From Sky news, this is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made in the spring of 1954, in Rochester, where a young boy named Billy was looking forward to summer.

Looking forward to the warm months.

But at the same time, this was the height of the polio epidemic and the polio era.

The summers were different for kids, but those of us who did not grow up in the polio era, it's hard to imagine what it was like.

But it meant maybe not swimming all summer when it was 95 degrees, staying out of the water, the concerns about how polio spread and what it meant and what was safe.

Families had to make hard decisions.

And there were a lot of limitations for kids.

And so that spring, Billy found out from his mother that he and his sister were going to be enrolled in a vaccine trial.

It became known as the Salk vaccine trial.

The polio vaccine trial.

It would eventually involve nearly 2 million children in the United States and Canada and Finland, and over the next year.

The connection of this vaccine trial would reveal that it was successful and it was a big celebration.

There was a lot to celebrate because things were about to change.

Now, in Billy's household, his mother came back to him and told him and his sister that it turns out they didn't get the fake vaccine, so to speak, for a seven year old.

The placebo.

They got the real thing and that was a good thing.

Billy was fascinated by that experience.

Families were getting their freedom back, and that planted the seed for a future career in medicine.

And that's what would happen for William Valente.

He would go on to that career here in Rochester, and certainly he would take a short break to go study elsewhere.

But he has spent most of his life decades working on medicine in Rochester.

He is known as the heart and soul of HIV care in the city.

And I was about to congratulate him on his retirement.

But doctor Bill Valenti, you're not retiring.

We'll call it career transition to the R word.

So a little harsh.

And there's still work to do.

You, and it starts with that episode in, 1954 with the Salk vaccine trial.

You got me on that one.

Oh, well, we got a lot to talk about.

I'm I am I've known a lot about you over the years, and I've certainly it's been a number of years since I read your memoir, but I was going back over some notes, and I really appreciated that story because I wanted to start there and just ask you, first of all, what you remember about growing up.

But even before the vaccine, I mean, even as a young boy, what summers were like.

And I ask this because we're in an era of vaccine skepticism now, as you know.

So what was life like in the polio era before the vaccine?

It was terrifying.

My, mother never allowed us to swim in a public swimming pool, so I learned to swim as an adult.

That came much, much later.

What I remember is kids in my class disappearing.

Where's Carla?

Well, she goes to number five school now.

Number five school was the rehab school.

School on Plymouth Avenue.

Where post-polio kids went for school and for rehab.

And they had an intense physical therapy program there.

And that was just terrifying, in that era.

So that when the polio vaccine trial started, there was the largest field trial ever, ever done in this world.

And my mother, whose uncle was a physician in town, and she put their heads together and there was just no question that we were going to participate in that.

You were only seven years old.

What did what did you know about vaccines then?

I knew once the polio vaccine came and my mother read the results to us about getting live, getting vaccine and that placebo, that we were onto something because I watched polio disappear, that they didn't come into church anymore wearing braces.

How fast did that change?

It took a year or a year or two to really start to notice the difference.

But, because those the kids who got the placebo were lined up first in line for a vaccine to get the real thing, to get the real thing.

So over the next two years, we saw this change in my world, and that included, everybody sort of staying in school.

And my mother, letting her guard down just a tiny bit in terms of, well, maybe you can stick your feet in the water now.

And we went to Duran Spin Beach, but you never learned to swim until you were an adult?

No, it was swimming in public.

Swimming pools were big transmission contagion spots for for polio.

So that when we talk about vaccines, vaccine skepticism today, I think of those times.

And if you haven't lived through it, your worldview and what a vaccine can accomplish is just very, very different.

That's what makes me and we talked about this on the program on Monday.

That's what makes me worried about where we are and where we're going.

The success of the polio vaccine, the success of vaccines in general, has led to a society in which, look, I don't mean to date to doctor volunteers a few years older than me.

Okay, you're doing great.

But, you know, unfortunately for many people who did not grow up with the life that you're describing, with a school for polio, injured children, this skepticism, I don't know if it opens the door for it, if people just don't believe it was that bad or, you know, one thing I hear all the time is, you know, from the skeptic crowd is, well, you know, it wasn't the vaccine that did anything with polio.

It was we stopped using a certain aerosol.

And that was it was just coincidence that it happened when the vaccine trial happened.

