trahan recently co-wrote a bill with a Republican colleague to increase oversight of AI. She also wants to temporarily ban states from regulating its development, giving that power to the federal government. Let's turn to a national culture story that erupted in Boston this week. Global pop star Ed Sheeran will play Gillette Stadium in Foxborough next week. But Sheeran's tour was thrown into chaos by Patriots owner Robert Kraft, whose company owns Gillette Stadium. He pressured Sheeran to drop one of his concert's openers, the rapper Macklemore. The reason? Macklemore has repeatedly said things like free Palestine on stage. Kraft called that and past rhetoric from the rapper hurtful and anti-Semitic. He's put millions of dollars into supporting Israel. After Macklemore was removed, other artists dropped out of Sheeran's tour in solidarity. This week, Macklemore, Sheeran and Kraft pledged millions in donations to the region, but Kraft has not specified which groups will get his money. Up next, wondering what vaccines you need to get this fall? Dr. Ashish Jha has some advice. Keep listening. Welcome back to Up Next. I'm Tiziana Dearing. Cooler temperatures are a sign of many things to come. And while fall colors and pumpkin picking are fun, in the health world, those cooler temps mean lots and lots of pathogens. Kids are back at school, people spend more time indoors. As is the case every year, there's a new batch of flu and COVID vaccines too. Dr. Ashish Jha came by our studio to share some advice. He's former White House COVID-19 response coordinator under the Biden administration. And I asked Dr. Jha what he thinks about reports that this year's flu season could be milder. Yeah, so the bottom line is we don't always know. And I, that's why I don't love predictions like that. Some of the predictions happen because we look at how the virus is spreading in the southern hemisphere, and we make guesses that that'll be the virus that ends up here. But you know what we learn every year is the virus sometimes surprises us. Now, my understanding is that we basically, I'm going to use such lay terms here, Dr. Jha, we cook up a flu vaccine based kind of on what we think the strain is going to be. And then either we were right, and it's relatively effective, or we were wrong, and it isn't. Is A, is that correct? And B, if that's correct, what do we know about this year's batch of vaccines? Yeah, it is absolutely true that we make a guess in the spring. And I actually think we should work on trying to make better guesses. There is new technology that allows us to do that. But yes, we make a guess in the spring, because it takes about three, four months for the vaccine to get cooked up. And then sometimes it's a great match, and sometimes it's not. But here's the part that's important. Even in years when it's not a great match, especially for high risk people, getting vaccinated still reduces their risk of getting hospitalized and dying. So it may not prevent infection at the rate that we would like, but it's going to prevent those serious complications. So that's why even in years that we sort of think of as a miss, I still tell people, you got to get vaccinated, because what you really care about is not ending up in the hospital. I was texting this week with somebody who had a sore throat. And they said to me, I'm not really worried about COVID. If I have COVID, it'll go away. Should we be worried about COVID this year? I think it depends on who you are. I still worry about COVID for my elderly parents, people who are older. COVID still kills a lot of people who are in that age group. Do I worry about COVID for, let's say, my teenage kids? No. Do I worry about it for an average healthy middle-aged person? No. A COVID infection is probably a third or a quarter as deadly as a major problem for healthy people. So then make the case or don't about why one should continue to be vaccinated for COVID every time a new one comes out every year. Well, I'll tell you what I tell my family. And by the way, this is not exactly aligned with what the CDC says, but I'll tell you what I recommend. For my family, again, my elderly parents, they're absolutely getting a COVID vaccine. Absolutely. I'm in my 50s. To me, I think I probably will get a COVID vaccine, but it's a bit of a dealer's choice. My kids who are in their teens and 20s, I say to them, if you want to get a COVID vaccine, God bless, but you absolutely do not need to. And as you can imagine, being my kids and being tortured by vaccines, I don't torture them, but I tell them what I need them to do, they generally are happy to get that choice. And they have actually in the last couple of years opted out, and I think I'm fine with that. So I don't think COVID vaccines are essential for everybody. They are absolutely essential for older people. What do you tell your kids about the flu vaccine? Oh, that's a different story. Every single person in my family gets a flu vaccine every year. I'll tell you why. We still have young people dying of flu. We had almost 300 children die of flu this past year. Almost all of them were unvaccinated. Every single person should get the flu vaccine. Every high-risk person should get the COVID vaccine. I want to switch gears now a little bit, Dr. Jha, to the measles. Cases are up nationally, not so in Massachusetts. Very few cases, unlike other states. Massachusetts is also not seeing a drop-off in vaccinations like in other states. Should schools be concerned about the measles? Well, if their numbers start dropping, absolutely. Measles is the most transmissible virus known to humanity. Extraordinarily infectious. And the truth is there's a small number of kids who can't get vaccinated, a child, let's say, on chemo for cancer. For those kids, it is essential that everybody around them is vaccinated. And that's why I strongly support local school districts having a measles mandate or vaccine mandate, obviously with those health exceptions. But yeah, schools have to be paying attention to this. That's Dr. Ashish Jha. He's CEO of the company BioRadar, which focuses on detecting biological threats. He's also a current fellow at Harvard. Before we go, I have to tell you there is so much happening this weekend. You really have no excuse for boredom, especially if you're a foodie. For starters, the Big E starts today in West Springfield, the state fair in the northeast, a 17-day bonanza. And the food, as you'd expect at a fair, is over the top. I'll just briefly mention the ice cream dipped in hot salted butter and rolled in popcorn. But for something a little closer to Boston, Somerville's got its annual tribute to a beloved and local food, fluff. Marshmallow fluff was invented more than a century ago by a French-Canadian confectioner who settled in Somerville and sold his sweet door-to-door. The What the Fluff Festival on Saturday is a love letter to that history. Not a foodie, no judgment. The Boston Film Festival starts today. And if you'd like some free creative inspiration, head to the South End. South End Open Studios is where more than 100 artists will share their work with the public, kind of like stepping into an artist's private workspace. That's it for Up Next. We'll see you next week.