Jono, Ben & Megan - The Podcast - MINI: Vaccinologist Helen Petousis-Harris Answers Your COVID Vaccine Questions

Episode Date: August 12, 2021

This morning Vaccinologist Helen Petousis-Harris joined us to answer all of your COVID vaccine questions.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

John O'Bien, new to your mornings. Friends of Skinny, New Zealand's most recommended telco. Happy, happy, happy, oh. We're joined by a vaccine expert, vaccinologist. I don't know if I've just made up a job title there. Helen Batousis-Harris, welcome to New Zealand's Breakfast. How are you? Oh, good morning. I'm all right.

What are your credentials, shall we say? Because I feel like I'll go later and go, oh, Helen said this, and they'll be like, who's Helen? What's Helen? Who's Helen? Oh, I think vaccinology's fair enough. I did do a PhD in vaccinology, but I don't think that makes you the expert.

But probably 23 years in the patch, probably. 23 years she's been playing the game. Vaccinology. I didn't even know that was a thing, and I just made up the word, but it turns out, thank God, it is Helen. We've got you on this morning.

There's obviously a lot of questions floating around around the vaccine and stuff, and I've asked Ben to just put aside his crazy 5G anti-vaxxer theories for this interview. Just for this moment, Ben. Stop throwing me under. It's not what I believe. Anyway. Firstly, what do you, as a vaccinologist, want to say to an anti-vaxxer?

Back off. Short and sweet. You're really going to contribute to making a bunch of people sick. Don't think the world's got time for it right now. Well, that's, yeah. I can sense a bit of people sick and, you know, don't think the world's got time for it right now. Ah, well, that's, yeah, I guess I can sense a bit of frustration. I can understand there would be frustration around, but there is, you know, there's people talking about it going, oh, well, if it doesn't stop you from getting COVID,

why should I get it? What do you say to those people? There's a lot of, I absolutely understand people's, you know, concerns and that you might not be feeling very confident about at the moment. There's a lot of, I absolutely understand people's concerns and that you might not be feeling very confident about at the moment. And I think that is absolutely understandable. And there's some really good places and good people that you can get answers for. But please just be careful on that internet. Is it true that the virus is chasing

down the vaccine, like i.e. Delta, it doesn't actually protect you from Delta? No, you get quite good protection against Delta, thank goodness. There's a little bit of reduced effectiveness observed against that particular variant, but it's still doing a great job of keeping you know, effectiveness observed against that particular variant. But it's still doing a great job of keeping people out of hospital and from getting dead, et cetera. So that's good. That's a win.

Yeah, well, you had some great stats. I saw it. I know, apologies for doing this on the same way because I didn't realise until I was researching last night that you did pretty much the same thing on the project a couple of days ago on TV. But you had some really good stats around the states and the percentage of people vaccinated and non-vaccinated

that are getting sick and in hospital. Yeah, well, that's got about, where did they get to with their coverage? About, you know, in the 60s, 60%. It does vary depending what state you're in. And over 99% of the people that are landing in hospital are not vaccinated. So it's really doing a good job of keeping most people pretty safe. You hear all about the different companies, the pharmaceutical companies that are getting into the vaccine game.

Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, AstraZeneca. What is the most successful? Yeah, well, I think some of that will still remain to be seen in the long game. I mean, I think the mRNA vaccines, you know, but the Pfizer and the Moderna, they see a very, very high bar in terms of how protective they've been able to be. I've seen some discussion that the protection from perhaps the viral vector or the AstraZeneca might be a little bit more long-lasting. I'm not sure yet.

So we might yet see some of these others producing some slightly different features than the mRNA. But the thing is, all the ones that we've been using are almost equally as effective against severe disease and death, which is pretty remarkable. Now, at the moment, excuse my ignorance, have we got Pfizer in the country, do we? Yeah, yeah, that's our one. Put our chips in with the Pfizer campaign. We country, do we? Yeah, yeah, that's our one. Yeah.

Put our chips in with the Pfizer campaign. We did, we did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We hatched our bets at the beginning, but then we decided to act mainly this horse. Now, of course, a lot of people who are against it or hesitant are saying that they feel like they've been rolled out quite quickly, these vaccines, and kind of almost experimental. What do you say to those people?

