The Dispatch Podcast - Coronavirus, Variants, and Vaccines

Episode Date: March 26, 2021

We heard from many of you that you are having trouble persuading people close to you to take the COVID vaccine. You wished there was something you could pass along to people with the actual facts about the vaccine, not scary myths about why a person should not get it. You asked, and we listened. Former CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden joined Sarah and Andrew Egger (subbing in for Steve) to discuss all things vaccine related. Not only is Frieden an expert on the COVID vaccines, but also on listening to those who are concerned about taking it and trying to give them the scientific facts that support getting the shot. As he says, “Effective communication starts with listening. … I understand your concern, but I’ll share with you some information that may be helpful to you.” Show Notes: -Dr. Frieden’s bio -Resolve to Save Lives website -Pew Research polling on who would get the vaccine -Frank Luntz focus group with Dr. Frieden -Impact COVID has had on the flu -Dr. Frieden’s guide to a bike trip with his son -VaccineFinder from CDC’s website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome back to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isger, joined by Andrew Eggers this week, my fellow staff writer at the dispatch. And we are talking to Dr. Tom Frieden. He is the former CDC director. And now the president and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, a global health initiative aimed at preventing cardiovascular disease and epidemics here in the U.S. and around the world. But the reason we want to talk to Dr. Frieden, specifically this week, well, you're about to find out. Let's dive right in. One of the main reasons that we wanted to have you here today is we have a lot of listeners who have been asking us what they can do to persuade friends and relatives who are hesitant to take any of these COVID. vaccine vaccines that are quickly becoming more and more available to more people. And based on a recent focus group, the answer to what you can do to persuade your friends and relatives was

you. So we have polls that show that nearly half of people who voted for President Trump in November said that if they're offered a vaccine, they're not interested in getting it. Frank Luntz then did a focus group with 20 vaccine hesitant Trump voters. First, I want to talk to you why we think these people are hesitant to get the vaccine. And then I want to talk to you about why you were the most persuasive voice in that room to them. Do you understand why people are wary to get the vaccine? There are lots of different reasons. People are hesitant to get vaccinated. And I think you have to separate people who are just adamantly opposed and nothing you can say will change their mind. But that's a small group, less than 5 percent, from others

who have a wide range of concerns. And addressing those concerns is really important. And frankly, effective communication starts with listening, hearing what people's concerns are. And the focus group was fascinating because this is a group of intelligent people who care about their health and were adamantly opposed to getting vaccinated. They believed that the virus, the vaccine, and the COVID program have been politicized and weaponized. And they didn't want to hear from politicians. They didn't even want to hear from former President Trump, of whom they continue to think very highly. They're thinking about whether or not to put a foreign substance in their body. And they had a lot of questions. They were so frustrated that they weren't being respected. They weren't

being listened to and those questions weren't being addressed. Probably the most common question they had was, how can you be certain there aren't bad long-term consequences from this vaccine? And the honest answer is we can't be certain. I understand your concern, but I'll share with you some information that may be helpful to you. I'm not going to tell you to get vaccinated. I'm going to share information with you. I noticed that that's how you approached it. You said I'm not to convince you. I'm here to answer questions. I'm here to explain things. Here are five things I want to share with you. I was wondering as I read that whether you had studied sort of the psychology of persuasion because certainly what we know from studies having nothing to do with

coronavirus is the worst way to persuade someone is to argue with them. Well, it's fundamental to public health. So I spent over a decade working on tuberculosis control. In tuberculosis control, we have to convince patients who feel perfectly fine to take medicines for many months where they will get very sick. We have to gain the trust of patients so they'll tell us who their contacts are and we have to address the problems that they have. So one of the first fundamental concepts of that kind of relationship is that the patient needs to be the VIP of the program, that you have to listen. It's also so important to focus on convenience because at the end of the day, someone may be vaccine hesitant, but if they're offered a vaccine as they're walking into the shopping center

