StarTalk Radio - The COVID-19 Vaccines, with Irwin Redlener

Episode Date: March 1, 2021

What’s up with the COVID-19 vaccines? On this episode of StarTalk, Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice talk about all things COVID-19 vaccine with Dr. Irwin Redlener, Director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness. NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/show/the-covid-19-vaccines-with-irwin-redlener/ Thanks to our Patrons Joe Selmser, Daniel Smith, C Hough, Sheri Eaton, Jon O'Rear, Jennifer Sell-Knapp, Catherine Nelson, Wesley Karl Trevenzoli, Carl Simmons, and Chris Reynolds for supporting us this week. Photo Credit: Army Spc. Angel Laureano holds a vial of the COVID-19 vaccine. Credit: DoD photo by Lisa Ferdinando – U.S. Secretary of Defense, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And for today's episode, we're talking about the COVID-19 vaccines. Chuck, you with me on this one? I am indeed. However, I am not vaccinated. You're not vaccinated.

Okay. And I'm halfway through that. Oh, did you? Yeah, I'm halfway through. Congratulations. Thank you. Did it up at Harlem Hospital up in Manhattan. Nice.

In Harlem, of course. Right. So obviously, neither you nor I have specific expertise in this field. So we go into our man who does. And that is Dr. Erwin Redliner, a friend for many decades. Erwin, welcome back to StarTalk. Now, I so delight in reading your title because it's one of the baddest-ass titles that we've got here. So you were the founding director of Columbia University's

National Center for Disaster Preparedness. Sweet. And you created the Pandemic Resource and Response Initiative at Columbia University. So this is, you are the man. If I ever see a disaster, I'm running to Irwin. We're going to think of you. Help me, Dr.

Redletter! Chef, if you see a disaster, don't call me. I'll be really offended. I want you to know that. But when Godzilla comes, we're calling you, just so you know. Exactly, no matter what happens. By the way, you have a long history of the medical treatment of children

who couldn't otherwise afford that treatment. And you're author of the book, I have to give this a shout out, The Future of Us, What the Dreams of Children Mean to 21st Century America. So you're the man. Thank you for even agreeing to be on our podcast. My great pleasure, actually, Neil. So thank you for the man. Thank you for even agreeing to be on our podcast here. My great pleasure, actually, Neil. So, thank you for having me. We got Chuck here to make jokes, so nothing you do

is a joke. So, Chuck. Exactly. So, we'll try. We'll see how this goes. I don't know. Yeah, we will. I'm not worried. I call Dr. Redlener our own Tony Fauci. We got our own personal Fauci.

We don't need Tony Fauci. We got Erwin Redlener. You know what I mean? That's where we are. So let me just ask you, the vaccine, you know, I view it like any other vaccine. If it can prevent an illness i'm getting it yeah but there seems to be this gurgling of attitude towards the vaccine yeah holding aside the regular variety of anti-vaxxers okay there's like a new subset

or or are there maybe they're not new it's old, who have specific objections to this vaccine. Can you tell us what's different about this vaccine from others? Yeah, and I've thought about this a lot, Neil. You know, one of the things was, remember when it was introduced, it was introduced during one of the strangest, most bizarre presidential administrations in American history, that is, under the umbrella of Donald Trump. So almost anything that was introduced in that weird four-year span was viewed with skepticism and doubt. And, you know, when he would say, for example, that we're going to fast-track this, and he had something called Operation Warp Speed, which he actually did have, people either didn't believe it, they were skeptical about it.

And it was a new technology, this sort of so-called mRNA, the messenger RNA technology. So this was born in an environment of serious skepticism. was born in an environment of serious skepticism. Also at a time, simultaneously, Neil, where the anti-vax movement was growing anyway. So it was into this kind of very complex situation where people have doubt. And if it's fast-tracked, does that mean they bypass the safety assessment

that we normally would expect. I mean, the fastest vaccine ever developed before this was the mumps, which was a four-year process. Most vaccines take well more than 10 years. So there was skepticism. All right. So what you're saying is we were a victim, in a sense, the vaccine movement was a victim of the cry wolf problem, right?

Because if so much of what emerges in the Trump administration was not connected to an objective reality, and then he says something that is, then the entire anti-Trump movement has justifiable skepticism that it's going to be correct when, in fact, in this case, it was correct. So perhaps we shouldn't, just in general, we shouldn't be getting our medical advice from elected politicians. A very good point. Okay.

