Actress of Jamaican & Haitian Descent Stars in “Marry Me”

Actress of Jamaican Descent Stars in New Jennifer Lopez Movie, “Marry Me”

BY STEPHANIE KORNEY JAMAICANS.COM

Editorial credit: Sam Aronov / Shutterstock.com

Michelle Buteau, an American comedian, actor, television host, and podcast host, has a starring role in the new film “Marry Me,” which also stars Jennifer Lopez, Owen Wilson, and Sarah Silverman. The film, which is directed by Kat Coiro, tells the story of a musical superstar named “Kat Valdez,” played by Lopez, and a math teacher, “Charlie Gilbert” played by Wilson, as two strangers who agree to get married and then get to know one another. As the story develops, a romance arises between the two different people who are looking for something real in an environment marked by relationships based on perceptions gleaned via social media. Buteau noted that the best thing about working on the film was being with so many dynamic women, and she had only praise for Jennifer Lopez, who was integrally involved with the film’s production. She also said she felt the difference being directed by a woman and in a cast with diversity. She remembered that when she was growing up, she did not see people like herself in the movies, but now, with Lopez and Maluma living their dreams on stage and being good people represented more than a movie< “It’s a movement,” she added. Buteau was born in 1977 in New Jersey. Her father is of Haitian and Lebanese descent, and her mother is a Jamaican of French descent. Buteau attended Florida State University where she was studying for a career in journalism before deciding to move into comedy. She began her pursuit of a comedy career just a few days after the tragedy of September 11, 2001. After five years of stand-up work, she appeared on television for the first time on Comedy Central, and by 2017, she was listed by Esquire magazine as one of its “ten comedians to watch.” She became the host of the “Late Night Whenever” podcast in 2018, a broadcast named one of the best of 2018 by Time magazine. She was also a member of “The Comedy Lineup” on Netflix. Her film career began in 2019 when she made appearances in several movies, including “Someone Great,” “Isn’t It Romantic,” “Sell By,” and “Always Be My Maybe.” The year 2019 brought more exposure for Buteau when she started hosting the “Adulting” podcast on WNYC with cohost Jordan Carlos and appeared in two television series – “First Wives Club” and “Tales of the City.” In 2020, Buteau began hosting “The Circle,” a reality television show from Netflix. She also published her first book, a collection of personal essays titled “Survival of the Thickest” in that year. In 2021, her show “Buteau’s Michelle Buteau: Welcome to Buteaupia” won a Critics’ Choice Television Award in the Best Comedy Special category. Buteau has no problem staying busy. The “Marry Me” film was released on February 11, 2022, and the comedian signed a new deal with Netflix for a series based on her novel “Survival of the Thickest.” With the series, she hopes to represent “curvy and thicker women” through honesty, which she is hoping will prompt “difficult conversations.” The show will be based on her own experiences, and she says she wants to find “humor through pain.”l

Kitchen Corner Caribbean Fish Soup

Not just a healthy soup, it's very tasty too. I always loved this soup while growing up in the Caribbean. To my surprise it turned out to be a good warm-up drink too. Long story short, as I waited for a bus on a very cold and windy winter evening in NYC, I noticed a West Indian restaurant across the street. I ran in to get a cup of coffee or tea. The last thing on my mind was a bowl of soup. They were about to close and the only thing they had was fish soup. I took a small cup and went back to the bus stop. It warmed me up so much and reached such a good place inside me that I ran back for more. By Tony P, AllRecipes.com

Ingredients 2 whole fish, scaled and cleaned, or more to taste 1 lemon, juiced 8 cups water 4 green bananas, chopped 1 pound pumpkin, cut into 1-inch pieces, or more to taste 2 potatoes, chopped 2 ears corn, cut into 1-inch pieces 4 ounces carrots, cut into 1/2-inch pieces ½ cup chopped okra 4 scallions, chopped 1 hot chile pepper 2 cloves garlic, chopped 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon ground black pepper 4 sprigs fresh thyme, leaves stripped

Directions Step 1 Rinse fish with lemon juice; drain. Step 2 Bring water to a boil in a large bowl. Add fish; simmer until soft, about 30 minutes. Strain fish, reserving broth. Let fish cool. Remove bones, trying to keep large pieces of fish intact.

Step 3 Bring broth to a boil. Add green bananas, pumpkin, potatoes, corn, carrots, okra, scallions, chile pepper, garlic, salt, pepper, and thyme. Bring back to a boil. Reduce heat to low; simmer until potatoes are almost tender, about 10 minutes. Stir in fish. Simmer until flavors combine, about 5 minutes more.

Step 4 Remove soup from heat and let stand before serving, about 30 minutes. Discard chile pepper.

Cook's Notes Don't slit the chile pepper if you don't like a lot of heat.

