Well with Arielle Lorre - 92: Dr. Danielle Belardo - The Science Behind Vaccines

Episode Date: January 13, 2021

In this episode I’m talking to Dr. Danielle Belardo, Director of Cardiology and Co-Director of Research and Education at IOPBM, about the science behind mRNA vaccines and the safety, efficacy and questions around the Covid-19 vaccine. We cover all of the audience’s pressing questions about short term and long term effects, concerns with fertility, speed with which the vaccine was developed, herd immunity and so much more.   www.Sakara.com/BLONDEFILES for 20% off your first order www.HelloNed.com/BLONDE for 15% off your first one-time order or 20% off your first subscription plus free shipping www.Organifi.com/BLONDE for 15% off any item in the store   Produced by Dear MediaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The following podcast is a dear media production. Hey, welcome to the Blond Files podcast. I'm your host, Ariel Lori, and I'm here to talk all things wellness. From how to achieve optimal health and well-being to the best beauty tips and everything in between, no topic is off limits. I know there is so much information out there, so I'm here to help you navigate it all and live your best life. Thanks for listening.

Let's get into it. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the show. show. So today I'm talking to my friend Dr. Danielle Bellardo. We are going to be talking about mRNA and vaccines and the science behind it all. So I think it's important that you know Danielle's background, her education, her credentials. She's a cardiologist. She earned her medical degree from Drexel University College of Medicine. She followed that with three years of internal medicine residency, after which she became board certified in internal medicine,

and then she completed her three-year fellowship in cardiovascular disease. She is dedicated to being a cardiologist that in addition to traditional medicine focuses on lifestyle modification and evidence-based nutrition in order to prevent heart disease. She is also the director of cardiology and co-director of research. and education at IOPBM in Newport Beach, California. On top of that, she's a member of the American College of Cardiology Nutrition and Lifestyle Subcommittee. So she knows her stuff. I was going to swear, but no, she knows her stuff. So we're talking about COVID and vaccines, like I said, an MRI. And, you know, unfortunately, this has become a highly politicized, highly divisive issue,

especially on social media, especially in the wellness world. So, you know, I think most of you guys are interested in science. And I just want to preface this by saying she's not being paid by Bill Gates or Big Pharma or anyone to deliver this information. She's a proponent of lifestyle modification, but she's also a scientist. And today we are just talking straight science. So I collected questions from you guys, the listeners, and we discussed the major ones, including concerns over long-term side effects, issues with fertility, the unknowns around the vaccine, and so much more. So enjoy. All right. So welcome to the show. So happy you're here. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for having me. I feel like we just did a mini show before the show. We should catch everyone up on

what we were talking about. But we're here to talk about the vaccine, obviously. we had so many questions from the audience and we're going to narrow it down to about 10 of the big major questions that really encompass I think everyone's main concerns and issues with the vaccine, whether people are like trepidacious about getting it or they want to get it, but they want to know, you know, long-term effects and how it might affect things like fertility and all that. So we're going to cover everything. But to start, why don't you just tell everybody a little bit about you and your training and what you do now. Sure.

Hi, everyone. I'm Danielle Bellardo. I'm a cardiologist. So I just finished my training in June. That's four years of med school. Then you do three years of medicine residency and then three years of cardiology fellowship. I was in Philadelphia and I finished my cardiology training.

And now I'm a cardiologist in Newport Beach, California. And so I became really interested, you know, similar to all the other physicians in America with COVID because I was redeployed during my fellowship train the last few months to take care of COVID patients. And of course, as a cardiologist, we have a lot of overlap with COVID. So I've used my social media a lot to kind of disseminate some of the correct, some of the misinformation that's been out there with the virus. And yeah, I'm just so honored and excited to be here and discuss this with you. And I love the questions your Instagram following sent in. They were all really reasonable, amazing questions.

And I think that it's super just amazing that you're doing this for them. And I'm so honored to be a part of it. So thank you. And everybody go follow her if you aren't already because she brings the science, but she also brings the snark and the sarcasm. And it's just like a roller coaster. You're a roller coaster to follow. You know, it's like you get so much information,

but you can also like laugh and, yeah. And you... You have to laugh, right, to stay seen. Oh, my God, yeah. So maybe before we start with the questions, I mean, I'd love to talk about what we were just talking about before the show. If that's okay, we don't have to talk specifics, but we were kind of talking about, like, the mystery of COVID. And you've seen people who were our age younger than us severely impacted with this. And there have been young people who have died.

