An interview about COVID Vaccines and Vaccination with Dr Craig Laferriere PhD. We discuss the overall impact of vaccination in terms of global death and disease reduction. We then concentrate on the various types of vaccines and relate them to the COVID Vaccines that are currently being administered.The research process, manufacturing, and safety of COVID vaccines are all explored. We investigate vaccine hesitancy in relation to COVID vaccination.

Watch: https://youtu.be/9ZmRqIR3ohc

Listen: https://player.captivate.fm/episode/2657e1e6-814f-4e3d-b2c7-92b0e3f549b0

Learn More: https://kojalamedical.com/covid19theanswers/

 https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/vaccines-and-immunization-what-is-vaccination

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2020.00937/full

https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/13/3/418

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20XNvpYhmoA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0CeqJIBUDY

https://www.statnews.com/2022/02/15/i-trust-my-drug-dealer-more-than-i-trust-this-vaccine/

Kojala Medical presents Covid 19 The Answers. The  show that delivers the scientific evidence-based

knowledge that can safely return us all to  our pre-Covid lives. My name is Dr. Funmi

Okunola and I'll be hosting the show. Every  week you can listen to me interview a highly

respected professional about the science that  can reduce your risk of becoming infected with

this coronavirus. Dr Craig Laferriere PhD is  head of vaccine development at Novateur Ventures

and is an international consultant in vaccine  manufacturing and licensing for Canvax

he led the Glaxosmithkline pneumococcal  conjugate vaccine team to a successful

application of Synflorix and he was a regional  medical research specialist and medical advisor

at Pfizer Canada where he launched among other  things the adult indication for the vaccine

Prevnar 13 helping to stem the tide of the most  common cause of pneumonia in our communities.

Dr Laferriere has an illustrious career, that  has included the development manufacture and

implement implementation of some of the  most important vaccines in use today

which have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.  These include the haemophilus influenza type B

or HIB vaccine, the meningococcal conjugate  vaccine, both of which primarily protect children

from Meningitis and the Pertussis, or whooping  cough vaccine. Essentially, Dr Laferriere has

been responsible for the delivery of a significant  proportion of the first vaccines that children are

inoculated with around the world. Welcome!  Thank you Funmi, it's a pleasure to be here.

Thank you Craig. So what got you  into vaccine development and are you

in the process of delivering  any vaccines at the moment?

So when I got started my interest in vaccines,  just after I finished my bachelor's degree and

I got a job in West Africa in Ghana in West Africa  as a teacher at a secondary school. This was back

in 1983 and the school that I was teaching at had  a hospital associated with it. And so I used to go

over and visit the children in the hospital. Now  this hospital specialized in orthopedic surgery

and there was a surgeon who would come down from  Spain every once in a while and he would perform

operations to straighten out the bones of  children who had problems walking and so on.

And one day while I was walking with the nurse  doing rounds, I asked him why are there so

many crippled children in Ghana and he said to  me, ‘oh it's because of Polio’ and I was very

shocked and disappointed at this, because Polio  was a vaccine preventable disease. I had recalled

lining up when I was in elementary school  back in the 60s, lining up to get the oral

drops for the Polio vaccine, so it was completely  preventable. These these crippled children. Well

after that, when I returned to  Canada an opportunity arose to

do a PhD in vaccine research and I jumped at it,  and that started my career in vaccine research

and development. Gosh that's a fantastic and  honorable story. Thank you for sharing that.

So and just currently what I'm working on these  days is the patents around the messenger RNA

vaccines. So it's there's a very interesting story  there who owns the intellectual property and who

can benefit from it what patents are expiring and  which ones will will be lasting longer so it's

and I think there you know there's some great  opportunities available for vaccine manufacturers

to to be able to begin manufacturing the messenger  RNA type of vaccines there was for example an

article in the paper about several places in  Africa putting together messenger RNA vaccine

manufacturing facilities and there there was a lot  of concern about the patent situation there but I

think having a good understanding of of where  the patents are at and which ones are expiring

will help to speed the way along the development  of these new vaccine manufacturing facilities.

Oh that's really excellent. So you're  actually working on a project that will

facilitate opening up the technology to many more  low and middle income countries, so that they can

maybe manufacture the mRNA vaccines on their own  soil and reduce costs and create jobs? Absolutely.

No that's fantastic. Okay so links to papers and  quotes cited will be included in the show notes

I think we should start with the definition of  vaccination. There is an excellent explanation

on the world health organization website  of which I will read the first paragraph.

Vaccination is a simple, safe and effective  way of protecting you against harmful diseases

before you come into contact with them. It uses  your body's natural defenses to build resistance

to specific infections and makes your immune  system stronger. Please explain to us Craig,

in simple terms, how you would define vaccination  in a way that a non-medic can understand?

Well I read that definition several  times and I have to say that I'm not

sure I quite agree with it. I'm not sure that  it actually makes your immune system stronger.

What it does is it introduces your immune  system to diseases that it hasn't yet seen and

so that means that when the real disease comes  along your immune system has already seen it,

already recognized it and so therefore, it's  able to respond more quickly to the invasion

and cut it off before it  gets started. So it's more of

a teaching of your immune system and of course  there is something called immune memory and

so it's actually teaching your immune system to  recognize something that is an infectious disease.

Of course what you're injected with is something  that is a weakened or dead form of that particular

infectious agent and so it doesn't cause  the disease when it is injected into you,

but your immune system is trained  to recognize it in the future.

Thank you. The way I kind of look on it is  that it helps our body mobilize our army

of white cells, which is our infection fighting  cells and helps to alert them of a danger that

that that sort of is around so that when we're  exposed to the real virus our sort of about the

army in our body which is our immune system  kind of our infantry and maybe special forces

is like alert and ready to combat that sort  of attack. How do you feel about that too?

So again, I don't think that's quite correct  because your if your immune system was

on alert all the time, I mean it depends on how  you define you know, ‘alert’ but you know, you

for example, when you get a cut or something  like that, then you'll start to see swelling and

inflammation and that's when your immune system is  activated. It's wanting to shut down any potential

cause of infection, but you don't want to have  inflammation all the time, because you know, that

would be painful and you'd be feeling sick all the  time. So your immune system calms down in between

and it is on guard. It's you know, it's  looking for any potential infections,

but it's more of a surveillance rather than  being activated. Thank you for that clarity.

Vaccination is medicine's single  biggest contribution to society to date,

according to the World Health Organization there  are 25 preventable diseases that have licensed

vaccines. A study done by the University of  Illinois in Chicago for dating from 1962 to 2017

concluded that vaccinations stopped 4.5 billion  virus cases, and saved 10 million lives worldwide.

The sudden onset of Covid-19 accelerated  the global urgency for vaccine development

and distribution to unprecedented levels  of speed and financial assistance.

Current estimates indicate that nearly 11 billion  doses have been administered around the world.

Is it possible to estimate how  many lives have been saved and

hospitalizations prevented from  the Covid 19 vaccines to date?

So that's a very interesting statement you read.  And you read, and one thing that popped out to

me when you said that 10 million lives had been  saved over 50 years and that's a lower number than

I'm used to hearing. Now of course, I'm coming  at it from you know the vaccine manufacturing

side and they do tend to exaggerate things, but  one of the numbers that I've seen is that two

to three million lives saved per year and so  over a 50-year period that would be you know

100 million lives saved. Which is about you know,  10 times higher number than what you quoted, so

I think probably the truth is maybe somewhere  in between you know a low estimate and a high

estimate somewhere between 10 and 100 million  lives saved over a 50-year period. Now getting

on to how many lives has the Covid vaccines saved.  That one's very tricky because there's been a lot

of other interventions at the same time. There's  been you know, isolation, there's been mask

wearing, there's the treatment of people who have  Covid has improved dramatically. You know, at the

start for example. The death rate from Covid was  as high as 30% and now it's less than 1% because

they know what it is that's killing people. It's  the inflammation caused by the virus that is

killing people and so the treatment with steroids  reduces that inflammation and so you have much

higher survival rate. I did see a number of that  500 000 lives had been saved from the introduction

of of the vaccines, so half a million lives, but  as I say it's a very difficult number to estimate

because of all the other interventions that have  occurred in this Covid 19 pandemic. Thank you.