Think about this. He says, inject yourself with bleach to cure yourself of COVID and get a vaccine. Do you know I forgot about that? Okay. All right. So, all right. So, so, so that, okay. So that's, it's fascinating that it happened in this perfect storm of misinformation.

And, but what about the integrity of institutions, right? If NASA says an asteroid's coming, people are going to listen, all right? So certain institutions have an integrity that has been preserved or at least fared better than other institutions. You mean like the CDC?

Yeah, for example, the CDC or any other sort of medical, you know, the Mayo Clinic. Whatever it is that we trust. Are we in a post-institutional trust era? Forget an individual. How about just institutions? Well, here's what happened with that.

So within a month of the recognition that we're dealing with a pandemic based on this particular coronavirus, the CDC sends out 100 test kits across the United States for people and laboratories to be able to test to see if one has COVID or not. Those test kits, one third of them failed. So the CDC stepped out of the gate with a very unusual demonstration of incompetency that immediately eroded the public sense of faith in the CDC as an institution, to your point. So again, this is like you said, it's this kind of collision course of incompetencies, disbelief, dishonesty, etc. And here we go. And we should not be surprised that people are skeptical about the vaccines. And holding aside the scarcity of masks in the early pandemic, weren't there official

statements and wasn't CDC included among them declaring that you should not wear masks? Holding aside the scarcity and you want the medical professionals to be first in line. But wasn't there also some widespread statements from authorities declaring that masks are not helpful? There were. There absolutely were. In fact, Tony Fauci himself was not all that enthusiastic about masks early on. And that changed, obviously.

But yeah, there was a lot of rumbling and grumbling and people making statements that were not necessarily true or things that they probably should have said, we think they are, but we'll see. We'll be doing a lot of tests and experiments and observations. Let me get back to that because that's a very important point about how science works and how experiments works and how new information arises. And I'll get back to that, because that's a very important point about how science works and how experiments works and how new information arises. And I'll get back to that in a minute. There's a larger point I want to make about that, but let me keep moving this forward. What about the distrust of big pharma?

That's out there. That's real. who might be all in on their mistrust, if you sift through that, there's going to be some things in their mistrust that, yeah, that actually did happen. Yeah, there is the profit motive. So how do you address that dimension of this misinformation?

You know, let me say this. In 1947, and I'm making a point here, the country was worried about a new influx of smallpox into our country. New York City called up the six pharmaceutical manufacturers that made vaccines. They ordered six million doses. They didn't have to check with the state. They didn't have to check with the federal government. They just ordered it.

The city. New York City. The mayor and the health commission met. That's badass. Yeah, it's totally badass, man. This is like, yeah, we need 6 million doses. We need it now. They got 6 million doses, and in less than 6 weeks, they inoculated

for smallpox, 6 million New Yorkers. And the pictures are astounding. New York is lined up for blocks and blocks, you know, these kind of 40s images of black and white images. It was amazing. People trusted the health commissioner and the mayor. They said there was a bad thing coming to smallpox, go get vaccinated. And they did in droves. Now we've had in the 60 years since a gradual increase in absolute skepticism about institutions, about corporations, about government. And all of this has now,

you know, it's all congealed in this massive mistrust of everything, including the institutions that we should be trusting. One good thing, a good thing about the Biden administration is the restoration of trust is happening already, and it's happening much faster than I even anticipated, Neil. Okay. So now what about this idea that you're, unlike other vaccines where you put sort of a denuded version of the virus and your body thinks it's the full virus, but you don't get the disease, but you get the antibodies. So that's the more traditional understanding of vaccines. This one is actually modifying DNA.

And that kind of has a spooky feeling to it. Well, RNA for the Pfizer's and the Moderna's and DNA for the new J&J, Johnson & Johnson, that's coming out. But yes, it is spooky. the body's cells into thinking that they've been invaded by some foreign virus, when they're in fact been tricked into thinking that there's a protein, because of a protein that's inserted into the body, they're tricked into thinking that it's some sort of external virus, and then they manufacture the antibodies.

It's pretty fancy stuff. This is genetic engineering. It is genetic engineering. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Which's pretty fancy stuff. This is genetic engineering. It is genetic engineering. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Which is great. Okay.

I mean, come on. All right. Goodness, of course. Because it's not, you're not changing my DNA, right? You're not engineering me, you know? Well, you kind of are. We're making your body think something is happening to it that isn't.