And it seems like there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. it. So can you talk about that a little bit? Absolutely. So COVID is a very mysterious disease. So there are things we do know, of course, at this point with regards to certain comorbidities like having existing heart disease, obesity, things like that can put you at a higher risk of getting severe COVID. But by no means, one thing that I definitely have tried to emphasize by no means is being a young, healthy individual prevent you from having the sequela of COVID. I've seen people critically. our age, me and you were the same age. I've seen critically people critically ill that are our age

that were healthy from COVID. But I've also seen, and what a lot of us are seeing, are patients that were previously healthy that are young, that are having these really bizarre long-term side effects, which we don't have enough data on yet. But, you know, we're all seeing just various different side effects. Some people with palpitations with different endometias, some people with different long-lasting shortness of breath. My friends who are a neurologist are seeing a lot of patients that are younger with strokes. And so to me, the best COVID is no COVID, meaning I feel like if you have the opportunity, if you haven't had it yet, and you have the opportunity to prevent yourself and prevent your

loved ones from getting it, do everything you can to not get it. Because at this point, there's still so much we don't understand about the virus. And I know I won't go into great details, but you and I just spoke about even this paper that was published in JAMA about these two identical twins that were the same age in their 50s, I want to say, with the same medical history, which was no medical history at all and perfectly healthy. And they even worked in the same job and they lived in the same home. And they were both admitted to the hospital with COVID. And one was, you know, intubated and got really complicated a hospital course, and was really sick.

And the other one got discharged the same, like the next day. And so we don't quite understand. And they have identical genetics. And so we don't quite understand everything about this disease. And so I am thankful we're here today talking about the vaccine because I truly do believe it's all of our way out back to getting some normalcy back. Well, we're barely into 2021. And there's still a lot of residual stress from last year and new stressors. So it's important to be cognizant of.

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Hi, I'm Sheney Alexander, host of Press Send, a podcast and more importantly, a safe and hilarious place for candid conversations about the scary, funny, heartbreaking, but always intriguing questions that make us all human. Each week, me and a new best friend you haven't met yet, field your questions across any and all topics and offer our take on the matter with plenty of humor, heart, and badassery along the way. We launch a new episode of Press Send every Wednesday. We'll see you there. This wasn't included in the questions, but maybe you can break down like herd immunity. I've seen some graphs going around about herd immunity if X percentage of the population gets vaccinated when we would have herd immunity, when things might go back to normal. And I've seen, you know, if maybe 70% gets vaccinated, that's a number, it would be sooner than later.

Whereas, you know, if like a much lower percent gets vaccinated, it could be 20, 25. So could you kind of break that down a little bit? So the way it works is the more of our population we get to be vaccinated, you know, a few things happen. So when you get a vaccine, any sort of vaccine, one of the things it helps to do is reduce the amount of the virus in general that we're seeing. clinically in the population. One of the questions that people may ask is, well, do we know if the COVID vaccine reduces spread? I think that the incorrect assumption people are making is that because scientists are saying, well, we don't know exactly yet how much it will reduce the spread. That doesn't mean that it will not reduce the spread. We know it reduces the severity of illness.

It's just that the endpoints of the study were still evaluating and tracking to see how much it will actually reduce transmission. We all believe that from the data and from the way vaccines work, that this will help to reduce transmission, but how much we don't have data on that yet. But with regards to herd immunity, so the only way to get herd immunity without having thousands

upon thousands more people die is through a vaccine. And to reach herd immunity, you really have to essentially get about 70 to 80% of the population vaccinated. This actually helps to reduce viral transmission, but in general, also, the less of the virus we have bopping around in the atmosphere, the less chance it has to mutate, the less chance it has to become a new virus, a new strain. So that's why we want to get 70% of herd immunity as soon as we can,