Well, yeah, rolled out quite quickly is absolutely right. They're not experimental. Experimental phase is over, but we don't stop studying them. So I think that's the thing to get clear. No vaccine, even if it's been around for decades. You always study the vaccines and these ones we need to keep studying for the entire time that we're

using them and we're learning a lot as we go. But experiments were done before, we did experiments before they went into humans and then we did the technically the experiments were done on tens of thousands of humans before they were authorised for use. Now, someone's texted in 4487, and this is actually quite poignant

because we're hearing a lot of conversations about people who are like, oh, you can just walk in and get it done. You can walk into a chemist. Some of them are distributing it. And someone's texting going, my father's 60, had a heart attack around 10 years ago, and they understood that people with health problems would be contacted early, but no one has contacted them.

What do you suggest they do, Helen? I think they need to reach out and indeed there's a lot of clinics that are taking people, you just have to walk off the street and they're quite happy to give you your vaccine and

also there are a whole lot of numbers if you don't like computers to ring or also online. Just go on there and book it for yourself if you've missed out, if people haven't reached you yet. So not that you want to send hordes of people into chemists, though, but if you're not in the demograph at the moment, which is eligible, would you suggest maybe checking with a chemist or someone who is distributing it to see if you can get it? Yeah, I mean, you can sometimes walk down the street and see clinics advertising. And so, you know, why not pop in? And also those big clinics that have been set up around.

And you can find their locations on the interweb as well, see if there's something near you. So there are sort of ways to, more and more actually than there were before. They sort of seem to be growing by the minute. Rebecca, you're on from Christchurch. Good morning, Rebecca. Your question for Helen, our vaccinologist. Our vaccinologist.

We don't own you, Helen. I was just wondering, is it going to be, so will we need like yearly boosters, kind of like how we always get notices around the flu vaccine is that kind of going to be the same for the covid one i think i think we might we might need at least um at least one booster in the um during this period where the the virus is still really running pretty much out of control all over the world. But once it gets, you know, once it gets dampened down,

those variants are going to really, it's going to limit their ability to pop up. So we might be able to stop worrying so much about that. So it might not be quite yearly as we go forward, but maybe in the next, you know, over the next 12 months, that might be a reality. Thank you very much, Rebecca. What about travelling? A vaccine passport seems like something you're going to have to have and be fully vaccinated if you're going to be, in the future, be allowed to travel to other countries, right? Yep, yep. I think that's well, it is a reality now, and I think probably that will grow as a reality.

It's not the first time we've done that. We do have yellow fever as an example. Some countries won't let you in without proving you've had a yellow fever vaccine. So it's not a first, but yeah, that might be quite important. And can you, if you have had the jab, can you still spread the virus? Some people who've had the jab can still spread it. Yeah. And so some are actually quite well protected against doing that. Others, you know, so they can pick it up, not know it, be quite perfectly well and maybe still contribute to spreading it. So just to summarise for everyone

who just tuned in right now, a final message for anyone that maybe has been a little hesitant, isn't sure what do they need to think about? Think about themselves, think about the New Zealander in the world when they go towards the vaccine? Yeah, I think it isn't all about you. You do have to think not just about your own community around you, but also, yeah, I'm afraid the rest of the world, we're really all in this together.

And I think if we can almost, almost everybody can get this done, I mean we can get out of this. It's not a half-pie effort. It can't be a half-pie effort. You've all got to get in there. Some champagne closing statements

from Helen Patousis Harris. Hey, Helen, lovely talking with you. Thank you very much for spending your time with us. You've really increased the IQ level of this show, doubling it instantly over the last 10 minutes. At least. Yeah, appreciate it. I'm glad I could talk to you guys.

You haven't answered my last question. It wasn't even really a proper question. I just kind of said some words, but you knew what that meant. But I thought we did a good job of fumbling our way through the interview, Helen. I mean, you've probably been interviewed by RNZ, you know, your Jessie Mull words, but you knew what that meant. But I thought we did a good job of fumbling our way through the interview, Helen. I mean, you've probably been interviewed by RNZ, you know, your Jesse Mulligans, your Hoskings. Where do we stack up, Hel? Oh, 12 out of 10.

Oh, yeah. Great stuff. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Hosking. Put that in your Maserati and burn it out. Dr. Helen, we really appreciate your time and passing on your expertise to our listeners this morning. Thanks so much.

You're welcome. See you. Want more Jono and Ben? You can wake up with the boys' weekdays from 6 on The Hits and via the iHeartRadio app. Jono and Ben on The Hits Breakfast. Friends of Skinny.