Consider This from NPR - Q & A: Vaccine Development And Kids' Questions

Episode Date: May 23, 2020

NPR Science Correspondent Joe Palca answers listener questions about vaccine development, and medical experts tackle questions sent in by kids.These excerpts come from NPR's nightly radio show about the coronavirus crisis, The National Conversation. In this episode:-NPR Science Correspondent Joe Palca explains how vaccines are made and the unique challenges associated with COVID-19.-Kids' questions are answered by pediatric nurse practitioner Suzannah Stivison from the Capitol Medical Group in Washington, D.C., and Dr. Wanjiku Njoroge, medical director for the Young Child Clinic at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.Find and support your local public radio station.This episode was recorded and published as part of this podcast's former 'Coronavirus Daily' format.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Coronavirus Daily from NPR. I'm Kelly McEvers. A vaccine is not a sure thing. And while early results do look promising, there's still a long way to go. What the vaccine development process looks like, and later, even kids have questions about what's going on right now. Public health experts answer those questions on The National Conversation with All Things Considered. Here's NPR's Ari Shapiro. You've sent us a lot of questions about possible vaccines to protect against the coronavirus. And here to help answer those questions is NPR's Joe Palka. Good to have you back, Joe. Thanks, Ari. How are you doing? I'm all right, thanks.

Good. Let's take a listener question. This comes from Logan in San Francisco. What goes into making a vaccine for this type of virus? Yeah, it's a really, I mean, from a scientific standpoint, it's a really interesting question. So what the scientists are trying to do is to find something that looks to the immune system just as if a virus had come into its body and was about to infect it. So they study the thing on the outside of the virus that the immune system first sees, and they try to replicate that in one way or another. And in the case of the coronavirus, it's a protein on the outside. It looks like, I've been thinking about it like it's like a clove stuck into a tennis

ball. So it's something that exquisitely recognizes this clove and then figures out a way to just take the clove, not the whole virus, but the clove by itself or with a few other things attached, but not the whole virus or not a healthy virus, and put that into a vaccine. And the immune system will say, oh, I think this is an infection. But, of course, it's not. So it will recognize it. And then the next time, if the real thing comes along, it'll say, oh, I've seen that before. And it'll respond. Our next listener, Sujal, is also in San Francisco.

And he wonders this. So far, what progress has been made by the scientists to complete a vaccine? And what info do they need to finish it? Huh. So we know that these trials are underway. But what does the finish line look like? At what point can they say, like, OK, to finish it? Huh. So we know that these trials are underway, but what does the finish line look like? At what point can they say like, okay, we did it?

It's actually, the proof is in the pudding. I mean, as they say, you're going to have to take all these great ideas. There's more than a hundred vaccines under development and there's maybe eight or so that are actually in human trials and there are more to come. But eventually you have to show that it's safe,

show that it's provoking an immune response, and then show that it actually prevents people from getting sick. But you know, with that many trials, I could also imagine a scenario where they say, okay, we've got a vaccine, it has a 65% effectiveness rate. And then later on they say, oh wait, but here's a different one that has a 70% effectiveness rate and less side effects. I mean, it seems like it's not just done, you've crossed the finish line, right? Yeah. I mean, it could be iterative like that. I mean, sometimes the first one might be a home run. They use it and bang, nobody gets sick again. But you're also right that there may be some that have side effects. Another thing to consider is there may be some that work really great, but they're hard to manufacture or they're hard to

administer. So there's a lot of factors that go into deciding whether you have a success or not, which is kind of an interesting thing to contemplate. All right, we have two questions about antibodies and a possible vaccine. I want to listen to them back to back. First, this is Dave in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Over a dozen sailors on the U.S. Theodore Roosevelt tested positive for coronavirus a second time. Does that mean a vaccine based on antibodies U.S. Theodore Roosevelt tested positive for coronavirus a second time. Does that mean a vaccine based on antibodies, such as the one being developed by Moderna, won't work? And related question here from Megan in upstate New York.

I've heard that having antibodies does not necessarily protect against a second infection of COVID-19. What does that mean for vaccine development? Joe, what is the connection between antibodies and a vaccine? They're right that this is a problem. If you generate antibodies, which in theory should protect you, and you can generate them if you get actually exposed to the virus, or you could generate them if you get given a vaccine. But if you generate them and they stop protecting you, then you're not any better off than when

you started. The issue is that it's not clear at this point. People don't understand exactly what's going on with these sailors on the U.S. Theodore Roosevelt. So it's not clear how long these antibodies are protective or if they're protective. Well, they are clearly protective for a while. That seems to be the case. How many people are protected, for how long, in what circumstances, one of the many questions that has to be answered. All right. A lot of listeners are telling us they want to get involved, including Amanda in St. Louis. Here's her question.

I'm wondering if there's anything else we who aren't science or health professionals can do to help with the vaccine development. What would you say, Joe? Is there anything that folks can do? Exercise patience, I think, would be one of the things. So sit still, quietly stay home. It's going to take a while. And yeah, and people are going to have to put up with restrictions on their behaviors

that they're not going to be crazy about, and understandably so. Patience is important. The other thing is, you know, when they talk about testing this vaccine, they're testing it on somebody. You should watch people who are interested and willing and able should watch for advertisements for people who want to join the

test program to see if the vaccine works. Is that posted on like hospital websites? Where do you find out about those things? There's actually a website that I found earlier that lists all the clinical trials. So if you search around, you can find places where they're looking for volunteers. It's not too hard. Interesting. Okay, let's take this next question from Kay in Scottsdale, Arizona, who wants to know about how this vaccine might protect people taking it and those around them. Wouldn't an infected person, vaccinated or not, still shed the virus, exposing others? Joe, how does that work? What would you tell Kay? I asked a vaccinologist this question earlier today, and the answer seems to be basically no.