meaning 70 to 80% of the population vaccinated, so that way we can really get to a point where we can return to some normalcy. And so that's why vaccine education about the safety of the vaccine and what we know and what we don't so far and being honest and transparent is important. Okay. Well, getting to the vaccine, I want to just get one big question out of the way. And it's about microchips. And I'm kind of laughing. But this is something that people earnestly asked me. So, you know, I'm not like shaming anybody. But can you address that one? Absolutely. So, well, first and foremost, I want to stay for the podcast in general. This is not individualized medical advice, and I do recommend everyone talk to their physician about it, especially once we get into some of the details and specifics about allergies and things like that. I do think that in general, this is just going to be just some general vaccine education,

public health information, but definitely speak to your provider, your health care provider, whether it's your nurse practitioner or your physician, you have specific questions. But the microchip question, I've gotten a lot, too. And there is a lot. is no silly question. I do think that your followers gave so many amazing questions. And I do think it is good to nip this at the butt. So this actually goes a little bit into the misinformation that goes around about vaccines. So one thing people don't know is that vaccine misinformation is actually in industry. So people always talk about pharma and how, you know, pharmaceutical companies are so evil, all this stuff will actually turn out that the vaccine industry is this massive

multi-billion dollar industry funded by a few huge big players. There's this incredible nonprofit organization that is in the UK that actually tracks what anti-vax organizations are doing. Well, the anti-vax, you can follow them on Instagram, actually, it's at counter hate. They're this incredible nonprofit organization that does a lot of research into the anti-vax industry. And so a lot of, they had this huge anti-vax. meeting that counterfeit was actually able to attend. And they found that some of the biggest leaders in the anti-VAC space had a meeting to plan of how they were going to create public distrust in vaccines. And, you know, one of the things they discuss is making Bill Gates into this evil, this moniker of evil,

even though he's done so much with public help and so much good in sanitation and vaccines. And him and his wife have just been incredible. And they also have him brought up the theories of microchips and that people are going to get a chip transmitted into them, et cetera. And I think that one of the important things to get out there is rather than I'm trying to, rather than just saying to people like, oh, how could you believe that? It's actually, no, it's more of like, it's actually not your fault if you believe that. Because this industry for misinformation is so huge that every doctor I know is trying to fight so hard to share the actual scientific information because it's not your fault if you've

fallen into a lot of the misinformation. So I think that that's an important point is just to realize that there is no microchip. There is no plot by Bill Gates or the government or physicians to, you know, mind control. You are a victim of misinformation. And that's not your fault. And I think that just following as many evidence-based resources as you can, of course, like the CDC discussing with your physician, that's the best thing you can do. It's interesting not to get too far off topic here, but I was listening to a podcast a while ago with one of the guys behind the social dilemma, I think it was. And he was talking about how the algorithm really manipulates us all. And he was talking about YouTube specifically and how

maybe 80%, I think, 70 or 80% of the time spent on YouTube per day, which is like 100 million hours or more, something crazy, is on suggested videos. So it's not even the thing that you're going there to watch. It's the thing that they're then feeding you. And the algorithm is always going to feed you something a little bit more enticing and a little bit more extreme to keep you on it. So if somebody might go to like YouTube and look for like vaccine side effects or something, you know, something may be kind of benign. And then you might just end up in this like rabbit hole. And it was just so crazy because this astronomical number, it's like it's not even what people are going to.

going there intentionally to do. They're being, you know, controlled by this thing, which is taking them further down the spectrum, if that makes sense. It's truly not. So the vaccine misinformation is not the fault of those who are the victims of vaccine misinformation. It's the fault of huge, big players in it that put lots of money into it. Yeah, not to go too far down this either.

I think that the reason why people should check out counter-hate, as I mentioned, I'm not affiliated with them at all. They're a nonprofit, but when you see the anti-vax playbook, even in my own Instagram, I have it in my highlights called Misinformation. When you see the Antivax Playbook, you can see actually what the anti-vaxers in general, these top big players, what they have pushed as their entire, they have an entire planned playbook to spread vaccine misinformation.