You conducted two studies into SARS-CoV-2 vaccines  resulting in two publications entitled ‘a snapshot

of the global race for vaccines targeting  SARS-CoV-2’ and ‘the Covid-19 pandemic

looking at vaccines in production published  in June 2020 in frontiers of pharmacology’

and the second entitled target product  profile analysis of Covid 19 vaccines

in phase 3 clinical trials and beyond an  early 2021 perspective published in March 2021

shortly after the first vaccines of the pandemic  had been administered. Could you tell the audience

what are the key properties that an ideal vaccine  needs to have to protect us from Covid 19?

Sure, so if you look at our papers, you'll see  a list of all the properties or characteristics

that the vaccine should have in an ideal target  product profile but really what it comes down and

some of those things can be you know shelf life  and administration you know one dose, two doses,

three doses, but really the two main factors that  make an ideal vaccine are safety and effectiveness

and I think people don't recognize how much  importance there is on the safety of vaccines.

The, it really is the most important issue  or the most important characteristics that

the vaccine manufacturers will look at in  their clinical development of the vaccine

and before any license, any vaccine gets to be  licensed, there has to be a large number of people

vaccinated and these people are monitored very  closely for the standard side effects that you get

from vaccines, such as inflammation and fever and  so on, but then also looking for the rare events,

the, for example, allergic reactions are a known  side effect for for many vaccines and so those

things also have to be monitored and so you need  a large numbers of people studied in the clinical

trials. At least 15 000 if not more, to have  received the vaccine and this goes together to

put together a safety data profile of the vaccine  and all that is essential for the submission

to the regulatory authorities for licensing a  vaccine. Well, thank you for that, that's really

reassuring. I'm sure for the audience that safety  is the absolute priority during manufacture.

So vaccination is a major topic today which has  sadly polarized people in many parts of the world

particularly unfortunate is the misinformation  about vaccination that is spread through social

media and other mediums. In simple terms that  people can understand i'd like to drill down to

the different vaccines currently available that  combat the SARS-CoV-2 virus and how they work

there are four different vaccine categories  can you please give a brief explanation of each

and the vaccines that fall into that category?

Okay so I gave you a link to a talk I had  presented some time ago where I go into

detail on the history of the development of these  different technologies. I think you said you would

get the link make the link available to  your viewers? Yes, so people want to go

into more detail there's a whole hour worth  of details on these different technologies,

but essentially the four technologies  are the whole virus vaccines

the viral vector vaccines, the recombinant  protein vaccines and the messenger RNA vaccines

and these have been developed over the years. And  so I'll just sort of give you a bit of a historic

background and that sort of helps people  to understand these different technologies

so the whole virus vaccines is as it describes  it is the whole virus and these were first

developed around well the very first one  was I guess Louis Pasteur, way back in the

late 1800s. But what it is, you grow the virus  up and then you kill it somehow, or you weaken it

and then that person is immunized with that and  then they develop an immune response to it and

examples of that are the flu vaccine for example,  that's weakened by treating it with detergent

that splits the virus, or the Polio vaccine,  the sock Polio vaccine where it's inactivated

using formaldehyde and then there are some Covid  vaccines that use that. There's the Sinopharm

vaccine and Sinovac vaccines from China and  in those instances I believe also they are

inactivated with formaldehyde and they have  efficacy somewhere around 50 to 70 percent.

So that's a technology that's been around  since the 1950s. The next technology to come

along was the recombinant protein vaccines.  These this technology was developed in the

late 80s early 90s and what that  involves is taking a gene from the virus

and inserting that into some kind of other vector,  or some kind of other organism that can produce

a lot a large quantity of that  protein that that gene codes for

and then you purify that protein and then you  immunize with that now what was discovered back

in the 80s that doing that using this purified  protein approach didn't work very well you'd

immunize a person with the protein and there  wouldn't be any kind of antibody response

and it so something needed to be added into those  those types of vaccines to increase the immune

response so the adjuvants an adjuvant means  additional thing adjuvants were developed to

increase the immune response to those recombinant  proteins and so you'll see that in for example the

Novavax vaccine they have an adjuvant which  is comes from the bark of a tree called quill

a and then also medicago in Quebec city they have  a protein that is produced in plant cells and then

they have an adjuvant which is manufactured by  Glaxosmithkline to increase the immune response

so and those ones have shown  vaccine efficacy between 80% and 90%.

And then we start coming into the more  recent vaccines the viral vector vaccines

and the viral vector vaccines  are they are non-replicating

and the gene from the Covid spike protein. In  this instance is inserted into an adenovirus.

Now this adenovirus has been genetically modified.  It has had certain genes removed from it and so

that it can't reproduce. But it, what it does  is it introduces that gene into your cells,

in your body and your body produces that spike  protein and then that elicits an immune response

against it. Now there's a lot of technology going  on there that I don't think it's worth going into

right now, but if you want to know more about it  you can again look at the my previous talk that

I mentioned to you earlier and you'll see a lot  more details about how that all works and those

vaccines only had about 70% 75% efficacy  and that's kind of surprising because

you would think that this kind of  technology would you're getting the

protein produced right inside your cells which  is how it is naturally occurs in infections

and so that stimulates your immune system you  would think but what seems to be the problem or

what is potentially a problem is that people  have are already exposed to the adenovirus

maybe about 10% or 15% in North America  about 30% in Europe and even higher in

Asia up to 50 to 60 percent of  people have already been exposed

to this particular adenovirus and so that means  that when the vaccine is introduced into a person,

it doesn't even have a chance to go anywhere.  It is immediately attacked by your immune system

before it even gets a chance to start  producing the spike protein. So that's

probably the reason why those vaccines didn't  have as high efficacy as you would have hoped.

And then the final technology is this  messenger RNA technology and again there's

a lot of very interesting details and I go  into it more detail in my my other video,

but the idea here is that the messenger RNA  is kind of like the working memory inside your

cells you have the long-term memory which  is your DNA and then you have the working

memory which is the messenger RNA and the  advantage to this is that the messenger RNA

doesn't stick around, it gets chewed up very  quickly by natural metabolism in your cells,

so there are some theoretical safety advantages to  doing that it's, there's no chance of this these

messenger RNA integrating into your genome of  your of your cells and then the messenger RNA

codes for the spike protein. So the spike protein  is then produced by your cells and then your body

recognizes that as foreign and then you create  an immune immune response against it and so for

that particular vaccine of course we have the  Pfizer vaccine BioNTech and then also the

Moderna vaccine and those ones have shown efficacy  up around 95 percent and so and they're

in terms of the time-scale to manufacture them,  they are much quicker than the other technologies

so this one has turned out to be really  the favored vaccine for most countries.

Thank you for a really good explanation and  just sort of looking back at what you've just

said that that was really interesting about why  the adenovirus vector vaccines didn't have as

as great an efficacy as the mRNA vaccines. That's  the clearest explanation that I've heard. The fact

that basically our bodies an adenovirus is the  way I look in it is kind of similar in a sense to

a cold like virus. Am I correct? So that's common,  obviously throughout the world's population. So

I can see now how our bodies would see that  as an invader and kind of prevent the vaccines

from working as well as they could have. Those  still very, they still have a very high efficacy

from what even the World Health Organization  initially expected. I think the target initially

was about 50 percent of efficacy and when  we say efficacy, I presume we're saying efficacy

against severe disease. Am I correct there? It would be against symptomatic infection

is the way they've been defined in the clinical  trials so somebody has symptoms they come in and

get tested by a PCR test and then they they find  the virus present in their respiratory system

so that's how it's defined in the clinical  trials. Great and with the mRNA vaccines.