or if they're online for something, they may well take it. So convenience may overcome reluctance frequently. That seems to have been the case with the flu shot. Right. And one of the key lessons from flu and other immunization programs is that it's so important to have multiple platforms. That includes pharmacies, community vaccination sites, pop-up vaccination sites, and really importantly, doctor's offices. Within the coming months, we should be able to get a COVID vaccine in the office of any doctor who wants to give that vaccine. One of the interesting things about what you say about this concern about long-term effects,

reluctance because of long-term effects, who I think has a lot to do with the fact that the disease is new, The vaccines are obviously brand new, and there's been so much news coverage of sort of the vaccine development. People have been following along with it every step of the way, and so there's really like a sense that, wow, this is like a brand new thing. But at the same time, you know, all of the vaccines that we have that have been around for a while, they were new at one point, all these treatments were new at one point. Can you just talk a little bit about what actually goes into the decision-making process about tests? these things in terms of, you know, why we believe with a degree of confidence that we're not going to start seeing long-term problems?

Well, one thing that was really important to explain is that although it's remarkable that this vaccine has been approved in a year, it's the result of more than a decade of scientific research. It's not as if it was invented from whole cloth within a year. It required more than a decade of very intensive research. In addition, that the rapid approval wasn't from cutting corners. It was from cutting red tape. It was from investing a lot of money and focusing on what worked and trying a lot of different ways to produce a vaccine. And then there were some that got over the finish line first. The trials of the vaccinations were large. More than 70,000 patients participated in them. That's larger than most vaccine trials. And there were no serious

negative effects. It's also important to think about risks and benefits. If you get infected with COVID, you're going to have billions and billions of the virus particles all over your body. And they may cause harm for weeks, months, or even years. We don't yet know how frequent and severe long COVID will be. In contrast with a vaccine, it teaches your immune system how to respond, and then it's gone. I made the analogy to a message sent to every one of your immune cells, which shows it a most wanted picture of what COVID looks like and a set of instructions on how to kill it, and then like a Snapchat message, it disappears.

So let's get to the big reveal here. What were the five fast facts that you shared? with this group that they found so persuasive? First, the risks of infection are vastly higher than the risks of vaccination. Even healthy young people can get severely ill, dire, or suffer long-term harm from COVID infection. Second, COVID vaccines don't stay in your body.

They prime your immune system, teach it to fight the virus, and then disappear. Third, nearly every doctor who's been offered a COVID vaccine, gets it as soon as they can. Fourth, the more of us who get vaccinated, the faster we can get our jobs back and our economy back. And fifth, vaccinations can save the lives

of least 100,000 Americans in the coming months who would otherwise be killed by the COVID virus. It's interesting to me that, of course, a couple of those are just pure medical, factual statements about sort of what the vaccine is and does. But a couple of those are more about putting somebody in the correct, I guess, frame of mind to think about this from a public health perspective, appeals to the specific kind of authority that we've seen people tend to trust, the fact that doctors get it.

How important is it? And how do you, I guess, do you go about taking a person who's making a personal medical decision and trying to get them to think about that in terms of public health? Different messages and different messengers will work best for different people. It was really clear they wanted to hear from doctors. And there were other doctors on the call physician members of Congress, and they had some very important points that I think made an impact on the group. The fact that doctors are taking this vaccine, that really made an impact. And it's true. You know, doctors want this vaccine

and get it. What's really interesting is that the approach may be slightly different for different people. And if you read the room, it was a Zoom room with all the faces, some of those messages really resonated. And I've watched the tape afterwards. Some of them, some of those five really resonated with some of them and others with others of them. So different strokes for different folks, different messages will work for different audiences. Can we run through some COVID myths versus facts? I have, in my friend group, one of my friends tried to hire someone and the woman in question said she would not take the vaccine because she believed it affected women's fertility would make women infertile if they took it. And it was a real, you know, heartfelt struggle.