And when you see all of the exact same talking points, things like vaccine injury court, things like they push alternative. A lot of them you'll see are pushing things like ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine that don't work or vitamin D or they're minimizing COVID. When you see and when you become educated about, well, what have these people been coaching the anti-vax industry to spread? It actually helps you to disseminate and be like, oh wait, this person who's giving vaccine information just said that I should be taking vitamin D, zinc, etc. Maybe they're not super, you know, trustworthy. And it just helps you to be more aware.

we're all susceptible to misinformation. And it's not your fault if you've been, but we're now in this stage where getting vaccine, the correct vaccine information is really important to get it out there. So there is at least something we can do. If you're trying to eat healthier this year,

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and they are offering my listeners 20% off their first order. All you have to do is go to Sakara, com slash blonde files. That's S-A-K-A-R-A dot com slash B-L-O-N-D-E-F-I-L-E-F-I-S, or enter Blond F-I-L-E at checkout. Again, that's saccara.com slash blonde files to get 20% off your first order. So the main question that I got is, how do we know that the vaccine is safe? There are a lot of concerns with how quickly it was developed and the lack of long-term studies associated with it? Totally understand.

We're great questions. So at this point, we actually have tens of thousands of people that have received this vaccine and they've been monitored in a clinical trial setting for actually months. So this demonstrates that the vaccine is definitely safe for at least most people. Now, there's some asterisk that don't come exactly into that term. So even though clinical trials are very large, there are reactions that happen to vaccines. And this can happen rarely. So I'd say about one in 100,000 or one in a million or even more rare.

So we're talking incredibly rare. And this is impossible to pick up on before licensure because of the size constraints of the clinical trial. But you may, for example, have heard about, say, anaphylaxis. This happens very rarely. We're talking about one and maybe 150,000 cases as a response to vaccines. And it's incredibly rare. But it's still possible for people to have a very rare reaction to the vaccine that hasn't been caused. before clinical trials. So the thing about vaccines is that we've been using them for centuries,

right? So we know exactly what to expect from them and how to manage any issues that may arise. The FDA and the CDC, they have a list of adverse events that they're paying special attention to based on experience with prior vaccines to see if these differ significantly from the background incidents. So, for example, things like you may have heard or your listeners may have heard about something like Gianbrai syndrome. And that's something people get concerned about with vaccines that happens incredibly rarely. Well, whenever a pharmaceutical is licensed, it's impossible to know about its long-term effects per se. But with regards to vaccines, the way we track and the way we evaluate is pretty exceptional. So we don't really worry about long-term effects generally in a

toxicology sense when it's a medication that has to be taken frequently and is intended to create persistent deviation from the biological functions. But vaccines are given twice. So these, both mRNA vaccines are given three to four weeks apart depending on the vaccine, and that's it. So the MRI within them survives inside your cells for just a few hours at most. And there's only one vaccine that can really cause any sort of long-term effect. And it's very rare and reflects very few unique factors that come together. So that would be varicilla vaccines, with the exception of shingricks, if they contain a live attenuated baricillow virus, that can either cause chicken pox or shingles. But this is not a live attenuated virus. This is just an MRI that your body

uses the mRNA to form these proteins, and then it totally forgets about it. It's not a live virus. You're not going to get infected with the virus at all for taking the vaccine. So, And it's not going to affect your genetics. It's not going to go in the nucleus of your cell. Exactly. So your RNA cannot affect the DNA. So, you know, is there any way to know long-term effects of vaccine? So ultimately, nothing as good as just waiting and monitoring. That's called phase four of the clinical trial process. But if any serious safety signals emerged, they would immediately be investigated. And the vaccine could be rapidly removed or discontinued to stop potential. harm. And I don't see that happening here because the risks from the vaccine have demonstrated to be so much lower than the risks of COVID-19. And the risks of the vaccine are just the safety profile of this vaccine is incredibly robust. And so when you expect to see long-term effects, I don't think any scientist or physician expects to see any from this vaccine. And in terms of how

quickly it was developed. Maybe you can speak to this, but MRNA has been studied for a long time. And if you think about this situation that we're all in, I mean, the whole world was trying to find this. So I'm sure there was so much more funding than if it were just, you know, a couple scientists trying to research it. Could you speak to kind of the speed of how this was developed? Absolutely. So a lot of what we're thinking and talking about is the fact that, you know, people are like, is it rushed? Well, it wasn't rushed at all. First of all, MRNA research and vaccine research has been going on for 10, 15, 20 years. People have been working on MRNA vaccine research.