But, Neil, we do the same thing with the old-style viruses. Let's say if we give a dead, different kind of, like what's called an adenovirus, a dead or attenuated version of the actual virus, you're also tricking the body to thinking that, oh, I got a real enemy here. I'm going to mount an immune response. And, you know, this is what vaccines do. Okay, so it's a more sophisticated version of what we've been doing for our bodies for decades. Yes. That's a fair way to say that then.

Well, okay, so this is also a Cosmic Queries, and we did solicit questions from our fan base on the vaccines. And so I'm curious, let's, oh, by the way, one last point. The trust or mistrust of vaccines does not land equally in the demographics of this country country or even perhaps the world. And I think that may be rooted in a distrust of organized medicine. All right. And let's look at sort of the black community, for example.

Just there is some really ugly history there. And so there's some explaining that needs to happen. and so there's some explaining that needs to happen. There's some really significant effort in the restoration of trust that's necessary. I'm not letting the government do no experiments on me. Right, right, exactly, exactly. No, that's it. So can you just remind us of sort of the pinnacle

of the source of this distrust, Erwin? So there's a particular pinpoint in history that happened in the 30s and 40s, which was called the Tuskegee experiments, where researchers, legitimate scientific medical researchers decided, you know, we'd like to figure out what happens to somebody who gets syphilis and we don't treat them. So they rounded up a bunch of men with syphilis, black men in Tuskegee, and said, you know, we're going to give you free medical care. And we want to just observe you over the next few decades to see how you're doing. They did not tell them they were denying treatment for syphilis. So over the decades, they learned what happens with untreated syphilis at the cost of the lives and health

of a large number of black Americans. So the point is, treatment was available, if not cure. They believed they were getting treated, but they were just getting a placebo. And there they were unwitting medical experiments. Yeah, horrendous. I like to use the term Nazi-like. I mean, you know, and I mean that in a particular way because normal people don't experiment on other people like that. It's not okay in any way.

The eugenics movement was still sort of in progress in the early 30s when that was happening. It was festering along there. Of course it was. But, you know, this is also on top of a few hundred years of slavery, of Jim Crow, of institutional racism. This was like the Capra. This was a very explicit, horrendous experiment on top of mistreatment of African Americans. By the way, we confirmed this. It was the public health service in collaboration with the Tuskegee Institute doing these experiments. Right.

So it was a government funding situation. And it went through the 60s into the early 70s, so it was multi-decades. So why would you expect anybody to believe anything you're saying when we have that kind of history? That's the question. And this is what the challenge now is, how do we embrace what actually happened and getting hospitalized from the disease.

So they are the highest risk groups who have the most hesitancy about getting the vaccine. And this is going to be tough work, convincing people that they really do need to get the vaccine in spite of that history. And I have the answer. I figured it out. What's the answer? It's called the racial buddy system for vaccination. Okay. Any black person that goes to be vaccinated,

a white person must go along with them, and they must get vaccinated from the same vial. Okay. The white person goes first, like a food taster, like a food taster. Oh, that's brilliant. And then the black person gets to say it, and then we know. And they withdrew it from the same source. And from the same source.

It's just like, all right, here's my white buddy. He goes first. Bang. Because if you're going to be killing black people, you're going to be killing white people right alongside them. There you go. All right, we've got to take a quick break. When we come back, we will indeed get to

our questions from our fan base on the COVID vaccine. What's it all about when StarTalk returns? Hi, I'm Chris Cohen from Hallward, New Jersey, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. Please enjoy this episode of StarTalk Radio with your and my favorite personal astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson. We're back.

Tyson here. I got Chuck Nice tweeting at Chuck Nice Comic. Thank you, sir. All right, Chuck, I love your tweets. They're insightful, and I laugh most of the time. Some, they look like you're experimenting on us with whether something is funny. Well, listen, I'm very much like the Public Health Service of comedy.

No, I'm experimenting. Our Twitter is your sample base. Is that what it is? That's my sample base. Okay. So we're talking about the COVID vaccine, all nuances of it, with our friend of StarTalk, Dr. Erwin Redliner, who's

chief honcho of all disaster preparedness that we know of in this country. So, Erwin, we've got questions from our audience, if you don't mind taking them. Chuck, you've got them lined up. What do you have, Chuck? I got them right here. So let's start things off. These are from our Patreon patrons. And of course, if you are listening to this, feel free to go to patreon.com slash StarTalkRadio. Support us and we will give you priority, so to speak. Okay. This is Cameron Bishop. Cameron Bishop.