Thank you because I know there's been a lot on  social media with fears of them changing DNA

in our cells and thank you for providing clarity  in the mechanism to show that that is not

happening. And from my understanding the messenger  RNA is extremely fragile and that's why it has a

protein coating that's been developed, because  when it's actually released it disintegrates quite

quickly, am I correct? It's not a protein coating.  It's a lipid coating actually. Sorry, yeah,

and yes that's exactly it and in fact back in  the 90s there was a whole lot of excitement about

you know, messenger RNA and DNA type vaccines it  seemed to work really well in mice. But when you

tried them in monkeys or humans it didn't work  at all and I remember back in the day talking to

one of the scientists who was working on this and  he said he did a really simple experiment he took

a drop of blood and mix it with the DNA and within  I think 10 minutes it had completely digested

the DNA down. So there are enzymes in your blood  and RNA, also the same thing would happen there's

enzymes present in your blood that just chop  up these molecules, so unless you protect them

against those enzymes, they're just going to  disappear the second you immunize with them. So

this little blob of of fat, what it does is it  protects the messenger RNA against your immune

system and then your body naturally the cells  in your body naturally pick up little blobs of

fat. It's part of the communication system between  cells and so it picks up that little blob of fat

and then this is where the real interesting  technology comes in the ph changes inside those

those vacuoles and when the ph changes  that allows suddenly that membrane to

pop open and that releases the messenger RNA into  the cytoplasm of your cell and so that's how you

get the messenger RNA inside without having  it being degraded when it's open. Yeah when it

when it would be in in your blood system in your  bloodstream thank you and as Dr Laferriere says,

as Craig says, I will be included links to his  YouTube explanations about vaccines in the show

notes and I'm glad and you've kind of preempted  one of my questions in that you've already cited

work that was done on the mRNA vaccines 30  years ago because people have these fears

that it was sudden and instant technology but so  thank you for again kind of highlighting that and

that will come up in in in my sort of questions so  you've defined for us all the different types of

Covid vaccines so to what degree do each of these  vaccines meet your criteria for an ideal vaccine?

so that's

I don't want to say anything to  disparage any particular vaccines. In our

second study, when we looked at  the vaccines that had been licensed

or at least with the clinical trials had come out  by early 2021. We sort of ranked them based on the

you know, four criteria safety, efficacy,  manufacturing and shelf life. And we

ranked the messenger RNAs as number one the  recombinant protein vaccines as number two,

the viral vectors as number three, and the whole  virus vaccines is number four. And what really

drove that ranking was the efficacy that was seen  in the clinic with the messenger RNA vaccines

getting the highest efficacy but safety is also  very in fact potentially even more important.

And what we've seen since then is that  the viral vector vaccines have been

associated with stroke and even though the cases  of stroke are actually quite rare and you have I

know you have a question coming up later on  about the details on this but nevertheless

that the public has very little tolerance for  any kind of adverse events coming from vaccines

so for example in Canada we've seen that the  national advisory committee on immunization

has taken away its recommendation for the viral  vector vaccines. Right okay I didn't realize

that had happened in Canada as well as the US. Historically a normal vaccine development cycle

has taken 10 years to meet the various vaccine  approval stages yet the scientific community

derived safe and effective vaccines particularly  the mRNA vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 in less

than one year how do we manage to accomplish  safe vaccines in such a shortened time period?

So I thought there's two approaches  to answering this question

so one of them is to go into all the technical  details about how much research had been done

previously what we knew about the spike  protein from from previous coronavirus you

know epidemics that had sprung up one of them in  from the SARS. One of them from MERS but, I think

really the most probably, the most correct  answer, or the really what made the difference

was simply money. The availability of a lot  of cash, and and I'll explain why that is.

Maybe I'll give a little example first. When  I was working on the Pneumococcal vaccine.

I was a scientist among about 11 or 12 other  scientists working on projects and when I had a

experiment that I wanted to do, so I'd have to get  the antigen prepared from the fermentation group

and then it would have to be formulated into with  the adjuvant and so on from the formulation group

and then finally i'd have to get the animal  facility to you know inject the mice,

or the or the rats and then get the antibodies  back from that and then perform experiments to

see how well it worked and that cycle could take  six months before I got that one experiment done.

But while I was doing that a competitor vaccine  manufacturing company just finished a phase three

study with that particular technology and had  found very high efficacy with their vaccine and

had announced that they were going to apply for a  license. So suddenly the priority of my particular

project changed overnight and now when I wanted to  get something done it was done within a week and

when I wanted to get formulation done. It was done  within a week and when I wanted to get the animal

injections done, it was done immediately and  the results, the serum samples were sent back

to me within a month and so it just sped up  completely the time that was required for me to

get an experiment done. Because it was given  more priority. But really the thing that takes

the longest and is the most expensive part of  the vaccine development are the clinical trials

you they first of all they're very expensive  as I mentioned you need at least 15 000

subjects and then each subject you know  depending and you want to monitor them very

closely and it's a physician somewhere who's  doing that monitoring so efficient physicians

you know get paid a lot for for their services and  so to run a clinical trial can be hugely expensive

and hundreds of millions of dollars range and  so the pharmaceutical company has its cash flow

and so they will you know,  run this clinical trial slowly

to you know, have start recruiting subjects.  And doing things over a period of time

and so it just it just stretches things out. But  for Covid, there was such urgency and that the

money was available for for example, down in the  States they had the warp speed Government funded,

they had billions of dollars made available  to the manufacturers and so now the money

was available to to run these things with  higher priority that resources were available

so I think the difference between what  happened with Covid and what happens with

other vaccines is is simply the availability  of the funding to get things done quickly

thank you. Yes from my understanding, I think  operation warp-speed channeled about 25 billion

dollars into vaccine development, so yes, that  that sort of pales into significance to what a

single company could access and so I can  I can see now that makes much more sense.

So the mRNA vaccine appears to have come  out of nowhere in the world of vaccination.

Can you touch on the history of mRNA vaccines in how they became the leader and safe vaccination

for Covid with such fantastic efficacies. I know you've mentioned this in

your earlier answer, but I think coming back to  it because it is a subject that concerns people

and I think contributes to some hesitancy.  So the interesting thing is that if you look

back in the history the very first messenger  RNA vaccine was actually published in 1978

and the person who published it sort of it  disappeared there wasn't you know not many people

cited it they didn't I don't think people  recognized how important it was at the time

and it kind of disappeared like I said until  the 1990s when somebody tried something even

simpler so rather than enclosing the messenger  RNA in a little fat droplet they just used

the naked messenger RNA and as I mentioned it  seemed to work in mice but never worked in humans

but I think people were aware of this idea of  well they were definitely aware of this idea of

getting messenger RNA inside a cell by enclosing  it in a little fat droplet and there's all kinds

of different formulations that were being  developed in the 80s and in the 90s and then some

of the big breakthroughs came in the early 2000s  so one of them was this technology for how to make

these little fat droplets a very simple technology  just really simplified how to make these things so

that was one piece of technology and then another  piece of technology which came from I think is

the University of Pennsylvania where they found  out a way to modify the sequence of the messenger