The things that were rushed were the amazing things, like the red tape that goes on with research. So a lot of research takes a long time, not because of the actual research process, but because of a lot of the regulatory process that goes into research, IRB approval and things like getting funding and things like that. all of the red tape that normally makes these processes slow, just the bureaucratic red tape was removed. But the science, the robustness and the safety of the science remained the same. So it was actually truly not rushed. It was just all of the, like you mentioned, all of the world, and especially in the U.S.,

we had so much of the usual red tape that prevents scientific research from accelerating fast, the bureaucratic stuff was removed. But the actual science, the components of science itself were not rushed. It was very, very still maintained in a completely robust, rigorous trial and safe way. So is it safe for everybody? So that's a great question. So in general, right now, the only contraindication is a severe allergy to any component of the COVID vaccine. And since the vaccine doesn't contain any live component, It should be safe. We still don't know at this point, but it should be safe for pregnant and lactating individuals. And with the immunocompromise, it's no more dangerous than it is for an immunologically competent people to take it. But it is possible that with time we may discover that a subset of

individuals who should not receive the vaccine for very specific reasons. But right now, to our best of our knowledge, as long as you don't have any serious allergy to a component of the vaccine, it should be safe to receive for the people who are studied in the trial. So who was studying in the trial? Well, currently, the vaccine's not approved for children yet. I believe that they're in a study now, Moderna or Pfizer. I can't remember which one that's looking at, I think they're as young as 12 they're looking at now. But right now, it's FDA approved for adults. We do not have approval technically. We don't have a full clearance for those who are pregnant or those who are breastfeeding. That doesn't mean that you can't get the vaccine. It just means that that wasn't

a data point that was specifically studied because the way vaccines go, or you want to study the safest, biggest populations first. So non-pregnant to non-children, so just adults who are not pregnant. And then once you generate safety data from these populations, which we have, then we move on to the more special populations like immunocompromise, children, pregnant women, things like that. So right now it should be safe for the majority of people to get. So I did get a specific question about whether somebody should pre-treat with Benadryl if they do have, I can't, I don't have the question in front of me. I think it was allergies, history of allergies, angioedema, etc. Right.

So that was, or people with the history of allergies or amylopies or? Alergies. This person has history of allergies and angioedema. Okay. So Benadryl and other antihistamines are not appropriate for the management of anaphystic. So antihistamines can be given for comfort, but there's only one treatment for if someone has an anaphylactic reaction and that's epinephrine. So anyone who actually gets the vaccine is observed for at least 15 minutes.

If they have a history of severe allergic reactions, they will be actually watched for at least 30 minutes. If you are someone that has severe allergies and you carry an EpiPen around with you, you may consider bringing it. But plenty of people have received the vaccine with no issue despite a history of severe allergic reactions to things like peanuts or very. various things. The best thing you can do is discuss with your allergist and see what they recommend. But in general, for anaphylaxis, the most important thing is an epipen. So if you're someone that carries one, you would consider bringing it with you to your test. But it would just be super important to discuss that with your allergist beforehand. But otherwise, there is no general recommendation for treat. You know that I talk a lot about adding things to our diets and routines

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Sometimes I like it before a workout. It's caffeine-free, but I get like an energy boost from it, and it has only a gram of sugar. So if you want to try Organify and their high-quality superfoods without breaking the bank, go to Organify.com slash blonde. That's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I-com slash B-L-O-N-D-E, and use code blonde, B-L-O-N-D-E, for 15% off any item in the store. Again, that's Organify.com slash blonde for 15% off any item. So you were mentioning pregnant women before. A lot of my audience wanted to know about the safety for women who are not pregnant right now, but who hope to be pregnant in the future. How do we know that it's not going to affect infertility and all of that? It's a great question. So because this vaccine is

authorized under emergency use authorization, the DART studies to look for potential reproductive toxicity are not yet available for the Pfizer vaccine, but they have been done for Modernas and show no risks. In general, it would be extraordinarily difficult for any vaccine to affect fertility. So there was some bad signs going around that suggested that the spike protein bears this resemblance to a protein on the placenta called Sysentin 1. And there was some evidence that they thought there could be possible. This was just a theory that there could be an inappropriate immune response against this and could result in failure to bring a pregnancy to full term.