Okay. Yes. He says, I was recently listening to a StarTalk episode about pandemics years ago. It had to be Laurie Garrett. Laurie Garrett, for sure. He says, I was curious. The guest said that back when we no longer have to vaccinate for smallpox, it's because we eliminated the virus. How likely is something like this with SARS-CoV-2? Please stay healthy. There you have it.

Okay. Excellent question. I love it. So, Erwin, so SARS-CoV-2, that's the official, that's the geeky name for COVID-19? Yeah. SARS-CoV-2. Okay. So that's the name of the virus and COVID-19 is the... That's the name of the specific virus. And the disease you get from that is COVID-19. Right. Is that a fair way to put that? Okay.

It is. And the reason it's called CoV-2 is because we had a CoV-1 back in 2003, in fact, which is when people started thinking about how we're going to confront it with vaccines and so on. Okay. But I thought it was COVID-19 because it was 2019 when it was discovered. Yes. But the name, that's the disease.

But the name of the virus is SARS-COV-2. Two. So it's the second virus. It's the second virus in this family of viruses. In this family of viruses. Got it. Got it. Okay.

All right. Perhaps you know my father, SARS-CoV-1. Yeah, we called him Big Dog Kobe. Big Dog Kobe. That's what they called my dad. You shot him down in Tombstone, Arizona, and I come for my revenge. That's right. Did I get away with that? Yeah. My name is Sarge Kovito.

You killed my father. Prepare to die. That's right. All right. So if smallpox is done, then can we have similar hopes for this one? No. Because... Damn. Damn. done then what can we have similar hopes for this one no because damn okay next question yeah yeah yeah go ahead no it's the the problem is that it's a very these coronaviruses which is this this is one of are very very common you can't really eliminate them. And it's going to end up being endemic, meaning around all the time. It may well get mixed.

The vaccine for this may well get mixed into the annual flu shots that we get. And that's that. We'll control it. But I don't think we're going to stop it. But more, isn't it true, equally as important, is that humans, homo sapiens, were the only victim of smallpox? So if you get rid of smallpox, it's not jumping to you from a bat or from some other creature that we handle? That is correct.

Okay, so smallpox was unique in that way. Now, if you're going to have species jumping viruses, it's not clear that you would ever be able to stamp them out entirely at all. Correct. And then you have also the so-called variants or mutations that we're confronting where you have a little bit of a change in the makeup of the virus that causes to have different characteristics or less sensitive to the vaccines and so on. So this is going to be around for a while, but I think we'll learn to live with it and we'll adapt to it. But it's not going away like smallpox. Yeah. And like you said, if it's a part of every season's cocktail, then we're good to go. All right.

We are. All right. All right, Chuck. Next question. Excellent. Okay. Let's go to Toby Sonnenberg, who says, hello from New Jersey. We're so sorry for you. I know, I just thought.

But first of all, Chuck lives in New Jersey, so that's a joke. That's why I can say it's a joke. You can say it's a joke. But also, just the way you said that, I was ready for it to be from a really exotic place. It's like, To, from, you know. Exactly. From Tasmania. No, from New Jersey.

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go ahead. So, Toby says this. Why couldn't Pfizer and Moderna start using standard vaccine techniques for COVID-19? Why was it necessary to use the RNA vaccine? Yeah, so Ern, wouldn't it have been easier just to denature the virus we already know is in the house? Why is one faster than the other? Well, maybe, but you know, the mRNA technique is really quick and it's very effective.

And you're not fooling around putting live or attenuated vaccines, viruses into people. So there are a lot of advantages. Even now, because now we're seeing all these variants and mutations, we're worried about them being more infective and maybe more lethal. You can make very rapidly a booster shot. In fact, Moderna is, as we speak, working on booster shots that will specifically address these new variants. Otherwise, we would have had to start fresh

in a very different and much more prolonged process to get the protection if we were using the old techniques. Erwin, you used a word, infective. Is that the same thing as contagious? It is. In the context of how we're talking about, yes. That's the same thing. Okay. Got it. Yeah. Okay.

