Buffalo Radio: 2 Personalities Talk COVID

Classic Hits WHTT 104.1 FM morning personality Bill Lacy and News/Talk WBEN 930 AM afternoon host Tom Bauerle couldn’t be more different, according to Allen Pergament at The Buffalo News.

Lacy is the calm, reassuring voice of morning radio for 40 years, 20 years at WHTT and 20 years at WBEN before that.  Bauerle is the outspoken and controversial talk show host on a station that advocates conservative talking points.

But Lacy and Bauerle recently had something in common.

Both were vaccinated for Covid-19 but were off the air for extended periods of time recently because they had breakthrough cases of the virus. They have since recovered.

The 69-year-old Lacy became sick before Labor Day and was off the air from Sept. 3 to 13.

“It was pretty nasty for a few days,” said Lacy in a telephone interview last week.

He quarantined for 10 days, with his wife, Pat, putting three meals a day at the bottom of the stairs that he brought upstairs.

Bill Lacy

For three or four days, he said his symptoms were a cough, aches and chest congestion.

He was thankful he decided to be vaccinated and received two Moderna shots.

“When it first came out, I said I’m not going to take that,” said Lacy. “I quickly came to my senses. I saw people dropping like flies. I’m not a young chicken.”

He added his late mother was a registered nurse who believed in vaccines. He is surprised that some health care workers are declining to be vaccinated.

“It baffles me, it stumps me,” said Lacy. “I would not want to have gone through this without the vaccine fighting off the worst of it. My chest was hurting to the point that I wondered when I was alone, 'should I be in the hospital?' I wouldn’t want to be in this battle without the vaccine.”

Bauerle addressed his positions on being vaccinated and the mandate when he returned to his program last Tuesday for the first time in a few weeks after getting sick in mid-September.

Like Lacy, Bauerle also initially tested negative on a rapid test before later testing positive.

He told his audience he received two Moderna shots.

Bauerle said he had mild to moderate symptoms for a few days, felt “kind of crappy,” was fatigued for a few weeks and had trouble talking and isn’t 100% yet.”

But later in the program, he told a caller: “Rightly or wrongly, there were times during the situation I said, ’Wow. I’m glad I got Moderna.’ How bad would it have been if I didn’t get Moderna?”

He added that “at no point” did he think he should go to the hospital.