But this was actually just totally bogus science. Because if you look at the sequences between Sucidin 1 and the spike protein, There's actually no significant similarity that could result in this kind of reaction. And more even than that is that our current data of COVID-19 patients who are pregnant does not show an increased risk of early pregnancy loss in these patients, which you would expect. So you would expect that people who have had COVID to have early pregnancy loss if it was the same and we're not seeing any of that. The data is still preliminary though and can change, of course,

as SARS-CoV-2, which is the virus that causes COVID, has been shown the ability to infect the placenta or maybe rarely capable of vertical transmission. But in short, there's really just no reasonable basis or reason why at this time that we would see developing that this vaccine would affect fertility. What's more as that is because it's not a live, attenuated virus. You actually don't need to wait before attempted to conceive like when you do

with things like MMR. So, you know, it's just, it's one of those things that the vaccine in itself has yet to show any signal that it would cause an issue with fertility. And so a lot of it was just based on some bogus science and concepts of mechanisms that don't pan out. That's reassuring. Let's see here. Okay, autoimmunity. So I had a lot of have questions on thoughts on long-term autoimmune effects, since there's no long-term evidence right now with an MRNA vaccine and then also how safe it is for people with active autoimmune conditions. So with regards to there being no long-term evidence with MRNA vaccines and autoimmune means it's not entirely true because there have been several earlier clinical trials

with MRNA vaccines that looked at the long-term safety risks. It was in at least a few hundred people and none weren't noted. So in that respect, the data was limited, but it's not non-existent. In general, there's so many things that have to go wrong for you to develop new autoimmune disease that the idea that a vaccine is going to do that is just, it's not realistic in the way the vaccine works or the way science works. So we have examined all the essentially the routine vaccines for these sort of things and consistently find that there's no evidence of increased risk.

So if you look at all the other vaccines we've looked at, we haven't seen an increase in autoimmune risk. But MRNA vaccines, so they may seem novel, but functionally they actually reflect just the specific piece of the viral replication cycle. And when we give a live attenuated vaccines, these produce huge quantities of MRNA all the time without any concerns about them provoking some new,

autoimmune response or autoimmune disease. And in this vaccine, it's not even a live attenuated vaccine. You're not even getting the virus in your body. So even theoretically from a mechanistic standpoint, far more likely. So essentially, you know, the other thing to consider is, well, you know, what won't be a risk of developing even an autoimmune disease from actually getting COVID-19? And there was a recent pre-print that looked at COVID-19 patients for the presence of auto-antibodies, and it found that many of these patients have a number of antibodies against the self-antigin that may help to explain these long-haul syndromes and things like that. But the strain on your self-tolerance mechanisms, essentially from a replication,

infection of any kind, you know, causing these tissue damage and releasing all sorts of substances that promote inflammation. So getting COVID, that would be far more. concerning than just having the MRNA vaccine, which is not a live part of the virus. It's just a single one-off MRNA, develop the proteins, and then your body forgets the MRI completely. Can you explain? I should have asked you this in the beginning, but for anybody who doesn't know exactly how an MRI vaccine works, so it gives your body the blueprint, right, to develop this

protein and then, like you said, its half-life is really short, right? it's just gone from your body. But how does that protect your body from the actual virus? That's exactly right. That's perfect. So it's like it's analogous to just, yeah, well, actually, you said it perfectly. It gives you this blueprint. You get the MRI.