So is it also not true that, because a lot of people are somewhat concerned that this technology, if you will call it, this advancement was rushed. But is it not true that this has been in the works for quite some time because of some people after the SARS outbreak saw the opportunity to make these advancements and through these hedge fund investments started working on this years ago. So it's not like last February they started working on this mRNA technology. Exactly. That's exactly correct. And like we were just talking about before, Chuck, it's actually started, as you just reminded us, after the SARS, the initial SARS pandemic. And yeah, and we had a real running start getting prepared to rapidly develop the vaccines that are confronting the SARS-CoV-2 virus. And that's a dimension of this entire landscape that I think is unrecognized or unappreciated,

that it was a running start up to the starting line. Yeah. All right, Chuck, keep it coming. Give me more. All right, let's keep going. Love these. Let's go with Fernando Gomes, or Gomez. I'm not sure.

He says, Why do our policies fail so badly in enforcing mass vaccinations? Since it is a collective protection measure, shouldn't everybody partake? Yeah, well, I think Erwin kind of addressed that, that like 70 years ago, we all did agree. So, Erwin, let me just jump before you answer that. Is there some renewed sense of individual freedom that people feel the need to express in this country so that the idea of being free means I don't have to listen to anybody tell me anything? Yeah, actually, that's a really big problem. Of course, again, exacerbated by Donald J. Trump, who made a political agenda from this public health catastrophe. Here's the thing about this.

It's a question of, I'm deciding to take a risk, and you don't have a right to tell me not to. Except that's not really applicable. If you're risk taking means that you're going to climb up a straight wall cliff or go skydiving, good luck to you. And we'll let you do that. And in this country, we let you do that. Yes, you can do that. But if your risk threatens me, that's not okay. You can't say my risk is I'm not going to wear a mask, let's say.

I'm taking that risk. So I'll get SARS-CoV-2 and that's my choice. It is not your choice because your choice is actually if you implement it, if you do what you say you're going to do, which is not do the protections that are required, and you make me or my family or my friends sick because of your recklessness that you are declaring your personal right, that is not okay in a society like ours. So it's differentiating between the individual risk and taking a risk on behalf of a lot of other people. Okay, so the people who are now doing that, did they just not learn civics? Did they just not, do they have no empathy? Are they, I mean, you're a medical doctor with presumably some training in psychology or psychiatry.

How do you analyze this? It's a little narcissistic. it's a little self-centered it's it's about focusing in a very egotistical way on you personally with uh some disregard for your the people who are around you and i i think that's it's really what we're talking about and that could get obviously extreme which doesn't happen all that often. But people who say, who have no empathy whatsoever, and they are implying when they say, I'm taking this risk and you be damned. And that's that's what we run into trouble. Or it could very well be that those people are anal apertures, better known as a-holes. OK, so that explains a-holes. Okay.

So that explains the whole thing. There you go. Okay. Do I have to answer that? No. No, you don't have to ever steep as low as Chuck goes. Okay. This is not a requirement.

So, Chuck, give me more. We've got time for a couple more before this segment ends. Okay. Here we go. This is Woody. Woody doesn't give us anything except he's Woody. Okay. He says, what level of efficacy

would different groups have receiving the first round of vaccines? How does preventing spreaders like youth compare to protecting the vulnerable like oldies? Shout out to Australia's CoronaCast for the idea. Wait, wait. So is it, okay. Are those two different questions?

Like one of them is, what is the, let me split that. What is the efficacy of the very first round of experiments that are conducted? Right? If you're going to say it's safe for me because you experimented on some other humans, what is that about? So I think what he's asking is exactly what you just said. But he wants to use the first round as a means of comparing and contrasting the efficacy between the elderly and young people instead of just trying to protect certain people. Yeah. So let me say, so first of all, the long history of medical research and the use of human subjects was originally about the subjects being, you know, middle class, middle aged white males. And many, many experiments to figure out what drugs work and so on were done

with that very narrow group. And then people started to say, well, what about women? What about African-Americans? What about children? And I think our understanding of if you're going to do a broad-based full population vaccine, for example, you can't say that if you gave it to 10,000 white guys, middle-aged white guys, that'll definitely be effective in older people or African-Americans or kids. So the more demographics that you have to address, the bigger that original sample has to be.