RNA to to make it more effective in producing in  being translated into a protein inside the cell

so those so that was the sort of the 2000s  and then by 2010 you know we were starting to

see more development of going into vaccines  with these ideas that had come along

and at this point the major hurdles had been  passed and it was simply a question of refinement

and so you can find studies as back as you know  2014 where they're looking at this technology for

either a influenza vaccine or an Ebola vaccine so  that the technology had was really developed over

you know 30-year period at least until and then  when this opportunity came along where it really

evolved to the point where they it was it was  known to be safe it was known to be effective

then the opportunity you know to do a large study  the funding was available to do large studies

with it and to be able to monitor people  very carefully to look for any unexpected

safety effects that might not  be seen in in smaller studies

so to me that was you know when I in the summer  of 2020 when we published our first paper and

and I had been interested in the messenger RNA  back in the 90s but had forgotten about it for

for 20 years and when I saw that what  was going on with messenger RNA I

you know the thing that popped into my mind  was boy if this thing turns out to be safe it's

really gonna you know be great and so I looked  with real anticipation to see the safety results

and and as it turned out you know there there was  a problem with it with the allergic reactions but

in fact all vaccines do have you know people do  have allergies and so I i don't think there's a

vaccine out there that hasn't been associated  with some kind of allergic reaction but these

allergic reactions were very rare somewhere less  than 10 in a million and also we know how to treat

allergic reactions now people with an Epipen  who are prone to having allergic reactions they

carry them around with them and so we can treat an  allergic reaction very effectively so so it seems

to have passed the safety test so far and that  you don't really anticipate as I said because the

messenger RNA decays so quickly we don't really  anticipate any long-term effects the effects are

are really going to be short-term within a week  or so or even hours after getting the vaccine

is where you might see the major effects  so it seems to be so far passing the safety

test and and they've been licensed they went  from having a sort of emergency use licensure to

to full licensure yes no thank you for citing that  historical transition and really if you go back to

1978 we're looking at nearly 50 years of looking  at this technology it's not an overnight thing

and also you cited the numbers of people in the  clinical trials which for Moderna and Pfizer

from my understanding it was 40 000 people that  were sort of enrolled in clinical trials for each

of those vaccines so they were huge bigger than  usual so the safety issue has been really taken

seriously and also the sort of teams of  scientists that have been involved over

that 30 to 50 year period just developing little  parts of the puzzle and we are actually very

lucky that all those discoveries  coincided at the cusp of a pandemic, I feel.

But yeah, lucky. I think but I think there was  also a lot of thought going in behind it and

really in some ways it was sort of an opportunity  to prove this technology on a large scale.

Thank you. So there's no such thing as 100%  safety in any vaccination however the risk

factors are particularly low when you offset the  benefits as I think you've clearly demonstrated

one of the well-known scenarios is that mRNA  vaccines can cause myocarditis in one in five

thousand young men most of which is very mild and  easily treated the viral vector vaccines such as

Astrazeneca and Johnson Johnson have reported side  effects causing dangerous brain clotting as you've

again already cited which occurs in one in one  hundred thousand women aged between 30 to 49 years

how do these side effects compare to the rates of  myocarditis and clots caused by the actual disease

Covid-19. So, let's start with the Myocarditis  and you know I think there was some controversy

about that because I think the way the information  had been communicated originally was was not done

very well and so the I had seen some reports  where they were saying that the rate of

Myocarditis was going to be the same in people  who were vaccinated was going to be the same as

if you got it from a natural infection and I think  that created a lot of confusion, but when you look

at the actual numbers and I look them up to see  what what we're talking about here let me see

forever down here so I get the numbers correct. so let's start with the messenger RNA vaccine

and this is where we can actually sort of compare  apples to apples so the rate of myocarditis from

the vaccine as you mentioned is about one in  five thousand young men but if you look at the

rate of myocarditis and people who have had Covid-19 it's about one in 1,000 so that means that the

rate from natural infection is about five to six  times greater than it would be from receiving the

vaccine now the good thing about this Myocarditis  is that it's it's transitory it can be treated and

almost everyone recovers completely so the  chances certainly your chances of getting it from

a natural infection is much higher  than getting this from from the vaccine

now the other ones that's a little bit more  difficult to get comparable numbers are the brain

clots which are associated with the viral vector  vaccines and that's because the we can know what

the rate is from people who are hospitalized but  there's a lot of cases of Covid out there where

people are not hospitalized so I saw look I  found two studies one of them was the rate

of brain clots and people who were hospitalized  with Covid and that rate is for having brain clots

is one in a thousand. Now if you compare that  with the rate from the vaccine which is one in

100,000 then the risk of brain clot from a natural  infection is at least 100 times greater so so that

shows you that the vaccines are between five and  a hundred times safer than getting the infection.

A way to you know create immunity when you  hear people saying 'oh I'd rather just get

the infection and to build my immunity' they're  taking a way higher risk of having these awful

side effects compared to getting the vaccine. Thank  you that's an excellent answer to my question and

and I'd like to emphasize as well I mean  if you can if you get Myocarditis from

Covid-19 it's much more severe and has  ended the careers of of athletes where

that they've been unfortunate enough to develop  that and we and we don't know whether that

heart damage is going to be  lifelong or not whereas if you

you are unlucky enough to contract  Myocarditis from the vaccination not only is it

much much rarer but it's a much milder illness  which doesn't seem to have any lasting effects

I also looked up some numbers about clotting in  general and discovered because the disease Covid

19 has some form of inflammatory effect and some  form of immune response in our bodies and it

creates a whole clotting cascade so in the  community where most of the infections happen the

rate of a clotting issue, whether that be a clot  on the lung, leg, a stroke, is one percent in the in

the general community of people that get Covid 19. if you're hospitalized and on a general ward

that goes up to one in ten and and if you if  you're admitted to ICU it goes up to one in five.

So you're far better being vaccinated than  than allowing yourself to get this disease.

Yeah I saw those numbers also that you're  talking about and I thought in particular you

were interested in brain clots, so yes, clotting is  is very common, but the numbers that I quoted were

particular. I drilled it down to brain clots where  this is causing stroke essentially, yes. Thank you.

So the public were initially told that vaccines  such as Johnson and Johnson would be one and done

and that the mRNA vaccines were a two dose regime

the Johnson Johnson vaccine has been discontinued  in the USA and as you said Canada and

people are now being told to get third and  maybe fourth shots of the mRNA vaccines

why do we need boosters and in your opinion how  often are we going to need them in the future

so I think the scientifically understanding  why you need boosters there's the scientific

understanding of it is not very clear for example  there are some vaccines such as the hepatitis b

vaccine where you get you know one shot when  you're a teenager and the studies i've seen

that 20 years later you're still protected  against hepatitis b actually it's not a one

shot I think it's it's two or two or three shots  I think it was a two shot two dose of vaccine so

so for some reason that particular

vaccine gave long-lasting immunity and so you  you can't really predict ahead of time which

types of vaccines are going to be long-lasting  or at least nobody has yet identified what are

the characteristics of the vaccine or even the  pathogen that lead to to long-term immunity

so it's it's a question of something going on in  your immune memory and it has not yet been been

uncovered so so it was it was experimental to as  we went into the new these new vaccines we just

have to keep monitoring them and following them to  see how long the immunity will last to understand

when the booster is going to be needed and even  for older vaccines for example tetanus it used to

be that tetanus vaccine was considered to last for  10 years and you only needed to get a booster once

every 10 years but a few years ago they changed  that to five years now it's just every five years

so it's it really is something that we don't have  a theoretical understanding of it's just something

that you have to study and practice and find  out what's going on there so and then your quest

second question is how often are we going to need  them in the future so I think it looks to me that

this virus is able to mutate and I know we're  going to talk a little bit more about this later

but this virus is able to mutate the same way  that the flu virus mutates and so we have to

have a flu shot every year to keep up our immunity,  so I think it's you know to me, it's very likely

it's very possible that we may end up having to  get a Covid shot once a year, or maybe once

every two years. They'll obviously what they'll  do is they'll keep monitoring it and they'll

see whether the current vaccine is able to protect  against any new variants that appear you know for

example such as Omicron, we know that the existing  vaccine has reduced efficacy against Omicron

so those boosters will then probably be  modified to be more selective towards the

new variants and I suspect it will become a bi-annual or semi-annual type of vaccine. Hmm, Thank you.