I mean, does that blow your mind hearing stuff like that?

I counter with science is that we, over the past 60 plus years, have learned a tremendous amount about the polio virus and what it does in people and in animals and how it's transmitted so that, that's a coincidence.

Then in terms of aerosols or other products that came on or off the market that you might want to implicate, I don't think you can ignore it.

But at the same time, the science is really pretty clear, especially after all this time that this is a this is a serious contender.

And, to take it a step further, the terror of those days involved iron lungs because there were some survivors whose breathing was paralyzed so that they lived in this iron machine, for the rest of their lives.

A few polio survivors on iron lungs are still alive and have lived for 70 years.

This way.

And what you don't want to do is go back that there's no there's really no need to do that.

On the other hand.

We need to counter the skepticism with science and also the harsh reality, because the reality here is that parents have a very, significant challenge and responsibility to make the right decisions for their children.

And no doubt, parents want to do right to children.

There's no question they do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, and even the ones who are making decisions that you think as a professional are not the right decision.

They're making it because they think it is the right one.

Correct.

No question about that.

But but you we didn't have a chance to have Doctor Valenti on the program on Monday when some of your colleagues in epidemiology here.

So in that spirit, I want to listen to a sound clip that we listened to on Monday with them and get your response, because the skepticism that we're seeing now, the the resistance isn't just coming from fringy online sites, etc., I want to listen to what the president of the United States said about vaccines in children last week.

And, you know, children get these massive vaccines like you give to a horse, like you give to a horse.

And I've said for a long time, if this is the secret spread out over five years, you get five shots, small ones.

So you have to see what they get.

They give.

I mean, for a little baby to be injected with that much flu, even beyond the actual ingredients, that's sometimes 80 different vaccines.

It's crazy.

It's you know, that's a common sense thing to say to you.

It's like you're shooting up a horse.

They have a little body, a little baby, and you get up in this big thing.

That's a horrible thing.

This is it's a horrible thing.

Doctor, volunteer.

What do you hear there?

An exaggeration, to that gets people's attention.

But it's terrifying in the wrong way because you end up taking the wrong action.

That the message that we give to people should be actionable.

In other words, let me give you the information so that you can make a right decision here for yourself and for your child.

And that, kind of message is a little bit blended with a variety of some science that's carried to the extreme with exaggeration.

So it's really hard to sort the message out at all.

There aren't 80 vaccines.

Well, and they're not designed for bodies as large as a horse.

They're designed for children with kids.

Babies are getting vaccines that are appropriate for babies.

That's the point, is that, the vaccine dose is tailored to either the weight or the size of the individual.

And adults have a different type of vaccine than children do.

The other thing that we need to point out here is that we have probably 40 years of experience with childhood vaccinations and have watched many of these vaccines, vaccine preventable diseases disappear.

So that also needs to be a part of the, of the discussion.

And that's left out.

So what comes through is the exaggeration and the freight that ends up with faulty logic and faulty decisions.

And that's not good for that's not good for kids.

Yeah.

And again, the millions of people who voted for the president and who respect him, they want what's best for their kids.

They will listen to this president and they will do something that they think is right for their children.

Well, one of the things that I've learned in all of this, this intense experience that I've had with HIV over the past 40 something years, is the importance of leadership that each one of us, especially people who are in a position of authority or knowledge or science, have a responsibility to lead and get it right and not distort, avoid distortion and be open and honest.

And of course, vaccines do have adverse events or side effects and we should talk about that.

So there's no reason why doctors and patients shouldn't talk to each other about these things, but it needs to be as distortion free as possible so that you give people the right information that leads to a productive and safe decision.

I think that's well said.

I also wonder what it would have been like if the Salk trial happened in the age of social media, because I don't have any data on this.

I don't know what adverse events there were with polio vaccines.

I mean, I presume there were some and there's always some.

Right?

You know, in a in a large population, it's it's a non-zero number.

Right.

So imagine how social media would have amplified those effects.

And I don't think that that's a healthy way for us to be having discourse with each other.

Overblowing and not understood.

Because if, if a disease kills a million people in a year, and then a vaccine comes and the vaccine prevents a million deaths, but the vaccine itself causes ten people every year who get it to die.

It's tragic, terrible that that happens.