Exactly right. Exactly right. And so when people say, are we going to give the vaccine to children, for instance, and Dr. Fauci recently said, yeah, we're probably in the fall, we'll be starting to give it to children as young as six years of age, which is probably fine. But then they're going to have to, before that, give a lot of young children the vaccine to make sure it's safe and effective, which is ethically a little tough, as you can imagine. Right, because plus a child is not, unlike an adult, a child is not entirely accountable

for having received the trial dose of vaccine in the first place. Right. Nobody could give you a trial of anything without your permission and without getting a whole lot of explanation of the risks and the benefits, et cetera. But what is it that you're supposed to say to a seven-year-old to make that person comfortable or have the ability to give approval? Right.

So it's just guardianship. So easy. So easy. Here's some cookies and some juice. And the answer to give approval. Right. So it's just guardians. So easy. So easy. Here's some cookies and some juice. And the answer will be yes. Or it's a candy. Put it in a candy. Here's a lollipop.

Okay, I'll take it. We're going to take a quick break, our final break. And when we return, it's to the COVID vaccine and Dr. Erwin Redler. We'll see you in a moment. Hey, it's time to give a Patreon shout out to the following Patreon patrons. Joe Selmser, Daniel Smith, and See How. Thanks, guys. See How, you're helping.

All right, I'm going to stop now. Without you, we couldn't do this show. And for anybody who is listening who would like their very own Patreon shout out, please go to Patreon.com slash StarTalk Radio and support us. We're back. StarTalk. The COVID vaccine. Chuck, we're in question mode for Erwin Brad Leonard. Give me some more.

All right. Let's keep it moving. Let's go with Roman Prekop, who says, Hi, doctors. Okay, well, thanks for leaving me out. Did you feel that as a diss, Chuck? No, I mean, you know, I'm the only one that's not a doctor here. He could have said health doctors plus Chuck.

He could have said that. Yeah, he could have said, well, so, you know. We're finally getting our due, Neil. This is our job. We trained hard for this moment. All right, all right. All right, he says, hi, doctors. Do the current vaccines really decrease the spreading or just make the symptoms less severe? Yeah.

So the vaccine people, are they spreaders? And they don't and they don't. But they don't get it. Well, they might be. Are they spreaders? And they don't, but they don't get it? Well, they might be. And unfortunately, we didn't set up the trials well enough to know or appropriately enough to know the answer to that question. But what we do know is that they're very effective in preventing disease, serious disease and hospitalizations.

All of them are, including the new Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which will be out in a month or so. So that's what we know. And the degree of spreading? Unclear. It's unknown. It's pure and simple. Okay. Yeah. Right.

So that would mean you could be a carrier with no symptoms, is what that comes down to. You could be. Yeah. Okay. Got it. Okay. Keep it going, Chuck. All right. Let's keep it going.

Sam Couch would like to know this. What makes certain vaccines have the requirement of being stored under super cold temperatures? Oh, I love that question. While others have no issue being stored close to room temperature? Erwin, I was looking at the temperature for the Pfizer vaccine, 70 below zero. Come on now. 90. Excuse me.

90 below zero. 70, you're going to ruin the vaccine. Neil, you can't do that. So you're not going to have the corner vaccine dispenser doing this. This is going to have to only be in major institutions and hospitals that have freezers that low. Yeah, of course. So, yeah, what's up with that?

So Pfizer requires about minus 90 Fahrenheit, Moderna about minus five. The new Johnson & Johnson single dose vaccine will be able to be stored for three months in a regular refrigerator. Wow. Which is an amazing advance. And even though the J&J vaccine is said to be less effective, it still is an incredible vaccine when it comes to preventing serious illness and hospitalizations. But the big problem here, really the big problem,

is the global impact of trying to deal with vaccines that need this sort of Arctic temperature for containment and storage. So we will not be able to use the Pfizer vaccine, for example, in many, many developing countries where that, it's called the cold chain, that cold chain capacity does not exist. So it may be that your less effective vaccine, which stays preserved in a refrigerator, will in fact be the most effective force fighting COVID because that will have the widest distribution. Right. And by the way, if we don't address COVID-19 in every single country on earth, it really will affect our ability to get this virus under control in general. So we can't say, oh, we're doing great in the U.S. and in 90 other countries, we're not doing so great, because those will become pockets for infecting, mutating, and causing resurgence of the COVID-19 disease. So we have a lot of global work to do, which is why the J&J vaccine is so critically important as part

of our armamentarium. That's the first positive thing I've heard about it, so it's good to realize this. Yeah, I would take it for sure. Yeah, in fact, on late late night comedians were poking fun of they were third in the list and they ended to 50 rather than 95 and so yeah it didn't look good it's like the laggard students in your class you know yeah except that it doesn't have to be stored at you know um moon-like temperatures. Yeah, yeah. All right. Give me some more, Chuck. Here we go. This is Matthew Power. I love it. We should collect all the names

that would be great superheroes from our fans. I know. Yeah. Yeah. So Matt Power wants to know this. He says, Hello, Dr. Redliner, Dr. Tyson.