My friend then couldn't hire this person, she decided. Because she needed a vaccine to get a job, you mean? Yeah, because she felt like she wanted her employees to be willing to take the vaccine. She couldn't convince this person to take the vaccine. I'm going to step back there. Yeah. Other than nursing homes, I don't know that any employer should mandate vaccination for their staff. Interesting. Say more. If their staff are not providing a risk to others, it's not necessarily, it's legally acceptable. Their employers can do that. Employers can, for example, decide not to hire smokers.

That's employer's prerogative. But I think the issue of forced vaccination or required vaccination is a really complicated one, and it can backfire. I'll give you an example from a different vaccine. The HPV vaccine, human papilloma vaccine, is very effective. And some countries that have used it widely are really seeing massive decreases in types of cancers among both women and men. Early on, too early on, the state of Texas took a step to mandate HPV vaccination. And perhaps they did that because the company was pushing for it.

I don't know why. but it backfired and it really set the cause of HPV vaccination back a long way. And this group reacted very strongly when I said at a different point of the conversation, no one's going to force you to get a vaccine. Oh, yes, they will, they said. And so they were really suspicious about that. And as I've thought about it, the one group that I think there may be an ethical justification for requiring vaccinations of are nursing home employees.

because even if the residents of nursing homes get vaccinated, we don't know how complete that protection will be, particularly in frail older people. I've had a longstanding position on this. I think that flu vaccination should be required of nursing home workers. There's good evidence that if your relative is staying in a nursing home where the staff are vaccinated, they are much less likely to die in flu season. And that's just not acceptable. So that's the one situation where I would say an employer has an ethical right and maybe even duty to require vaccination of their employees, with, of course, exceptions for people who have true medical contraindications. And you can have a larger discussion on the religious contraindications. It turns out there really

aren't religions that have a long-standing opposition to vaccination. But in terms of the question about pregnancy, I think what often happens is that there's some kernel of not truth, but trigger to this kind of a rumor. And I think what happened early on is that there's limited data. There has, was not anymore, but there was limited data about use of these vaccines in pregnant women. And the reason for that is that companies are very reluctant in their trials to include pregnant women. And so early on, there was some debate about should pregnant women get

these vaccines or not. And that's a fairly complicated debate because in health, we're really conservative about what pregnant women receive because we're worried that there may be some impact on the fetus. The principles there are to think about the risks and the benefits. For example, does the woman have a lot of exposure to COVID? Is she working in a place where she might get infected? Does she have an underlying condition like diabetes that might increase her risk of severe disease if she gets COVID? And what's her sense about it?

I wouldn't strongly encourage a woman to get vaccinated because there's not a lot of data that the COVID illness is going to make a big impact on the pregnancy, unlike some other infections where infection can be devastating in pregnancy, and you really want to make sure that pregnant women get protected. And the basic principle here is that the health of the woman is of fundamental importance and also the autonomy of the woman to make that decision. So while that complicated discussion was going on, the internet blew up with, you know, there's a problem, pregnancy and vaccine. There's no evidence that this vaccine will interfere with any future pregnancy. In fact, the odds that you'll have a problem with the future pregnancy are vastly

lower from vaccination than from the infection itself, because the infection is uncontrolled. going to have many different impacts that we don't have any idea of. Now, we have no evidence that it's going to interfere with reproduction in any way. But if there is any type of problem, it's got to be vastly lower than the problem from a vaccine. Can I follow up specifically on that question? You were talking about questions of compulsion or incentive and the way that people react sort of strongly against that. It seems that there's two kind of competing goals here, which is one that we want people,

we want to encourage people to get the vaccine. We want people to think that if they get the vaccine, they will, you know, that will sort of in some ways unlock their path back toward kind of normal life. And then at the same time, we don't want to do this thing where we are having governments or businesses, you know, creating kind of like a two-tiered society between people who are vaccinated and who are not in terms of the things they are and aren't allowed to do. What's the best way for the government and what's the best way for, you know, private businesses to accommodate these two concerns?