You know, today those ten stories are amplified on social media as if the whole thing is a conspiracy to kill people as opposed to, you know, an unfortunate and tragic sometimes trade off that still was part of the greater good.

The discussion needs to be balanced, that you need to talk about that, but put it into perspective in terms of with Covid vaccine, the hundreds of millions of doses that have been given.

Right.

And also the anecdotes that come with that somebody had a serious or a very bad event associated with the timing of.

But if you look at the big picture, in terms of big world experience, it's a very different story, so that the balance needs to be there in order to have the discussion, get the information out in a way that people understand and to make the right decision.

Are you at the I'm going to say, at the conclusion of roughly 40 years in, and we'll talk about the founding of Trillium and, community Health and where it is now coming up here.

But I know it's not retirement, but, in this transition, we'll call it for you.

Did you think you would get to this stage in this age that you are and that we would have an HIV vaccine, that we'd have an Aids vaccine?

Not necessarily because the signals about Aids vaccine and the success story with that have been coming on for quite some time in terms of this is going to be a slow process.

Maybe RNA technology will help.

We'll move it along a little bit faster.

Are you optimistic about this?

I'm very optimistic about the myriad new technology for an Aids vaccine that really needs to be explored.

But this administration, HHS Secretary Kennedy, is very much against them.

RNA technology.

What what does that mean for the research in the future?

Well, to slow it down, but again, it points to the need for this balanced argument in terms of keeping our options open in terms of, well, if it's not going to work or you're unhappy with it for one reason, might there be other applications of it?

And because of our limited success with an HIV vaccine, maybe there's an opportunity there so that it's a challenge and an opportunity, but you need to broaden your thinking in terms of where this might go and what it could do for us.

Well, we'll take your call in a second.

Patty and Ron, quick, hang there for one moment.

Here, just to make sure our listeners are totally up to speed about HIV vaccine.

A again, is the term HIV and Aids vaccine.

Doctor Valente, we're really talking about HIV, the virus.

Right.

So this is a vaccine for the HIV virus which can cause Aids, right?

HIV.

So, so where are we right now?

Here.

You said there's been limited success over the years.

We've talked a little bit on this program about that.

But there are big, big challenges.

This is not like developing a Covid vaccine.

It's a it's a very different thing speaks to the complexity of the HIV.

The HIV Aids virus is, you know, mutates quickly.

It the Chase when you're chasing the HIV virus, trying to chase it with a vaccine.

It's much more complicated than the experience we had with polio or even influenza.

The viruses are different, so it's going to require a different technology, different strategies, that kind of thing.

In order to get to a step where we find a vaccine, it works.

But but it's not unachievable.

Not.

No, it's not unachievable.

I would never say that, because there's we haven't know enough about this virus in its soft spots and certainly enough about the technologies available to design what they call a clinical trial to test it out.

But clinical trials take a long time if you want to get it right.

And that's where we are.

MRNA technology is about 40 years old, but really came to light during the Covid pandemic.

So now it's getting some attention, against the Aids virus.

And that's where it is.

But that's going to take a while.

To answer your question.

I, was hopeful, but I actually thought that we would continue the work and achieve success in terms of bringing HIV under better control with drugs, earlier testing and treatment, preventive strategies, those kinds of things.

Let's get Pat in around equity.

Wants to jump in here.

Hey, Patty, go ahead.

Oh, yeah.

Man, thanks for taking my call.

Sure.

Yes.

Doctor Mendoza, I when I heard you were going to be on the show today, I knew I needed to just call in and and briefly tell you, thank you for your commitment to this community.

Because I'm a lifelong registered vegetarian.

I'm a retired nurse, and I've, you know, I've watched the work they've done here, both with HIV Aids.

You've just always been concentrating on the people who need help the most.

And your leadership during Covid was what got me and my family and many of my friends through it.

Just your your tireless devotion, your integrity.

And so, you've been, just a just such an asset to this community.

And we really appreciate your service.

And I wanted you to know that.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Patty.

Doctor V well, just to clarify, I'm Valenti, the Aids doctor, and Doctor Mendoza is a, one of our physicians and operations, VP at Trillium Health now, and former public health director, former director of the Monroe County, public health, department.

So, yeah, so we work together, and, I don't want to steal any of, of his thunder because, we're glad to have him because of his public health experience, experience with HIV, all of that.