It's my understanding that at least two vaccines by different companies are on the market. Are these vaccines basically the same thing? Are they so different that it makes a difference? Is he talking about, you think, the J&J versus the Pfizer? I know we just... No, I guess, how about just the two RNA ones? He's talking about the two that are pretty much the same. So that's Moderna and...

Yeah, yeah, Pfizer. There's not enough difference to talk about with those. You know, I've been vaccinated. My wife's been vaccinated at the same place. She got Pfizer. I got Moderna. They're close enough in the way they function. We're very confident in the results

and the safety of both of them. There were some differences in how they're manufactured, which account for why they require different temperatures for storage. Like I said, minus 90 for Pfizer and minus 5 for Moderna. But if you're worrying about which to get, don't worry about it. Take whatever's available. Get it. Get whatever's there. Get what you got. Get what you get. Right. Okay. All right. This is Mike Bertruccio. Mike Bertruccio wants to know this. Hello. What

advancements to vaccines in general were developed for the COVID-19 vaccine? Do you anticipate that we'll see new vaccines coming on to the market for other diseases? I like that. Yeah. So was this a leap in any way, Erwin? It was definitely a leap. But again, I think we should mention once again that this was not a leap that happened, you know, a year ago.

This is a leap that started happening. The leaping began at least as far back as 2003 when people were looking at new mechanisms for developing vaccines and came up with this so-called mRNA technique. But also, in the last 20 years, there's been great advancements in medical tools and technology to even accomplish this. Isn't that correct? Yes. No question about it. Okay.

And, yeah, and this advancement is occurring nonstop. And we will certainly be getting things that we can't even imagine now. This is one of the things, the beauty of looking into the future is that the research and the developments, the innovation doesn't stop like in other areas of science. This is an iterative process. We learned this last year. Wait, what if we modify it this way? What will we get? Or what if we have a whole new vision of how to make a vaccine?

And that's what's happening. And by the way, I want to say one other word that's really important to the discussion of vaccines. is happening. By the way, I want to say one other word that's really important to the discussion of vaccines. The new tool that we'll have in our toolbox will be medications that you can take as an outpatient if you have the early signs of COVID and you test positive for it, where the doctor can prescribe a new medication you take by mouth and you're done with it. So that the combination of the vaccines, as they get more effective and more distributed, and new medications to actually treat the early forms of disease is what's going to allow us to gain control over this terrible pandemic.

And that's the light at the end of the tunnel. Really, both of these things. Cool. Very cool. So you do have something positive to say, Mr. Disaster Preparedness Person. Cool. Very cool. So you do have something positive to say, Mr. Disaster Preparedness Person. Okay. I do.

You know, one of the radio shows that I'm on a lot, Stephanie Miller's show, they call me Dr. Doom. Dr. Doom. There you go. Which is, well, anyway,

no comment. All right. Keep going, Chuck. We got time for like two more questions. Go. All right. Let going, Chuck. We got time for like two more questions. Go. All right. Let's go to Josh V. Josh V says...

He don't trust you with his last name. That's why he just said Josh V. I know. He's clearly just one more person who knows. I am not trusting Chuck. I don't blame him. All right. Josh V says this. I read a lot about herd immunity

and the numbers of immune people needed to defeat the virus. Yeah. Is there a clarity on what percentage of the population needs to be vaccinated to actually achieve herd immunity? And Erwin, isn't that dependent on how close we ever are to each other on average? Isn't herd immunity different for rural than it is for urban? Not so much. We talk about whole populations, really. So in any community, any community, we'll need to get a certain number of people who've either had the disease or who are vaccinated with an appropriate immune response.

So that number was once thought to be 65 to 70 percent of the population that had to have the immunity. It's now well into the 85, 90 percent that must have it. And that's that's a hard row here to hoe here. And we're going to see what happens, but it's a lot higher number or percentage. So the point is, so the way that herd immunity works then, correct me if I'm wrong, is you're one in 10 that has the disease,

but nine of us can't get it because we're vaccinated. So you're not going to spread it. And so what are the chances of you finding someone else who is 1 in 10? Well, that's sufficiently low. Correct. That even if you do spread it, that person has to have sufficiently low likelihood of something happening as well. So it rapidly tamps down back to zero.