If you had the vaccine and you're not becoming infected with the virus that's causing, in this case, COVID-19, you're not going to be shedding any because you don't have any. What you're getting from the virus is an activated immune system. You're not actually getting a live virus that you can shed and give to somebody else. So, yeah, I don't think that's going to be one of the big problems. All right. And P.R.S. Joe Pelka, thank you. You bet. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies.

Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today, or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. I'm Michelle Martin, and in this excerpt from the National Conversation with All Things Considered, we'll hear some younger voices. We asked kids to send us their questions about coronavirus. To offer answers and perspective, we called Susanna Stuyvesant. She is a pediatric nurse practitioner at the Capital Medical Group, which is in the Washington, D.C. area. And Dr. Wajika Ujurogi, she is the medical director for the Young Child

Clinic at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and an assistant professor of psychiatry at Perlman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Thank you both so much for joining us. Hi, Michelle. First up is Genesis, who is 11. Hi. When we do find a vaccine, how would it specifically be used on us? Thank you. Doctor, I'm kind of wondering if maybe the question is, where does the shot go?

I'm kind of thinking that might be the question, but I don't know. You tell me. You know what? The cool thing about Janice's question is, is that because there are all of these people working on vaccines right now, they're looking at some really interesting ideas. So one of the ideas is for it not to be a shot, but for actually to be needle free. And the reason why that's important is because part of the problems with vaccines is typically they need to be refrigerated. And so that can be a little bit tricky when you're trying to put it into trucks and trying to get it to all these various places. So if you can create a formulation that doesn't need to be refrigerated, and then if you can also have it so it's needle-free,

then that could mean that it could be like a skin patch, which theoretically could go through the the mail and go to everyone's homes and they get to stick that patch on your arm. So one of the things that people are working on right now are trying to come up with novel ideas and novel ways to create this vaccine that would work on this really large scale and that could be rapidly deployed. Dr. Jiragi, I think I may have, this may be about the vaccine, but it may be a broader question. So I'll just play it and see what you think. Here it is. My name is Gus, and I live in San Francisco. And my question is, will it be safe to go back to school without a vaccine? That's really going to depend on a lot of factors. And that really means for Gus, what's happening in San Francisco at the time in terms of transmission rates and the availability to test people and the Department of Health at both San Francisco as well as California,

working on all of those issues and monitoring the pandemic. And when they think that it's safe to reopen schools, then they will go ahead and do that and have a whole lot of measures in place to ensure that they can limit the spread of COVID-19 within the school setting. And if we've learned anything over these past several months of sheltering in place, we know what to do to be safe. We know we need to screen. We know we need to monitor. We need to test if at all possible. And then we need to do the things that we've been doing every day, which is hand washing, physical distancing six feet away. All of those things will be things that the school will do and school districts will

do before they think that kids are ready to go back to school. Susanna Stavis, I'm going to give you this next one from nine-year-old Gabby, and she called us from Tampa, Florida. I know that social distancing is important, but how can I make my friends do it when they aren't doing it? This is a really hard one, and this is going to probably require a, is to brainstorm with your parents about some things that you would like to do with friends that you can do with a mask on and that you can do at least six feet apart. So some of the things that have come to mind from my patients that I've talked to is a bike ride where you ride parallel to each other, but six feet apart with your mask and helmets on and badminton. I really think this is going to be a badminton summer. Four coloring, two different posters. You said this is the summer of badminton. I'm not sure that's the answer everybody wants. But I've got two questions about

a really popular sport. And here they are. Hi, my name is Quinn. And I'm eight years old. And my question is, I usually play on the soccer team. Will we be able to play this summer? My name is Gavin, and I'm 9. I live in Fairbanks, Alaska. Most summers, I play soccer and raise BMX. Both soccer and BMX happen outside. My parents say I should probably take the summer off from BMX and soccer

because of the coronavirus. I think BMX and soccer because of the coronavirus. I think BMX and soccer are probably okay because they're outside and because they're fun. Now I miss them. What does the expert at NPR think? Susanna Stuyvesant, we're putting you on the spot here. Well, actually, it's okay because I am a soccer player and I had my spring season canceled as well. So in addition to that, I was super excited to watch the National Women's Soccer Team play in the Olympics this summer. So I am feeling the burn of no soccer.

But the thing about soccer is that the coaches recommend 5,000 touches per day, okay? That's a lot. And most of those should be in drills. And those are really easy to do with one friend or just in your backyard. And you don't necessarily need one of the smart soccer balls. For Gavin, for his BMX, I believe there is a way that the group could probably figure out a way to do that safely. Maybe it would be going on the course one at a time, which I think is probably pretty different. But I think that that is something that by using guidelines that are on the CDC for camps and daycares reopening and things like that, I think they could probably follow some guidelines and get that up and running in some way, shape or form.

The other things are passing the ball in lacrosse, shooting on the goal. So there are ways to do these, but we're not going to be in that close contact, especially for the physical sports. Basketball, you can definitely do. Everybody has to bring their own ball. And remember to wash your hands before and after. And no one-on-one, just playing games like knockout and force. That's Susanna Stuyvesant. She's a pediatric nurse practitioner at the Capital Medical Group in the Washington, D.C. area, and Dr. Wajiku Jirogi, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Pearlman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. NPR's Michelle Martin. To keep up to date with all the coronavirus news,

check out your local public radio station. There's a link to find it in our episode notes. Thanks for listening. I'm Kelly McEvers.