How do you think the conflicting information fed

to the public through various mediums about  vaccination has led to vaccine hesitancy.

Yeah that's a tough question. I wasn't sure  you know, in particular, which particular

contradictions were you referring to because I  think different pieces of information could have

different effects. So for example, when people  changed. When the advice changed about you,

know the viral vector vaccines. Did that  create confusion amongst the population?

I'm not sure? I didn't speak to anybody who said  to me ‘oh I'm really confused’ now I only heard

people saying ‘darn I knew I should have gotten  the other vaccine in the first case you know

so this is what the government offered me’ so I  don't, I don't know enough about to say how that

would have created vaccine hesitancy. I think you  need to do a study on that to find out and from my

experience I didn't see anybody who became vaccine  hesitant because of of changing information. From

my experience as a Family Physician and every  day I'm I often come across people that haven't

wanted to get vaccinated and I listen to them  and then try and persuade them to get vaccinated.

That was an issue the population has on a  whole. I don't think science is necessarily

taught wonderfully in in our state school  systems and their understanding of science can

be limited and so there's lots of different news  mediums the standard ones such as newspapers,

the TV and then social media on top of  that and it did engender some confusion

and and challenge of trust, So that was my  own personal experience. I think studies do

need to be done to formalize how that made  a contribution and initially I mean even though

there's been a ban on the viral vector vaccines  in America and Canada, obviously Britain is still

using them, they're still they're still part of the  whole COVAX program. They're still good vaccines

I mean I've seen studies on Johnson and Johnson  that shows their the neutralizing antibody levels

sort of stay at quite a high level for longer than  the mRNA vaccines which can have a much higher

initial boost of neutralizing antibodies when  you're vaccinated and then they can drop quite

precipitously after six months so, I think  it's a pity that the Johnson Johnson vaccine for

example has been discontinued, because I think it  does still have properties but people get confused

when they when they hear that. Yeah like I  said, people are very intolerant of any side

effects from vaccines and especially one  that is as serious as causing a stroke, so

you can see why the you know the North American  populations are intolerant of that, but on the

other hand when you look at how rare that is  and compare that to what the rate is, if you are

getting the natural infection, there's the benefit  of it still outweighs the risk by a great factor,

so it certainly worldwide it's still a very  useful tool to have the viral vector vaccines.

Yes and I had a conversation recently with a  group of individuals in Liberia and also Nigeria.

My own cultural background background is  Nigerian and some friends had, were Liberian

and you know in Sub-Saharan Africa they're hearing  about our reluctance and they say well they're

coming here through COVAX why should we have  them and I said well actually they are still

very good vaccines that have saved lives and  if I was in your position I would

have that vaccine and so I'm glad  that we're both kind of underlining that.

People have become infected with SAR-CoV-2, after being double or triple

vaccinated with the mRNA vaccines. Some  have had no symptoms. Others have taken

to their bed for a couple of days and felt  awful. A very few have ended up in hospital.

What is a breakthrough infection? Is that an  indication that the vaccines are not working?

so that's a really good question and back you  know 20 30 40 years ago it was always assumed that

breakthrough infections were caused by people who  had not mounted a full response to the vaccine and

in fact it was used as a way to try to estimate  what is the necessary concentration of antibody to

protect against the disease but what they would  find is that the antibody concentrations were

extremely high in these people and so it's not  necessarily that you didn't make a proper antibody

response now there's actually just by coincidence  there was a paper that came out just yesterday

from Israel and they looked at 152 cases of  people who had been fully vaccinated but had

breakthrough cases and they looked at them to see  what was else was going on in their health

and almost 80 percent of them had some kind  of comorbidity and of the comorbidities the

top three were hypertension diabetes  and heart failure but there was also

you know another some 40 percent of them who  also were immunocompromised so they wouldn't

be expected to have a complete immune response so  it turns out that there's many reasons why these

breakthrough cases occur it's not just that the  vaccine didn't take but the person's likely also

had other diseases that were ongoing that that  made them more susceptible to an infection right

so in your opinion you think that the breakthrough  infections are mostly happening in people that

have additional illnesses like the ones that  you cited exactly okay so do you have any

understanding of why they're happening in young  healthy people that have no coexisting illness.

well I don't think that happens very often so  again you know there could be some little part of

their immune system which is not operating fully  so that is yeah I think it needs to be studied

to find out what's going on in those particular  cases again I could say theoretically it's they're

immunocompromised somehow which is what people  used to think in the past but what's really going

on is they need to be studied more closely to find  out why those breakthrough cases are occurring

from my understanding with Omicron again correct  me if I'm wrong that variant has properties

of immune evasion and I know and and an actual  fact, I think there's some figures where in some

instances people who are vaccinated, have high incidence or even in some cases,

more likely to be have been infected with Omicron.  I think most of my friends and colleagues have

been vaccinated, but a significant  proportion of them have had an Omicron

infection with the recent wave of Covid 19. So in  your opinion, would that be termed a breakthrough

infection and why is that occurring? Yeah, well  it's I guess, it you know, it just depends on

how you define breakthrough, but that's a  different thing. That's,

the virus is mutating away from from its original  form, where the vaccine protects against so

is that a called breakthrough. I don't think I  would call that a breakthrough. That's simply an

escape variant that for which the vaccine is not  optimized. So I don't think it's a problem with

the vaccine, I think it's just the virus mutating.  Right, so and I guess underlining things is they

they didn't end up in hospitals, so the vaccine  did its job in protecting them against severe

disease, so they might have felt you know  very unwell and taken to their beds in some

instances though I think a significant proportion  of people would have been asymptomatic or just had

mild cold-like symptoms and that's a vaccine doing  its job am I correct in that sense yes, yeah,

I think you're getting some partial protection  from from the antibodies that you have are are

partially protecting you against these variants  right and and and do you have anything to say

about the cell mediated response the  because there's two parts of our immunity

how is that working in terms of  protecting us against severe infection.

Yeah well that's, you know, I haven't gone into  that but certainly you have two parts of your

immune system. You have the antibody response  and then you have the cellular response the

antibodies are sort of the first line they're  like a shield they as soon as the virus

enters your system the antibodies hook onto  them and then your body tries to either

you know destroy them immediately before they get  very far but once the infection gets a foothold

and starts infecting cells once it's inside the  cell of course the antibodies can't get to it

so your immune system has to have another way  of killing that virus and what happens is there

are various molecules that are produced by the  virus that your cellular immune system recognizes

as foreign and the only way it can get rid of  the virus at that point is to kill the cell

that it is infecting and there's a variety  of mechanisms that your immune system uses

to kill those particular cells now one advantage  of the cellular system is that the those foreign

signals that the virus has are much smaller pieces  of the protein they're they're little cut up

pieces of the protein called peptides and those  peptides will be the same. They don't

mutate as rapidly as you know the specific parts  of the whole virus. The virus has to keep

parts of these intact because that's it's sort of  its overall structure. I guess you would call it.