And and thank you for the Valenti comment regarding your work on HIV Aids, which is, you know, again, the president of Trillium says that you are the heart and soul of HIV Aids care in this community.

And I know there are countless people who who feel that way and have said so over the years.

But, you know, it's interesting with your colleague, Doctor Mendoza's been on this program talking about maintaining and building public trust and what that's been like, especially post-pandemic.

But what that what that entails in the modern media age, what do you what do you think the state of public trust is in, in medicine right now?

A little shaky, it's a little shaky so that it's a, a challenge for those of us who are doing it, seeing patients out there delivering, the message you want to be, fair and balanced and, and get the message out there in a way that people can understand and can take action.

So, the, pandemic, the Covid pandemic changed a lot of that and eroded some of the trust.

Conflicting messages, a higher degree of skepticism, about some of the science, some of the science being called into question.

On the other hand, the this is not, the first time this has happened, we we really faced these kinds of challenges during the HIV epidemic, especially early on.

A new virus pops up.

You have no idea how is transmitted.

There's no treatment for it.

And people are dying.

So, trying to get the message around that and being, what I found during that era was if you could be as consistent and clear as possible, I learned a lot about brevity, and I know I'm not always as brief as I need to be, but if you can get the message out in soundbites in a way that people understand and avoid overwhelming them with science, you can develop that kind of relationship where people, well, I trust this person, so at least I'll listen.

Yeah.

You know, certainly obviously your career, your coming of age, when the Aids epidemic is exploding.

You've written a memoir about this.

Your career has been, based on the work that you did, largely in response to that.

So I take the point.

I remember in March of 2020, reading the comments of Italian doctors in remote Italian hospitals who were begging their colleagues to understand that what they were dealing with was coming.

And I remember reading this dispatch from an Italian hospital where at a time, I'm not I'm not a doctor.

I think I remember him saying, bilateral interstitial pneumonia, bilateral pneumonia, every patient who comes in, every patient who comes in and just thinking, well, I what are we in for?

How frightening that moment was.

And a lot of people did die.

I think we've already have forgotten that.

So I take the point that you're making that you got to have some give some grace in a moment of true chaos when people are dying.

With that said, do you think any mistakes have been made that have injured public trust?

I think we've missed some of the signals.

What you pointed out is one example of, complacency sometimes gets in the way of good decision making.

For example, when this virus was in Asia was when we really should have started to pay attention, Covid caught, excuse me, when Covid was in Asia.

Yeah.

It, that was the call to action then.

But we sometimes for lots of reasons denial, complacency.

It'll never happen here.

It's Africa's problem, that kind of thing.

This is really a global effort here, a global economy.

Travel has changed all of that.

So that what's in Africa was very likely to arrive here at some point.

And you can't ignore those signals.

So every step of the way there are small signals.

It happened with the, Aids epidemic.

I was in that position once where I talked to actually the guy who discovered and described his first cases of Aids, doctor Mike Gottlieb, was talking to him on the phone.

And I told him that.

Well, we've never seen that here.

And his answer to me, response to me was, well, then if I were you, I'd get ready.

And he in two months later, the world changed.

You write about this in your memoir, that this idea that for a brief time you thought maybe this will stay in the big cities, big city, New York City.

It's a big city problem.

We won't have it here.

And that who did not have that was not the case.

That's not a modern disease.

No.

So I learned that lesson.

I learned that lesson early in terms of paying.

Pay attention to the signals and don't ignore these kinds of things.

Talking to doctor Bill Valente, co-founder of Trillium Health.

In our second half hour, we're going to talk about a little bit more about, you know, why he isn't actually just retiring?

What is undone?

What does need to happen next, the future of health care in this community and more.

Let me take a call from Adam in Canada.

Is on the phone.

Hi, Adam.

Go ahead.

Hi, Evan.

Thank you so much for taking my call.

I love your show, and, I am such an.

Oh, man.

Right.

When he says nice things, his call flickers out.

Did you do that, Rob Kriegel?

Is that.

Come on, Adam, hold on.

I'm putting you back on hold because you flickered out.

Megan.

Mac did that, didn't you?

Did you do that?

He's saying nice things about me, doctor Valentin.

Then we dropped the call.