I think you can have positive and negative incentives. So time off for vaccination. time off a day or two after people have fever or aren't feeling well. Some facilities are using some incentives for vaccination. Then there are disincentives. So it might be that some workers would be required to continue having nasal tests to see if they have the infection, but they can get out of those tests if they get vaccinated. There's also appealing to people's solidarity that if we can get the vaccination rate up,

we're going to have better outcomes as individuals, as families, as companies, as communities. I think also there is an impending moral problem, which is that globally, lots of people will have gotten vaccinated and will be able to travel safely and do more things. And lots of people will be months, if not years away from having access to vaccines. And that's a terrible problem. And I think the only solution to that problem is to increase vaccine manufacturing. We can't slice a small pie better to make a big difference. We can have a bigger pie. We can have more vaccines quickly so that more people can get vaccinated globally.

Because I think you will see increasingly vaccine certificates that enable people to do things that unvaccinated people can't do. You're already seeing that in a few countries. back to a few myths that I want you to weigh in on at the beginning of this pandemic, there was a lot of discussion over whether some countries were going to pursue the concept of herd immunity, let everyone get infected, and then it'll wear itself out. And that now at the vaccine, there's an argument that we need enough people vaccinated to reach herd immunity. So here's the next myth. If I've already had COVID-19, I don't need a

vaccine? Well, that's not completely wrong. And I would say if you've got, if you've had documented COVID and you want to wait a few months, three months or so, especially when there aren't enough vaccines for everyone, that's okay. However, again, if you're often exposed or you've got an underlying condition that would make you more likely to get sick, if you get it again, then get a vaccine. There are some people who would prefer to get the J&J vaccine. If you're that's available if they've been infected before because there's some evidence that people who have been infected before get a really robust reaction to the vaccine. But it's certainly true that prior infection is pretty protective. And that's probably one reason that the vaccines

are so effective. If our body makes a pretty good reaction to a regular infection, the mRNA technology, especially, seems to help the body make a great reaction, more targeted reaction to that particular antigen. Now, there again are people who might prefer a J&J vaccine, which is a single dose if they've been ill with COVID and waiting a few months, three months after, especially until there's enough vaccine for everyone, is not unreasonable. But that's for people who have documented COVID infection. I was sick, and I think it was COVID. Andrew? You had a question about variance. Yeah, I do, but actually I did want to ask also, based on you mentioning the Johnson and Johnson

vaccine just now, the public health advice that we've all heard since the vaccination program started is go with the vaccine that's available to you, right, because it's been largely a supply-side problem. But you can see a situation in which, as we have less and less supply issues, there might be, as you indicate, more consumer choice. And you mentioned one reason why a person might opt to go for Johnson & Johnson over Pfizer or Moderna. Are there other sorts of factors like that that may come into effect more and more as we move forward is consumer choice on this sort of thing going to become more of an issue? And are we going to at any point see different public health messaging than just get the one you can? I think it'll more be a

question of logistics and convenience. So I'd like to see vaccinations outside shopping centers, but I would use a single dose vaccine for that because it may be hard to find someone for their second dose. I'd like to see vaccines in every doctor's office. And the vector vaccines like Jay's are likely to be more practical for that because of their storage requirements. There are some people who really hate needles, and for them, a single dose may have a big benefit compared to two doses. So I think really that old Chinese saying, black cat or white cat doesn't matter as long as cat catches mice.

I mean, whatever vaccine, as long as you get vaccinated. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having life insurance can be serious. That kind of financial strain on top of everything else is why life insurance indeed matters. Ethos is an online platform that makes getting life insurance fast and easy to protect your family's future in minutes not months. Ethos keeps it simple. It's 100% online, no medical exam, just a few health questions.