So these smaller cut up pieces the virus can't  change as quickly and so that's when the cellular

immune system comes in and sees 'oh yeah this this  peptide is being produced by this cell. The cell

must be infected' and then it does all its things  to kill those infected cells, so that's a slower

process it's not as rapid as the antibodies  but it works to kill off cells that have

already been infected and it has sort of I think  sort of you could call it a broader ability to

to be resistant against any mutations that  the viruses is undergoing. Yeah and I

just wanted to bring that up to clarify for our  non-scientific, non-medical audience that that's

an, as you've given a nice explanation there of how  that's another important part of how the vaccines

work to keep us out of hospital. So even if we  get that infection and we're sick because

you have that those two arms of your immune system  working from vaccination, it's stopping you

from being a hospital candidate, or ending  up in ICU even if you don't have a co-morbidity,

a co-existing disease and am I correct in that? Yes and this is one of the advantages that the

viral vector and the messenger RNA vaccines have  is that they produce the antigen inside the cells

and when the antigen is being produced inside  the cell that activates that cellular branch

of the immune system and again for  the non-scientific population the

antigen is the spike protein part of the coronavirus. Correct. Thank you.

The information provided to the public about the  vaccines can seem confusing and conflicting

particularly concerning to me is some of  the misinformation that parts of the medical

community via social media has peddled  to the public with no accountability.

How do you think this confusion has affected  the public's trust in vaccine technology

other than misinformation and confusion are there  any other factors that have contributed to vaccine

hesitancy so I actually take an interest in  this whenever I meet someone who is anti-vaccine

I ask them where are they getting their  information from. I'm very curious to know

and you know there's, I don't want to  go into my conspiracy theory ideas,

but one factor that has come out that I've seen  on several occasions is personal experience.

So either they or somebody close to them  has had a negative reaction to a vaccine and

frankly this happens you know there are side  effects from vaccines we know the whole idea

of a vaccine is to stimulate your immune system  and when your immune system is stimulated it

your body thinks you're sick and so  you know, you get flu-like symptoms

and that's miserable. But sometimes  these symptoms can be very severe and

so people don't like that. They don't like  feeling sick after having received a vaccine

and in some instances as I said, people  can get you know quite severe side effects

from a vaccine and so when somebody's had  a very severe side effect from a vaccine

maybe even going so far as to have an  allergic reaction, or something like that

then that makes them afraid and  especially if it's somebody you love

that you've seen have a bad reaction to a  vaccine then that lives on in their

in their memory that they think of vaccines  are bad look how bad it was I and the problem

is of course that the vaccine prevents you from  seeing the actual disease so they see somebody

they had a really bad headache for you know a  few days or whatever but if they had gotten the

real disease you know they'd be hospitalized and  possibly dead but because they've been protected

people don't see that and so what ends up  happening then is that they become afraid of the

vaccine rather than the disease that the vaccine  is preventing that's an excellent answer thank you

I read a recent article in a medical news feed  called STAT entitled 'I trust my drug dealer more

than I trust this vaccine' referring to a Covid  vaccine the article was mainly about the stigma

in the health service that people with addictions  face, but I think it highlighted some important

points about being accessible listened to  respected and treated in a humane manner

what's your opinion on the important points  highlighted in the article. Could healthcare

professionals have adopted some or all of these  principles in vaccine delivery to the hesitant.

Yeah that's you know, I think I think this is the  difference in the model between what we did in

in Canada and for example what they did in the  uk so in Canada we had basically a public health

roll out of these vaccines you know people lined  up went through you know one after the other and

and it was sort of a a process whereas  in the UK they got their family doctors

involved in the rollout which did not occur here  and I think there's more of an opportunity when

somebody is vaccine hesitant to to speak to a  their their physician and have that conversation

about their concerns and so consequently the  uptake in the UK was quite high it was about 90%,

compared to you know here at most 85 percent  in Canada and even lower in in the States.

So I think the approach of using the family  doctors in the rollout was an important factor

in the high uptake in the UK I actually  volunteered to work in some of these

you know public health mass vaccination projects  and my job was to greet people as they came in and

sort of just direct them where to go and sit down  and this one guy came in and he was you know a big

like tall guy you know very muscular and and he  so it was expressing some concern about being

vaccinated and I unfortunately thought he was  kidding and I you know sort of made a joke about

it but then realized that no he was really serious  he was really afraid and and he you know was

saying all his friends are are telling him he's  got to do this for the sake of his community that

you know by by getting vaccinated you're going to  prevent the spread of the disease and so he wanted

to do it you know because he had a good heart  he wanted to do it for the sake of other people

but he was clearly deadly afraid, definitely  afraid of getting vaccinated and you know he

he actually fainted at one point and he  had to have his head between his knees

so you know he was it wasn't he wasn't being  facetious, unfortunately like I was he was really

serious about his fear of having the vaccine so  I think in a situation like that it would have

been really great for him to have gone to see his  family doctor and have the family doctor explain

to him and taking him seriously about what his  concerns were and and explained to him you know

that there wasn't going to be any problem  so, or that is you know in a doctor way

of doing it. I'm not a doctor. I don't have that  bedside manner that helps a doctor have a person,

have a sensitivity to the other person's  feelings. Oh thank you for sharing that.

So there are two distinctly different  examples of vaccine hesitancy globally

that may have different underlying fundamentals  or possibly the same reasons for vaccine hesitancy

on the one hand we have the USA a wealthy fully  developed economy with a population that has no

barriers to knowledge about vaccination yet the  USA ranks 65th out of 218 countries for full

vaccination let's contrast that scenario with  countries in Africa which largely encompass low

and middle income countries that historically have  had populations that embrace vaccination there

have been reports that Africans are questioning  and in some cases refusing the Covid vaccines

how do we rationalize these completely different  baseline attitudes into an explanation for global

vaccine hesitancy in other words are the  reasons the same or or are they different

in both scenarios? Yeah I'm not familiar  with the work that you're talking about, but

so I can only just give you an opinion on what I think is happening and for us, so from

my experience in living in in West Africa was  that they really look up to the United States

the United States is a role model for them  you know they were always very keen

on any you know black singers, Michael  Jackson was really big so you know black

Americans were very had a lot of influence over  people's attitudes. Certainly where I lived in

in West Africa, so I think when they start hearing  that Americans are hesitant against about these

these vaccines. It has an influence on them I think  it is the American influence, that for some reason

America you know rejected the vaccine or a large  proportion of them I think that had an influence

in other countries that looked to America for for  leadership. Oh that's yes I didn't actually think

of that point which is a very good one. My own  personal experience as I cited before with talking

to relatives in Nigeria and friends with relatives  in Liberia and other parts of Africa, is that they

look at the same social media feeds as we do  and hear a lot of the conspiracy theories and

and they and that's what's put them off from  from getting vaccinated whether that be adenovirus

vector vaccines that have come along or mRNA ones  through COVAX when they've had the opportunity

and when I've listened to their concerns and  then explained, as we have explained in this

program the differences between the danger of  the virus and the minor side effects from from

the vaccines I know that there's significant  side effects with myocarditis in the mRNA and

clotting cerebral blood cuts and the viral vector  vaccines but the risk is still far far less as

we've cited than the actual disease then they they  have a greater and fuller picture of understanding

and then have agreed to be vaccinated so  I think it's about sort of getting a full

picture of information and also developing skills  to critically think and assess so that's been my

personal experience but I'm in agreement with  you I think there needs to be more research

because there's going to be future pandemics  and I think we need to be better prepared

in terms of our education what do you  think? I think you know of course when I was

working in in Africa we didn't have social media  and so the music was the social media at

that time and so there were anything  that it was in the newspaper about what those

singers were doing was an influence and I  think now of course with communications being

so much more rapid, as you point out social  media they see what's going on on social

media immediately and it has all that greater  impact. So that's exactly what's happening.

Thank you. Looking at a very important aspect of  vaccination relating to words that were tossed

around early easily early in the pandemic to  provide the public a potential road map to

a solution but not talked about as much today  achieving herd immunity was considered the way

out of the pandemic 12 to 18 months ago. Can you  please explain the meaning of herd immunity and

whether this is achievable with natural infection  alone versus vaccination against SARS-CoV-2?