That good?

You get Adam, we'll get you back on in just a second.

But before we do that, for listeners who are may maybe have heard Bill's voice on the show over the years or seen you in the community.

We talk a lot about HIV Aids care, but you went away from this community for for med school.

You came back, you chose to be here.

You chose this day.

And obviously the young Billy, you know, you don't know that you're going to end up being doing four decades of work in research, in a disease that the world didn't know about until 81, 1781, 1981, 1981.

So what did you think you wanted to do before all of that happened?

What?

Ever since I was a young kid, I wanted to be a doctor.

My playmates were cowboy hats and holsters and all of that.

And I had a plastic stethoscope that I played with.

So I was a kind of a nerd that way.

But I always wanted to do something in medicine.

And the polio participation in the polio vaccine trial sort of got me interested in infectious diseases.

Doctor Albert Kaiser, who was the public health director at the time, used to was quoted in the paper often during that era, and I didn't quite understand it, but I read it anyway in terms of trying to participate in and be aware of what was going on.

So there was always interest in, in infectious diseases.

And I studied.

So I started my career at the University of Rochester as, a young, naive, very green assistant professor, in the infectious diseases unit doing hepatitis work, flu vaccine work.

We did many of the studies of the intranasal flu vaccine.

So I learned about viruses very early.

I learned, too, about chasing viruses.

Was, a, a noble pursuit and worth worth the time and effort.

So had HIV Aids not come along, you'd have been in the epidemiology infectious diseases.

Yeah, that would have been the path.

Yeah.

So I think we have it.

We have had him back from Canada.

We do a all right at him.

You can say as many nice things as you want, but we won't drop the call this time.

Go ahead.

Thank you so much I appreciate it.

Yes.

Well, I could I could spend the entire show saying nice things that I will just say in synopsis that I just.

I really respect what you've done.

The voice of experience having gone through something is are the voices.

You know, that I tend to trust more than others.

And I do have what could be potentially a naive question, and possibly somewhat involved, but I, I wanted to throw this out at you, because I am so grateful for the vaccines that I got as a child and the things that are out there today, because they have indeed potentially saved my life without me even knowing it.

But so the it's almost like the, the term is being thrown around a bit.

The word vaccine, to me implies as a layperson that that it's, you know, something I get it alters my body chemistry and it and it helps to create an antibody or whatever the actual science might be.

And then there's something that would be a little less like that, like a flu shot, which I hear and correct me if I'm wrong, that a flu shot is formulated based on the flus from the past, the viruses from the past, because we don't truly know exactly what virus comes each year.

And so we put a collection together and do our best guess, as to the same variety and hope that it kind of works.

Not again.

This is not to say that anything wrong with it or bad about it, it's trying to figure out the mechanism as it works.

So to me that is less of a vaccine, which implies kind of a permanent with maybe a booster later, sort of a permanent, defense against a specific virus.

And same with the Covid, what we were calling a virus or, excuse me, a vaccine, when it was really more of a shot.

And I worry that that creates a doubt in people and that perhaps calling it something more.

What it is, it's a flu shot.

It's a preventative or something like that.

Is it truly a vaccine in the way I'm thinking of a vaccine with, you know, polio and yeah, yeah, there's that.

I get it, Adam.

It's a first of all, it's a really important question and a good question.

And I'm going to give Doctor Valenti some time to talk about that.

Thank you for the phone call.

Yes.

The flu the flu shot is also a vaccine.

It's just that vaccines are made in different ways, but they're all designed to do the same thing, which is to challenge the immune system.

So that when it's exposed to that particular virus or bacterium, that organism that the immune system responds and fights back and, that's why, the, the flu shot, does that the manufacturing part of the flu shot.

You bring up a good point about sort of guessing what, the proper strains might be so that you can stay ahead of this.

This is the part about chasing viruses that I was talking about.

Because the way the flu shots are designed is they, are really a best guess in terms of, well, what are the signals showing in other parts of the world?

What do we know about how the flu virus changes over time so that by the time it gets here, we will have a vaccine that's designed to fight it and do the best job possible.

Working against, against the, the strain of flu, in other words, preventing flu, the disease.

So, yes, that is, that's the way flu vaccines are designed.

It's, a little bit of science and a little bit of signal interpretation in that I was talking about earlier.