You can get a quote in as little as 10 minutes, same day coverage, and policies starting at about two bucks a day, build monthly, with options up to $3 million in coverage. With a 4.8 out of five-star rating on trust pilot and thousands of families already applying through Ethos. It builds trust. Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash dispatch. That's E-T-H-O-S dot com slash dispatch. Application times may vary, rates may vary. All right. Next myth. The vaccine changes your DNA. Yeah, this is a big one. So because it's got R-N-A in the title, in the name, some people think it's going to somehow become part of you and turn you into a Frankenstein, of sorts. And really, this, this,

maybe a branding problem for the MRNA technologies, but it really is like an email message, that the M stands for messenger. It is a messenger that sends a code to your body so that your body begins making a protein. The only thing it changes is whether your body will recognize COVID and respond to it the next time you see it.

All right, last myth, and it's sort of a reverse myth, now that we have a COVID vaccine, why don't we have a vaccine for the common cold or any number of other things I would like not to get again? Well, I thought you were going to ask something else. So I'm going to address that myth next. No, no, no. You have a better question. Good. Let's go with that. Now that we have a vaccine, why do we have to wear masks? Well, there's that too. I want to know the answer to that one. Yes, I want to know the answer to that too. That's not so much a myth.

That's like a, I would like to start licking people I see and telephone poles and whatever else. Why can't I? Well, the pandemic is still here. In the U.S., late March, we're still having more than 50,000 new cases a day. That's a lot of disease. And lots of people aren't vaccinated yet. and the more there is uncontrolled spread of COVID, the greater the risk of variants

that could overwhelm the vaccine protection. So I think the myth I hear most is vaccines here, pandemic's over. And you missed a few steps there. Pandemic is not over. Vaccine is not everywhere. And the virus is likely to be with us for some time. And to be clear, the variance,

the variants happen because people with ever so slightly different types of COVID that have slightly different, you know, parts to them, when they mix together, they create a new variant. That's a very simple way of how variants would exist. That's why you don't want people mixing too much right now to create those variants. Maybe. Nope. There are a couple of things. Let's talk to the real doctor and have him explain why mixing without mass could create variance.

There are a couple of theories here. First off, quite simply, the more people who have COVID, the more trillions of COVID or the virus that causes COVID virions there are. And for every virion that replicates, there's a chance it will make a mistake. That will be a mutation. That mutation will actually help it spread more. So the more uncontrolled spread there is among people, the more likelihood that the virus, as it replicates, will become more dangerous.

There's a different theory also, which is that certain people who have immune problems, not HIV actually, but people with inborn errors of the immune system aren't able to clear the virus. And the virus stays within their body for months and months and months, and it evolves to learn to live more with the body, and then those individuals can spread it. There's a footnote analogy here with polio. We're trying to eradicate polio from the world. We're very close. Only really Pakistan and Afghanistan have never eliminated the virus. But there are some people, again, those with inborn immune problems who are harboring the actual polio virus. And even if polio is

eradicated from the world, those survivors of polio may need to be treated with an antiviral to try to clear the polio so there's no risk that it will come back. But you asked a question earlier, why can't the mRNA vaccine be used for the common cold? Well, actually, maybe it can be. We don't yet know that. But one of the things about COVID is that our natural immunity, if we get infection with the virus, is really strong. And that's one of the the reasons the vaccine can be so effective. But we're really excited to see this is the first MRNA vaccine. Maybe there will be vaccines for other diseases, for flu, for example, or other diseases

that cause severe illness. Of course, you wouldn't necessarily vaccinate for any disease, but there are some respiratory viruses that are really good potentials for vaccine control. Of course, these vaccines came about. because of the most intensive scientific collaboration on any issue globally ever, and this biggest investment of money ever. So it takes a little bit more than just an idea.

