Stephen Colbert
On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert resumes indignation over the murder of Daunte Wright in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. On Sunday, Officer Kim Potter, a 26-year veteran of the force, shot dead 20-year-old Wright, who was unarmed, during a traffic stop after confusing her gun to her taser.
“There must be some kind of design flaw in the Taser handles – or in our country, because it’s not an isolated incident,” Colbert said, referring to experts who said it was not the first time such a a fatal mistake is not committed and winning it is not the last. “Why not? And why do we do so many people?
“I think it’s because people here ‘Taser’ assume it’s harmless because it’s not deadly,” he replied. “But actually it’s a torture to enforce. And it’s just possible that our laws too much applied with threats of violence for something that considers itself a free society.
“To be honest with the police, they only use the only tools and training we provide,” he added. ‘It is as the saying goes: if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Maybe we should not give the police hammers? ‘
Trevor Noah
On the Daily Show, Trevor Noah discusses the Food and Drug Administration’s temporary hiatus over the distribution of the Johnson & Johnson Covid vaccine, while investigating an extremely rare side effect: six women developed a severe blood clotting disorder within two weeks to receive the vaccine. “Look, on the one hand, I get it: you do not want the vaccine for one disease to give you another disease,” Noah said.
‘But on the other hand, it’s six cases out of 7 million doses. Do you realize that this means that you are more likely to be struck by lightning ten times? ‘
The chance of developing the blood clot side effect through the vaccine is extremely low – less than one in every million – ‘but if you get coronavirus, you can get lung damage, heart damage, neurological damage, strokes, seizures, Guillain’ Barre syndrome, immune disorders, erectile dysfunction and, it also gets blood clots, ”Noah explained.
“I think it’s impressive that Johnson & Johnson even made an effective vaccine with such a low chance of blood clots,” he added. ‘I mean, Pfizer and Moderna’, the other two major vaccine manufacturers in the US, are ‘pharmaceutical companies’. Johnson & Johnson makes baby shampoo. I’m surprised this shit is not working at all.
“There’s no doubt it’s a setback,” Noah concluded over the break. “This is a setback for a country that already has some hesitation against vaccines.”
But “the US is still doing a very good job of rolling out vaccines,” he added. ‘What you have to admit is a little unexpected. I mean, given how America handled all the others about the pandemic, I would not be surprised if America accidentally locked all the 300m doses in the trunk of the car. ‘
Jimmy Kimmel
And in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel also addressed the FDA’s temporary suspension of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. “Now the White House is trying to restore confidence in vaccines,” he said, as “public confidence is already a major obstacle to achieving herd immunity.”
Kimmel, in costume as a doctor, then took hearing questions submitted via Facebook about the implications of the break. “First, out of 7 million people who received the J&J shot, only six people had the side effect,” he told one who wondered if the J&J vaccine was still safe. “That means the odds are less than one in a million,” or 0.0000009 – “more zeros than in the entire Trump family,” Kimmel joked.
Johnson & Johnson and the FDA also immediately identified the side effects – “this is how closely they monitor it”, Kimmel said, “and it should be very reassuring because six out of seven million means it is safer to treat the “get the vaccine. get the vaccine. Do you have it? Then get it.”