Exactly. Exactly. That's the whole point. All right. So that's just trying to think that through. I know we're running out of time, but I just want to follow that up with when you said, what you said initially was enough people either have to be vaccinated or get the disease. So with that in mind, we are now seeing some cases. I don't know if they're isolated or not, but we're seeing some cases of reinfection.

Does that change the whole prospect of herd immunity? Yeah. Yeah. No, well, the thing of it is a tiny number of cases are reinfected cases. And, you know, there's this weird thing happening that people have had the disease documented and presumably have the antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 are still getting vaccinated. So my son, by the way, who had documented COVID-19 in March, last, you know, last March, recovered, had antibodies. He still, his doctors wanted to get the vaccine, which he's getting. Okay. So small chance, but really small. Okay. Chuck, we got 30 seconds. Give me something. Okay. Hello, Neil. Hello, Dr. Redlenner. As the virus continues to mutate and become more immune to vaccine, that's an assumption he's making. How often do you think we'd have to vaccinate to maintain life from all the mutations of COVID? We don't know. Sorry. Who wants to end this segment with, I don't know.

No, no. I got another way to come in on that. But just to shed a little bit of light on that, are you saying there's not something sufficiently in common with all of the mutations that by attacking that thing they have in common, it'll get any mutation that could ever take place? You're telling me you're not in that situation? No, we're not in that situation. Damn. I thought you guys were like... The South African version is

dangerous, and it may be more lethal than other ones. It's a work in progress. And viruses are smart. They're wily. They'll figure out a way around whatever we put there, so we have to be very careful and very diligent in addressing it.

All right. Wow. So you could end up making a super virus by trying to attack a virus? A super virus by attacking a virus. All I know is, all I'm telling you is that viruses mutate like crazy. And we got new mutations, by the way, in the United States right now. And we just have to stay ahead of it. This is why we have to get everyone vaccinated as quickly as possible so that the mutations don't run wild, Chuck. Right, because the more viruses there are out there,

the more opportunity there is to mutate. So you want to take that down. So the idea is we all have to do what we're supposed to do, which is our part in getting vaccinated. And if you're not vaccinated, then you have to do your part by washing your hands and wearing your mask. And then after you get vaccinated, you still got to wash your hands and wear your mask and all that. So basically, everybody's responsible.

Life is cruel. Yeah, life is cruel. Damn. So I just want to sort of conclude by noting that I think something needs to be updated in our educational system for people to recognize that anything that's scientifically new will have uncertainties. But the best access to what is good for you will not come from people who are not the scientists.

The scientists will find out on that frontier what is working, what is good for you will not come from people who are not the scientists. All right. The scientists will find out on that frontier, what is working, what is not. And if at any given moment you got to jump in, you can jump in. But if things change, it doesn't mean the scientists don't know what the hell they're talking about. It means at that time, that was the known understanding. And that comes with a risk. So the press generally doesn't talk about that risk. They just say, the scientists don't know anything. And that is because it hasn't been taught in a way where people can understand

the actual undulating moving frontier of discovery. And so I applaud your candor when you said, we don't know yet whether after your vaccine, if you can spread it. We don't know. That is so important. And it's not a sign of weakness. It's a sign of this is how the science works. And stay with me on that. This is what you've been teaching everybody forever, which is that this is the beauty of science. We learn this.

There's more to learn. We keep learning. It's constant exploration. Yes, yes. And that's a beautiful thing. And that's what we have. We keep learning. It's constant exploration. Yes, yes. And that's a beautiful thing. And that's what we have to teach in school. This is how we know and learn to know. We got it.

Finally, we got Irwin to end on a positive note. There you go. That's right. And I'm encouraged. I'm encouraged. Because if not knowing makes science beautiful, then I'm the most beautiful scientist there is. All right, Chuck.

I'll quote you. Yeah, well, we all got to quote Chuck on that one. All right, Erwin, always good to have you. Thanks for being a friend of the show. Thanks, guys. Chuck, you know I love you. Love you too, man. All right, Neil deGrasse Tyson here, concluding our episode of the COVID-19 vaccine.

As always, I bid you to keep looking up.