All right, well, I'm for putting money towards the common cold. I find it quite annoying. I think that maybe the single fact that made my jaw hit the floor most out of all of the stuff about this pandemic all year long was how quickly Pfizer and Moderna were actually able to devise these these MRI vaccines that are now the basis of our hopefully our ticket out of here. And that, you know, it's just a matter of days between

when we had the genome of the virus and when they had the drug. And then the months and months after that were just testing. So I did want to ask when it comes to some of these variants, some of which were worried may develop in the future, but some of which are already here, What's the prognosis on keeping up with the variants in terms of these vaccines? Is it possible to have some sort of more expedited testing process for variations of a vaccine, or are we likely to remain, you know, sort of that far behind any given variant booster? Well, first off, variants are the wild card. They are a huge potential threat.

We don't know how serious that threat will be, but there is the possibility that very variants will evolve, which can evade some or even all of the current vaccines. And one of the real appeals of the MRNA technology is that you could tweak the formula pretty easily and come up with a new vaccine targeted against a variant that escaped protection from the original vaccine. And what the FDA has already said is, we're not going to require massive trials to use that. If you can prove it works and creates the kind of antibody response that would stop that variant, then you'll be able to get it approved. And that's actually how the flu vaccine works. We don't do trials of each year's flu strain to see if the vaccines work. If there

was possible to do that simply, that might be a good thing to do, but it's not possible. So we use it, and then we analyze, is it working? You know, everyone's heard about phase one, phase two, phase three trials now, but there's also a phase four. And phase four is when the vaccine is actually in use. We analyze, how well is it working? Where is it failing? How long is it last? And some of those things will just take time to find out. As a side note, there have been some stories that, in fact, this year's flu vaccine may be far less effective. and I mean the fall 2021 flu vaccine because it will be so much more difficult

for virologists to guess which strains of the flu are going to be most prevalent. Can you give us any reassurance that our flu vaccine will be effective as well this year? Well, what I can tell you is that mask crushed the flu curve. What's really interesting is that the world has crushed the curve on flu.

And that's a combination of masking, distancing, and less travel around the world. So I think what happens in 2021 with the flu season is anybody's guess. There's an old saying among epidemiologists about influenza that the only thing predictable about influenza is that it's unpredictable. Well, that's a bummer. I will say that the flu is not fun and the flu is no joke, but if we get to the end of 2021 and the worst thing that I'm worried about is getting knocked out by the flu. I'll feel pretty good about that, relatively speaking.

I got to differ with you there. I like to say that flu is the raw danger field of diseases, although I'm told that that's an antiquated reference. It don't get no respect. And actually, flu is a bad disease. It kills tens of thousands of people a year. It sends hundreds of thousands of people a year. to the hospital. And even in a young healthy person, it can be really mad. I remember a staff

member of mine when I was CDC director who runs marathons, a very fit person who had never called me after hours before, called me very upset at one evening. She thought she was going to die and she had flu. It's just, it really can be very severe. I apologize for belittling influenza. I mean, you understand where I'm coming from, right? going out of this year. So I hate asking people for predictions, though normally I'm asking political operatives for their predictions. I feel a little better asking you for a prediction. I will admit, what does this summer look like when we can largely be outdoors while the vaccines are still

being distributed? And then what does Thanksgiving and Christmas look like? Well, I think the big wildcard is the variance. But if we don't end up with a variant that escapes vaccine protection and there aren't any production problems with the vaccines that we're developing, I think we're going to be in better and better shape. By really the next week or so, I expect to see substantial decreases

in death rates in the U.S. By June, I expect to see substantial reductions in case rates. Over the summer, I think we're going to be getting toward the new normal. the fall, I think, will be in the new normal in this country. So I think that Thanksgiving and Christmas are going to be pretty normal. We may see some masking. We may want to keep windows open. We may be worried about variants and clusters of more dangerous types of this virus. But the big unaddressed issue is the global issue. There are billions of people who don't have