Tips When reheating leftovers, do not boil; it will break down the fish.

Nutrition Facts Per Serving: 203 calories; protein 11.6g; carbohydrates 35g; fat 3.3g; cholesterol 25.5mg; sodium 338mg.l Prep: 35 mins Cook: 1 hr Additional: 30 mins Total: 2 hrs 5 mins Servings: 8

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Stacy Young Board Certified Holistic Health Coach Tel: 917-459-8431

If I Am Vaccinated and Get COVID-19, What Are My Chances of Dying? The Answer is Surprisingly Hard to Find

BY LISA MILLER THE CONVERSATION

Thankfully, most people who get COVID–19 don’t become seriously ill – especially those who are vaccinated. But a small fraction do get hospitalized, and a smaller fraction do die. If you are vaccinated and catch the coronavirus, what are your chances of getting hospitalized or dying? As an epidemiologist, I have been asked to respond to this question in one form or another throughout the pandemic. This is a very reasonable question to ask, but a challenging one to answer. To calculate the risk of hospitalization or death after getting infected with SARS-CoV-2 you need to know the total number of infections. The problem is that nobody knows exactly how many people have been infected by the coronavirus. So, while it is very hard to estimate the true risk of dying if you are vaccinated and come down with COVID-19, there are some ways to better understand the risks.

Counting infections The first thing to consider when thinking about risk is that the data has to be fresh. Each new variant has its own characteristics that change the risk it poses to those it infects. Omicron came on quickly and seems to be leaving quickly, so there has been little time for researchers or health officials to collect and publish data that can be used to estimate the risk of hospitalization or death. If you have enough good data, it would be possible to calculate the risk of hospitalization or death. You would need to count the number of people who were continued on page 19

Vaccinated/ continued from page 18 hospitalized or died and divide that number by the total number of infections. It’s also important to take into account time delays between infection, hospitalization and death. Doing this calculation would give you the true [infection] hospitalization or fatality rate. The trouble is health officials don’t know with certainty how many people have been infected. The omicron variant is incredibly infectious, but the risk of it causing significant illness is much lower compared to previous strains. It’s great that omicron is less severe, but that may lead to fewer people seeking tests if they are infected. Further complicating things is the widespread availability of at-home test kits. Recent data from New York City suggests that 55% of the population had ordered these and that about a quarter of individuals who tested positive during the omicron surge used a home test. Many people who use home tests report their results, but many do not. Finally, some people who do get symptoms simply may not get tested because they can’t readily access testing resources, or they don’t see a benefit in doing so. When you combine all these factors, the result is that the official, reported count of coronavirus cases in the U.S. is far lower than the actual number. Estimating cases Since the beginning of the pandemic, epidemiologists have been working on ways to estimate the true number of infections. There are a few ways to do this. Researchers have previously used antibody tests results from large populations to estimate the prevalence of the virus. This type of testing takes time to organize, and as of late February 2022, it doesn’t appear that anyone has done this for omicron. Another way to estimate cases is to rely on mathematical models. Researchers have used these models to make estimates of total case numbers and also for infection fatality rates. But the models don’t distinguish between estimated infections of vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. Research has shown time and again that vaccination greatly reduces one’s risk of serious illness or death. This means that calculating the risk of death is only really useful if you can distinguish by vaccination status, and existing models don’t enable this.

What’s known and what to do? Without a good estimate of total cases by vaccination status, the best data available is known cases, hospitalizations and deaths. While this limited information doesn’t allow researchers to calculate the absolute risk an individual faces, it is possible to compare the risk between vaccinated and unvaccinated people. The most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that hospitalization rates are 16 times higher in unvaccinated adults compared to fully vaccinated ones, and rates of death are 14 times higher. What is there to take away from all this? Most importantly, vaccination greatly reduces the risk of hospitalization and death by many times. But perhaps a second lesson is that the risks of hospitalization or death are much more complicated to understand and study than you might have thought – and the same goes for deciding how to react to those risks. I look at the numbers and feel confident in the ability of my COVID-19 vaccination and booster to protect me from severe disease. I also choose to wear a high-quality mask when I’m indoors with lots of people to lessen my own risk even further and to protect those who may be unable to get vaccinated. There have been many lessons learned from this pandemic, and there are many things researchers and the public still need to do better. It turns out that studying and talking about risk is one of them.l

Protect yourself, New York. Protect yourself, New York.

Get vaccinated. Stay up to date with a booster. Wear your mask.

NYC VACCINE FOR ALL: SAFE, FREE, EASY

To learn more, visit To learn more, visit nyc.gov/vaccine昀nder nyc.gov/vaccine昀nder or call or call 877-VAX-4NYC 877-VAX-4NYC.

E r i c A d a m s M a y o r D a v e A . C h o k s h i , M D, M S c C o m m i s s i o n e r