In other words, taking the available science with the signals that are available and projecting, and there are some years, as you know, where the flu shot really is, very, it's highly effective.

And other times of the years when it's 50 or 60% effective.

So it can vary.

It's not an exact science, but it's the best we've got at the moment.

Because and that's because of the nature of the flu virus.

So as the guy who was throwing a football around with a 13 year old recently and it's football season, here's the analogy that comes to mind for me, for Adam.

Tell me if this is a good analogy.

Doctor Valenti, a disease like polio isn't changing.

So if you train a kid, you train yourself to catch an out route right on the sidelines.

You get one shot that ball is thrown to you, you get, you get the right gloves, you get the right equipment.

You understand what the ball looks like, how it spins, what it's made of, what size it is.

And you feel like when it's thrown my way, I've trained enough.

I'm going to catch it.

Okay?

It's the same.

So I can catch that thing.

Now imagine you do all that work, but you know that ultimately when someone unleashes that throw to you, the ball might be oblong, it might be slightly different, it might be twice the size, might be smaller, it might have a different material on it might be different color.

And your odds of catching that are still pretty good.

But you know, you didn't train exactly for the throw that's coming your way.

And then the next season, it's a different ball, but it's still a ball.

And it's still useful to do the training because you're still catch it.

More often than not, you're just not going to be at a high as percentage as you would be.

If it's the same, throw the same ball every time.

How are we doing?

All right.

Except that okay, I think I think you're you're on target and also explained it in a way that is understandable because you can it's really I am not a doctor, but but Adam is making a separate point that I think I want to ask you about.

That's important here he is talking about what makes people start to lose trust or frustrated with the system.

And here's one of the things that he's hinting at.

You get a Covid vaccine and it is a vaccine.

Of course it's vaccine.

But then you get Covid and you get sick.

Now you don't get hospitalized, but you miss work for a few days and you are miserable for 72 hours and you go, what the hell, I get the vaccine.

Why am I getting Covid?

I get the vaccine, why did I get the flu again?

Not hospitalized.

You didn't die, but you might miss work.

You might miss a kid's event, and you're frustrated because you got vaccinated.

And then you start to go where it's with all these other vaccines.

If this is a vaccine and it's not working, what's up with polio?

What's up with this?

What's up with, you know, everything that they want the baby.

And I think he's saying that that starts to affect how people view vaccine.

Well, and it does.

And it also brings up the issue of boosters the way we boost, vaccines, some some vaccines and not others, for example, the polio vaccine or measles vaccines designed, to pretty much for life in terms of the way we respond, to them after one, or a series of injections and you're one and done.

Flu vaccine, a different story.

Covid vaccine, a different story.

There is also brings up the idea of the research that's going on to try and create a longer lasting flu shot.

In other words, sort of of trying to avoid this, the guesswork part that goes into it.

And taking what we know about the flu virus and creating a vaccine out of that so that the one shot, you get one shot and at last several years or maybe even a lifetime.

Okay, so that's coming.

I think what it also points out is that the whole, the whole science of vaccines, even though the science of vaccines is about 250 years old.

I mean, this is not a new science, but it's constantly evolving because, you know, chasing viruses, is not an easy task.

It's complicated and takes time and is because of, one of the things that I tell people about my experience is a what I call a clinical virologist is, you know, vaccines, and viruses are unpredictable.

And as you talk about the mutation with Covid in flu vaccine, HIV also mutates a lot.

You said indeed very complicated.

So the chasing that with a vaccine is going to take take continued effort to try and, get that job done.

We have to so let for only break it.

Unfortunately, Doctor Valenti has not signed up to do two hours today.

Which way it turns out we might have needed you for two, but the good news is you're not retiring, so you can keep coming back to connections whenever you want to come there.

Okay, well, we got a lot to squeeze into our last 15 minutes, including more of your phone calls with the great doctor, Bill Valenti, who is, I think marking and celebrating 40 plus great years in this community and still doing that work, even as he transitions out of the leadership role at Trillium Health.

Let's take that break.

Come right back on connections.

Coming up in our second hour, the October issue of City Magazine is all about whom does home mean to you?

Is it a state of mind?

Is it a place?

And how valuable is it to live in our region?

What feels like home that sets it apart, that is unique?