So herd immunity is a term that is applied to

the whole population that's where the term herd  comes in and that means when enough people have

some kind of ability to prevent infection  and that prevents the transmission then of

the virus from one person to another so if i've  been vaccinated and I have full immunity and I

come into contact with the person who is sick I  don't get the disease and so I can't pass it on

and so the more and more people that have that  immunity the less chance that the virus has to

be able to find somebody who's uninfected that  they can infect and what's interesting is that

you can actually measure the infectivity  of the particular disease depending on

how what percentage of the population  has to be vaccinated before you can reach

herd immunity so for example measles is a very  infectious virus and you have to have upwards of

around 95 of the population vaccinated before  you will get herd immunity and then the virus

just dies out because it can't find somebody  to infect the person who is infected, eventually

overcomes the virus the virus dies and then  it disappears and so you end up getting higher

really high protection from the virus. The virus  disappears altogether but other diseases are less

infective and so you only need you know 60 to  70 percent of the people vaccinated before the

bacteria disappears and stops spreading  stops circulating around in the population

so that's sort of a general idea of what  herd immunity is, it's the prevention of the

transmission of the bug from an infected  person to another non-vaccinated person because in

the second part of your question is was  can we ever achieve that with Covid and

this is why you sort of see waves in these these  epidemics you have the virus sort of there's

communities in in society there are people who  you know see each other on a regular basis and

so they're in communication with each other  and so before they've had any kind of immunity

the virus can spread through that whole sort of  branching network and eventually it comes to the

end and then it sort of begins to disappear  out and then the rate goes down but then the

virus finds itself into another branch of of  networks of people and then it comes back again

so you know is it possible that somehow  you know all these different sort of

networks in society could achieve the same kind  of immunity that the virus would disappear?

I don't think so. I think you  just for example look at children

we don't have a vaccine yet for children under the  age of five, so they're always going to be there

as potential reservoirs for the virus and now also  we've seen that the virus is capable of mutating

and so I think early on when that sort of  was hoped that oh yeah this virus doesn't

seem to mutate very much that it's possible that  eventually everyone will have either been exposed

to it or been vaccinated and then eventually the  whole thing would just disappear but it looks like

now that it is capable capable of mutating  and so I think that it's very unlikely we'll

ever be able to develop enough herd immunity to  eliminate this virus from the human population

so would that be the situation with  regards to because from my understanding

we've never really achieved herd immunity  without the implementation of vaccination

you've mentioned vaccinations several times so for  example measles was around for hundreds of years

smallpox it wasn't until we had  adequate vaccination programs

that we achieved herd immunity i.e a big enough  population as you've correctly cited, that have

been immunized so that maybe the 10 20 percent who  refused or couldn't be vaccinated were protected

because there wasn't enough places for the virus  to go so when politicians were saying we're going

to let the virus rip and and you'll get herd  immunity that from my understanding that was

a complete erroneous mistake to presume that  that was going to occur am I correct in my

understanding well like I said you would get these  waves you would get a you know a huge outbreak and

then and then it would drop off but then the  virus is very smart it's going to find another

network of people who haven't been exposed  yet and so then you're gonna get another wave

so if you look at the you know the flu epidemic  of you know 1918 you know it came in in four four

big waves and even currently what we're seeing now  we're seeing you know that we're on our just past

our our fourth wave of of the Covid epidemic and  whether there'll be a fifth, or not, is hard to know.

I have enough people been exposed at this point  I suspect there will be a sixth wave at some

point but it'll hopefully be smaller than than  what we've seen in the past, so yes and also

the other important point that you brought up  was that with measles being very contagious

you would need maybe 90-95 percent of the  population vaccinated in order to achieve

so-called herd immunity Omicron has, so the  measles R-nought, the number of people that it,

the number of people one person infects is about  15. If they're contagious, and my understanding of

Omicron is its R-nought is between eight and  fifteen so with that variant would we need

at least 90/95% of the population vaccinated  in order to achieve so-called herd immunity.

Yeah that sounds like a reasonable guess, yeah  and my other understanding as well is that

immunity gathered from natural infection it  isn't as sustained as immunity gathered from

vaccination so it's not as long lasting what's  your experiences. Yeah I did read something about

that, but I can't I don't recall the details of it  so I'm sorry, I can't fill you in on on anything

about that yes okay well thank you for those those  points so I did I did want to mention something to

you though it's just sort of a side thing so so  herd immunity of course can be taken to the limit

where you completely eliminate the virus from  circulating in humans and that's only been done

once so far and that was with the smallpox vaccine  which was completely eliminated from humanity in

1977. We're getting very close now with Polio and  there's just a few places left in the world where

Polio is circulating and so the idea is to get  everybody vaccinated so that polio was completely

eliminated from the world and what people  don't know is that measles was almost complete

completely eliminated from the world there were  several continents which had been measles free

for you know for several years this was around the  year 2000 or so and then what happened was this

anti-vaxxer guy came along and and started saying  that the measles vaccine caused autism and then

immunization rates with measles plummeted and the  virus came raging back. And now we're very far

away from having the ability to eliminate measles  worldwide. So it's almost you know it's almost,

it's a sad story about how close we could have  come to eliminating measles worldwide. Thank

you for sharing that and I think it underlines the  fact that we've only been able to eliminate these

diseases through vaccination prior to vaccination  we had huge and horrible ways of people dying and

suffering with these diseases they would come  and go in our communities persistently but we

never achieved herd immunity until the technology  of vaccination came along and we were able to

eliminate those diseases from what you just said. All right well it's interesting so around 40 of

the global population approximately 3 billion  people have yet to receive a dose of a Covid

vaccine variants are most likely to form  when we have spread of the virus through an

unvaccinated population with this current  situation of little access to vaccines to so many

I believe we could find, we  have a variant evolve that is able to circumvent

our existing protection from vaccination. What is your opinion on this thought process?

Yeah, so I'm not an expert in evolutionary biology,  but my understanding of it is that it depends on

on pressure evolutionary pressure and so what  happens naturally let's say there was not any

vaccine so you would have the virus go through  and then it would infect all these people

and then for the virus to continue living  it would have to mutate in order to find

fresh people to to infect well the  same thing happens with the vaccine

when the virus comes along and it's not able to  infect a person because they've been vaccinated

then the virus is forced to mutate in order to to  stay alive so my thinking is that regardless of

whether you have a vaccine or not if this bug is  is able to to mutate it's going to mutate into new

forms where it can continue to alive it's just  it's just part of of evolution so I think that

if anything you know having the vaccine  is going to put more pressure on on the

virus to to start mutating and and  it looks unfortunate it looks like

it is capable of mutating so it is able to  escape the existing vaccine and continue on

with all this in mind and the multi-layered  complexities and variables is vaccinating

the world a realistic option and if so  how long would it take in your opinion

yeah i'd say why not I mean why don't not  vaccinate everybody this is what the current as I

was mentioning earlier about the polio vaccine the  current drive is to get everybody vaccinated with

polio vaccine and to completely eliminate that  that virus from the world now the fortunate thing

about polio is it doesn't mutate very quickly  and so this is it's actually feasible that we

could eliminate polio from the world. Covid has  shown unfortunately a greater ability to mutate

so we're not gonna be able to drive it  away, but still I don't see any reason why

you know everyone shouldn't receive a Covid vaccine and and how long will that

take? Well I think you know we're still looking  at places in the world where we want to get

them the polio vaccine and like I said back in  the 80s, it had been already 20 years

since the polio vaccines were introduced and they  hadn't yet made it to to West Africa. I think