access to vaccine. And that's not just an ethical problem. That's an epidemiological problem. There will be people getting sick and dying from a vaccine preventable disease. And there will be uncontrolled spread of the virus with the continuing risk that it will figure out ways to escape immunity and come back and attack us again like as flu does each year with a slightly different virus. So the biggest risk we face is the risk that we won't have, we won't act on the essential reality that we are all connected. And if we don't stop this pandemic globally, we will not be safe. CDC, former CDC director Robert Redfield told CNN on Friday that he personally believes that the coronavirus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and that it was spreading as early

as September 2019. He was quick to clarify that this was his opinion and that he did not think it was intentional, that he thought this was, you know, probably accidental. How often do viruses accidentally escape virology labs and do you share Dr. Redfield's opinion? I don't know what he bases that opinion on. I don't think there's. any evidence that suggests that it is the case. We do know, forget about COVID for a minute, we do know that laboratory errors occur and they've occurred before. For example, the last human case of smallpox was the result of a laboratory error in the United Kingdom. It resulted in the death of a laboratory photographer in England. In 2004, the SARS virus escaped

from a laboratory in Beijing and resulted in the death of an individual. And in the late 1970s, it is believed, although not proven, that an accidental release of an influenza strain from the former Soviet Union resulted in a global pandemic of influenza. So whether or not the virology laboratory in Wuhan had anything to do with the pandemic, it is essential that the world strengthens our ability to make biological laboratories safer all around the world. And right now, essentially nothing is being done on that. In the United States, we have a division of select agents and toxins, which is part of CDC, which has steadily

made laboratories safer. But I believe, my personal belief, is that we have to have fewer labs working with these dangerous pathogens and with technologies that could create dangerous pathogens, that we have to have fewer research investigations that are being done, that each such investigation has to clearly outline why the potential benefits are greater than the potential risks, and that we have to reduce the number of people who have access to these facilities, because each person who has access is a potential point of failure in this. Now, when it comes to the Wuhan experience, I think fundamentally we have to look at the data. We have to investigate all of the possibilities and identify what happened. I think what's very unlikely

is that this pathogen was created in a laboratory and intentionally or unintentionally released. The phylogenetic information that I've seen strongly suggest that it is the natural evolution of a pathogen, and that is how other pathogens have spread to humans. Could there had been some association with that laboratory and someone bringing a sample there or something released from there? That's something that has to be investigated. There's no evidence that that's the case. There are people who are concerned about it, so it should be investigated. Obviously, there's a lot of sort of thorny political questions that are tied up with that question specifically.

The question of whether it's been, it was originated from the lab, has become kind of a football between the U.S. and China. You were talking a minute ago about how, particularly as we get up to speed vaccination here, we need to be thinking about this more and more as a global epidemiological problem. Is there a danger as these sorts of questions like about the origin of the virus become politicized, have these political questions sort of woven into them? Does that inhibit our ability to work with other countries to address, you know, specifically the problem of getting all these billions of people who aren't in our country vaccinated. I hope that health can be a bridge for peace and understanding. That was the case when the U.S.

and the former Soviet Union collaborated to lead the global eradication of smallpox. That has been the case in the efforts to vaccinate children. Wars haven't put on pause. so that children can get vaccinated. So health can be a bridge for peace and understanding. Health is not a zero-sum game. The healthier people are in any part of the world, the better off all of us are. And I believe that our future,

if we have that kind of solidarity and understanding, we'll have a safer and a healthier future. We so appreciate your time today. Very last question, as all of us have been home now for a year, we have learned to entertain ourselves in our own home. What has been your COVID hobby or new skill that you've unlocked? Well, it's an old one. I happened to have a bicycle that I used to ride around the country.

I've had that bicycle for decades, and I got it back into working order, and that's how I travel around the city now. So that's been delightful. That is a great COVID hobby. I love it. Well, thank you so much. Thank you for your time. Thank you for, well, being the most persuasive voice on COVID, according to actual data that we have now.

We hope to see you out there a lot more, but we know how much our listeners appreciate it. Thank you. It's been a pleasure speaking with you. Thanks very much. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and varied by race.

Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at mx.ca.ca slash yanex.