Here we're talking all about the idea of home with the team from city next hour.

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This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson, this is Bob and Mendon.

Next on the phones with doctor Bill Valenti.

Go ahead, Bob.

Hey, good afternoon.

Doctor, I was curious.

You mentioned that, you know, obviously Aids or HIV is not a localized issue.

It's a it's a global issue.

How disheartening was it after spending so much time, researching this when, our current administration, decided to not fund U.S.

aid?

That irreparable damage?

And are there other countries or organizations that are picking up the slack for our lack of, participation and helping those around the world?

Thank you.

Bob.

Go ahead, Doctor Valenti.

Yeah, there are other a large groups, United Nations, groups, and others who are, on the, the Global challenge, against HIV, disappointed because of, what I thought, was a, a lack of understanding in terms of how far we've come with HIV, that we really do have the tools, even without a vaccine, to get the job done and make some serious, dent in the global pandemic.

But that takes time, energy and, and money, so that I think the decision was shortsighted and, didn't quite understand the advances that have taken place over the past 40 years, in terms of treatment and prevention and drugs, especially long acting drugs.

Now, injection drugs that are, long acting, that, are real game changers.

So we're going to miss that opportunity or it's going to slow it down.

A disappointment.

Are you worried people will die because of these decisions?

Yes.

I think that, we've seen that when you let your guard down, these kinds of things happen, people get infected, and, and and I and remember that this is a is a global phenomenon.

This is not a just, as we said, not just localized.

So we really need to think about it in big picture terms.

Thank you.

Bob.

In Rochester, this is the mailer.

Go ahead.

The mailer.

Yeah.

Thanks for taking my call.

I have a question.

Maybe I don't know if this is true.

I'm not in that back there.

I've always done vaccines.

We're not since I was a kid in the health department going to Tyler, Texas, but my tingled as an army for 12 years and taking a flu shot was mandatory, and I always got extremely sick shortly after taking it.

And the first time I took it, it was October 85th.

In November, I ended up in a German hospital and I was dating a girl.

I later married the German girl and she came over and my buddy always knows when he's sick.

Before I knew it mentally, because I'll just stay in a bed and normally I would have been up at 530 in the morning, but when she came over I was still in bed like 11:00 and she asked me if I would go downtown with her.

Oh yeah, we can do that.

Well, let me get a quick shower.

And and I remember her asking me.

I remember turning to the side of the bed, and I remember someone standing up.

But then I woke up in a German hospital, and she said, when I stood up, I collapsed.

I hit the bed and I hit the floor.

I don't remember the ambulance ride.

I don't remember anything.

I just remember I ended up in the German hospital.

Yeah.

You know, you bring up a good a good point in a good a good question because sometimes these things are associated sort of happened together.

But in fact I'm not related.

So that it's possible that, there was some other, infection or situation or circumstance that contributed to, your illness.

And in fact, it wasn't the flu shot that caused it.

And one of the reasons I say that is that if you take a look at large studies where people, get vaccinated and look at events like that, there happen they happen relatively infrequently.

But I thought I you also said that you continue to get a flu shot.

And I'd say that's a very smart move, my friend.

So thank you, Dr.

Miller.

Thank you for the phone call.

And I will also say, Doctor Valenti, I've had a number of Covid vaccines now.

And almost all of them was absolutely barely even a sore arm with the with one exception, I, I got a bit of a fever and was just run down for a, you know, 12 hour period after a shot, which can happen after a vaccine, to the point where I woke up the next day and in my Q it was a shot.

I think it was like friends or something, like a show.

I would never watch that I knew something was wrong.

Well, I have some good news for you.

And there, but I was fine.

Good.

The good news is that there kind of reaction, body reaction.

Yeah.

All of that indicates that your immune system's responding yes to the vaccine.

Indeed.

So you should be protected.

There's no vaccine that should make me watch friends.

Well, there there should be lines, doctor Valencia.

But, but I will say, yes, I different no, I, I'm, I'm grateful for every opportunity to live in the modern age of vaccines.

And listeners, I want to say this.

We covered this on Monday.

We're obviously covering a lot more today.

And I know that's what you want to talk about.

We're going to keep talking vaccines.

And I want to thank you for all the interest and all the good conversation about that.

But in our remaining time, I want to ask Doctor Valente, who, has was there really?