it just depends on I think there's  always sort of sort of a financial pressure,

they're saying that the Omicron variant is  not as lethal as the earlier variants and so you

know it may not it may sort of just mutate into  something that's not as severe as it's a

common cold and then places that you know that  it may not I said earlier that we might need

to have an annual vaccine against Covid, but if  it turns out these new variants are are not as

severe it's just as bad as a common cold you know  then the public health officials who make you know

financial decisions based on this they'll they'll  do their calculations and find out okay you know

how much is it going to cost to immunize everyone  compared to what is the burden of disease that's

going to happen if this circulates naturally  and when those two numbers start becoming equal

then then there's less it's harder for the  public health to justify one vaccine compared

to another vaccine so I think I i think you  know the I haven't seen any really good cost

effectiveness calculations coming out yet  about how Omicron changes that calculation

but I i would suspect that getting the whole  world immunized I think at this point you know

because there's been so many manufacturers  that have jumped on it and have produced

you know lots and lots of a vaccine I think  it's it's probably there's about enough

vaccine out there that the whole world could  be vaccinated so it would just be a question of

getting it to the people and that's a question of  introducing it into the country existing programs

and and those are also you know not  necessarily well funded in a lot of countries

so how long could it take could be years could  be years I think I think that maybe this whole

pandemic has shown a light on on the need  for vaccination especially in in countries

that are on lower socioeconomic status and  that there's you know more opportunities for

foundations like the gates foundations  that has been providing funding to help

bring vaccines to to countries that don't have the  financial resources that the rest of us have and

to make it more equitable so that everyone has  the opportunity to to have vaccine programs in

their country and to get all the vaccines that  they need to to protect especially their children

yes so I think what you're really saying is oh  you've said it the whole world needs vaccinating

the quicker we do it the more chance we have  of reduction in variants being formed because

variants seem to happen when the virus is  allowed to run rife through an unvaccinated

population. I think that's one important point  we could turn this around. I think you've kind of

intimated in that we have such health inequities  across the planet this is a fantastic

opportunity to maybe level the playing field get  you know help our neighbors who don't have the

infrastructure that we have get vaccinated to help  us all I think that's a really good point you've

kind of intimated there and with Omicron I'm  I'm in disagreement. I don't think that it is a

mild, I don't think a variant that's caused sort of  more death and infection in a far shorter time of

of tens of millions looking at hundreds, probably  hundreds of millions of people is a mild virus.

I mean there's been more hospitalizations and  death with Omicron through sheer numbers so

I don't think we're at I think there's this  drive to sort of accept the coronavirus but

from what I can see we're still in a pandemic.  We're not in an endemic stage at the moment

but thank you for bringing up those  you know really excellent points.

there has been detailed discussion about the  role social media is played in misinformation

for vaccination are there examples that  you are aware of, where social media has

contributed positively to our understanding  of our understanding of Covid vaccination.

Yeah it depends on what you mean by social media,  but you know I think that certainly you know

when you look at the news channels and down in  the States you know you have three out of four

news networks that are you know being  responsible and are you know making an effort to

feed people correct information and so I think  there has been a I think most media companies have

been responsible but I but I think the type of  media you're talking about are things like twitter

and facebook and that kind of thing  who's whose market is you know less

driven by a a public service and more driven  by a financial profit and I think that they

aren't as careful as what kind of messages  they they produce but I think the sort of the

old-time news media outlets and newspapers and  whatnot have have done a good job in trying to

you know relay correct information to  people and it's and and of course the

you know it's it's a whole new world about  how people communicate information and I think

you know my wife in particular thinks that  these these new forms of communication need

to be regulated because of the you know by by  being sort of the wild west and allowing any

kind of information to to magnify as long as it  generates revenue for some advertiser somewhere

it's immoral. There  needs to be some kind of way of

ensuring that something doesn't get magnified  simply because it generates revenue for somebody

whether it's true or false so I think  that that there is a lot of media out

there that does take this responsibility of  educating and informing and and the truth

they do take it seriously and and so we're  we're we need to promote that more. Thank you

We've covered a wide ranging set of issues around  vaccination can you please remind the audience of

how the pandemic could have played out today  if we had not had access to vaccines at all

yeah that's a very difficult question  I tried to look at some numbers and so

how many deaths were have been caused by Covid  compared to how many deaths were caused by the

flu epidemic in in 1918 so there's  an estimated 50 million deaths from

that particular epidemic compared to an estimate  of about 6 million deaths caused by Covid now

back in that day they didn't have any vaccines  so you're looking at a death rate you know 10

times and presumably they had similar kinds  of public health measures like wearing masks

and you know isolation and so on so so that may  be one way to compare it you know 50 million

deaths compared to 6 million deaths that  that might be the impact from the vaccine

also though you know that that virus was different  it was you know it affected younger adults more

this this virus has affected older adults  more so it's hard really to to really tease

out exactly how much the vaccines have have  helped us but I would say I'm really glad that

we had this vaccine because it certainly made  my life a lot easier. Yeah me too and my final

question. I think you've partially  answered, but hypothetically speaking if the

world was vaccinated equally regardless of wealth  and opportunity, how would this pandemic look today?

Yeah again that's another one where it's it's  really hard to know you know when you look at

I mean it's just because some places you know they  don't monitor things as closely as other places so

so for example if you look at the death rate from  Covid in India and Brazil and compare it with

the US you know they they're about the same, but on  the other hand those countries had access to the

vaccines, also so and we haven't heard a lot about  what the death rate has been in Africa, but

there's probably not very good public  health monitoring systems in Africa to know

how hard they've been hit by the pandemic, so  it's a very difficult to know

how more equality, equity in vaccine  distribution would have affected the

pandemic today. I'm sorry I just don't  have a good answer for that question so.

So is there anything else you'd like to  add and contribute with regards to your

knowledge and vaccination to the audience and the  benefits of being vaccinated with a Covid vaccine?

Yeah like I said, for me you know  lining up to get a vaccine, bringing

me back to what it was like when I was a  was a kid lining up for the polio vaccine

it's, there's a long history  of vaccines and I think that

we need to do a better job to address the people  who are vaccine hesitant to let them know you

know that the fact I think it's important to  to relay people the true facts the true risks

I think that vaccine mandates you know  there are difficult to impose upon people

that you know I think people do maintain the  right to to be able to say no I'm this this is

a risk I don't want to take but on the other  hand I think society has the right to protect

itself from those people and you know to me the  idea of I wasn't necessarily in favor of vaccine

mandates but I did like the idea of the vaccine  passport and that you could know that you would

go into an environment where everyone had been  vaccinated and so you knew that you were protected

and and therefore you know did not have to be  worried about being exposed to to a virus so

I think I'm a little bit sort of reverse about  what people think I think people really hate the

vaccine passport but sort of ignore the vaccine  mandates and but for me I'm the reverse I still

I still like the idea of the vaccine passport  thank you so much for your contributions today

thank you for the work that you've done for all of  us globally in vaccine development and manufacture

this has been yet another very rich and enjoyable  conversation and yeah so thank you for being part

of this whole series well thank you, Funmi, it's  been a pleasure speaking with you about a topic

for which I'm deeply passionate and I really  hope that you're able to communicate with people

and help them to overcome any fears that they may  have about vaccine hesitancy and also to increase

people's knowledge of vaccines and so I help in  general for people to understand what they're

getting into when they get a vaccine and and  and promote it to their friends and and family.

Thank you Craig and please do join us for our  next episode on Covid vaccination in children

where I'll be interviewing with a bonus episode professor Melissa Stockwell from New York

Thanks for listening to this week's episode of  COVID 19 The Answers. If you enjoyed the episode,

please subscribe, rate and review and do visit  our website kojalamedical.com/COVID19theanswers