I think I saw a photo from you at the founding of Trillium was initially called the Community Health Network.

Community Health Network, and I think that's you.

And in Louise Slaughter.

Yes.

You had a relationship with Congresswoman Slaughter?

Oh, yes.

And I think she was there.

The picture of the founding.

She cut the ribbon that day, and she's said that, she predicted that we would do great things, that this was a community asset and welcomed community Health Network as a health organization to Rochester and cut the ribbon.

That's fantastic.

The late Congresswoman Slaughter, who had her own work in medicine and was very proud of that.

She was a microbiologist.

Yeah.

And was very proud of that.

So this organization is become so central in this community, so what are you going to do next and how will you stay connected?

We have the Trillium Health Foundation.

So I'm going to continue to work with the foundation in terms of fundraising and strategies and program developed funding, program development, that kind of thing.

The other thing that I want to do is I want to tell the story in meaningful terms for the audience who didn't live through it.

So I've launched my Instagram page and, am also, I have about 40 something years of archives of materials that I've saved that are going to the University of Rochester Library, so that that's going to become part of their Aids collection, history of Aids collection and what their collection does of all those materials that I save, letters, books of all of that, gifts from patients, speaks to the community response to the Aids pandemic.

And that's what needs to be acknowledged.

Because when I tell, I tell people that.

Thank you for the compliment on my good works.

But it didn't do it by myself that there was at all levels of the community, there were people involved in some way or other who wanted to help get the job done and wanted to respond to Aids.

And I think that speaks volumes, especially in terms of where we are today, with being divided, in terms of how we approach serious diseases that we didn't always agree.

But people really helped me push the rock up the hill and the hill.

There were many days when it seemed like the hill was getting steeper and the rock was getting bigger, but there were always people there to help and that made just a huge difference.

And that's that speaks to the success of Community Health Network that became Trillium Health, and the success that we've had with innovations in patient care for HIV that we've made.

The Rochester region has made significant contributions to the entire global effort.

This is to state the obvious.

When we talk about HIV Aids, this is not a disease just for any one identity or community.

And we knew that, especially in the 80s, all of the different stereotypes.

Having said that, I rewatched some of your conversation with our former CEO, Norm Silverstein when your memoir came out and you talked about in the early 1980s, coming out yourself at this time when the epidemic was really crashing down and and doing so much harm.

And I want to close with this.

Similar to how we tend to talked about vaccines.

There's progress.

There's progress than there's so much success.

Maybe there's a a backlash or a slide back.

How have you seen this community?

You've told us that this community has always been open and, and, and pretty good for, for the LGBTQ community.

But is it a has it been a largely straight line of progress?

Right.

Do you see any backsliding there?

Are you concerned?

Sometimes I'm concerned about health care capacity.

In terms of the hospital's emergency departments that sort of is sort of keeping up, with, shortages and trying to overcome shortages of health care.

People because a lot of what needs to be done can be done in private offices or even urgent care settings and outside of hospitals.

But we need to be training people, getting them into position and helping develop leadership and talent to, to get the job done and do it correctly.

So, it's a tall order, but it's an order.

For the community that it's a call to action to don't let what's happening in other places happen here, because the system is good and the people are just extraordinarily committed to getting it right.

When you decided all those years ago to come back to Rochester to work in this community, to build your career here, you could have gone elsewhere an hour or less.

30s have you ever regretted that in any way?

Not one day.

Ever.

That this, it's been it's been a joy.

It's not always easy.

Not always been easy.

But I'll tell you, it was the right decision.

Why do you think so?

The people make all the difference that the people who are responsive and want to get things done.

That to the letter.

People asked, what can I do?

How can I help?

And we never had anyone in health care turned down one of our patients.

As we close here.

I think listeners probably already know this just listening to you, but it it is the mark of a great leader when you are assessing a monumental career to talk about all the other people who made it possible.

And that's what you always do.

But this community also recognizes that without doctor Bill Valente, I think we would be worse off.

And I am grateful for the way you communicate, the way you come on, how accessible you are, the work you've done and the work that you will continue to do.

And this door is open.

And let's keep talking on this program, sir.

My pleasure.

I'd love to.

And that's the great doctor, Bill Valente.

We've got more connections coming up in just a moment.

Oh.

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