You start to develop these proteins. Your body makes antibodies to these proteins. You end up your body. So what happens is when you get the vaccine, your body, you develop these proteins. Your body starts to make antibodies to the proteins in your body. starts to remember like, oh, this is weird. I have to make sure that I will remember to attack this weird strange bug if it comes in the body. And the actual instructions that you've got in the vaccine are long gone, but your body's memory, the antibodies, whether it's humoral antibodies,

which is your B cells or your T cells, will remember the spike protein from coronavirus, and then we'll be able to bite it off if you ever are exposed. And so that's what's so great about it, that you're not getting the actual virus. I mean, the actual vaccine only includes the mRNA protein. Then it contains a lipid, water, a little bit of sugar, and that's really it. It's one of the least. There's none of those other ingredients that people always get kind of worried about for no reason. but all the other ingredients that people worry about in vaccines,

there aren't in this. So it's quite simple. And then like you said, your body gets the blueprint. It starts to remember, okay, well, I met this weird spike protein. Now I'm going to have to remember how to fight it off. And it does. And then that little message it got in the beginning is gone. This wasn't included in the questions,

but we were talking about this before. And I know that a lot of my audience is vegan. And there have been concerns among the vegan community about getting the vaccine. So you've talked about this a lot on your page. So everybody again, go follow. But could you just talk about that a little bit? Because you're vegan yourself. Absolutely. Yeah. So I'm a vegan. I've been vegan for 11 years. And I totally understand why the vegan community feels this way because I totally understand. I too wish that. So I'm a fully ethical vegan. And so I very much do wish that animal testing, we could get to a point where animal testing

is no longer required. But to all the vegans out there, anyone who is vegan that's listening, you know, animal testing currently is required in the way we develop medications, drugs, anything. And the truth is there's no way to be a perfect vegan. There's nothing you can do that is completely vegan. Even our smartphones are not vegan. Even buying produce, whether it's organic or conventional produce, a certain amount of animals die, even when you're buying broccoli, tomatoes. There's no way on this earth to be a perfect vegan. It's an imperfect world. You cannot be a perfect vegan. A pandemic to me is not the time to draw that line. For example, so, you know, even just eating regular produce every single day or whether it's organic or conventional produce,

you know, as I mentioned, like a certain amount of field mice die during farming, a certain amount of, you know, you could end up, you know, technically hundreds of animals, you know, over your lifetime will have died from you just eating produce because there's no such thing as being a perfect vegan. Well, there was a few hundred animals used in this study, but when you get the vaccine, you know, that study, those animals are, that study is done. So you're not adding demand to more animal harm by getting the vaccine. The research is done. So whether or not you take the vaccine will not increase demand for more animals to die, but you will help save thousands of lives by getting the vaccine, but you won't be harming more animals. And yes, do I wish we

could get to a point where animal testing isn't required? Sure. But at the same time, you have to remember humans are animals too, and there is no way to be a perfect vegan. So unless you are living on your own where you don't have a smartphone, you make all of your own groceries, you don't purchase any groceries and you make all of your own fruits and vegetables and you live without, you've never gotten modern medicine in your life, you're not a perfect vegan. And so to me, you really have to, you know, do the calculus that getting this vaccine is not adding more to animal harm because the trial is done. And there are no animal ingredients in the vaccine at all. Okay. Why has Pfizer and others paid billions in lawsuits for vaccine?

issues. Why should we trust them now? Okay. So this is another bit of the misinformation that's kind of been put out by the anti-vax case that I think is so great to clarify because it's a little really confusion. So vaccine manufacturers, they have an excise tax on every vaccine that's purchased, which is used to pay for a vaccine injury compensation fund in the U.S. Okay. And so first, the most common injury that's compensated by this vaccine injury, is a shoulder injury related to the vaccine administration, meaning like at the arm where you got the vaccine. This is actually not the fault of the vaccine.

This is the result of bad injection technique. And this is incredibly rare, but it's still the most common, even though it's rare. And this has nothing to do with the vaccine. So, you know, if you hit the wrong part of your shoulder, you can end up injecting the bursa and causing some inflammation. And that can actually be really painful. and cause someone to have symptoms.

So that is one of the most common reasons that people end up getting vaccine compensation, but it's not even that common and it's not the vaccine's fault. So it's super rare. So what about the rest? Well, it's true that no vaccines are completely risk-free. So on occasion, you do see serious adverse effects following vaccination, but the number of, you know, people always say that they're, There's billions of all these injuries.

It's very misleading. So since 1986, since 1986, there's been 6,000 compensation issued from Serba. And in that time, billions of vaccine doses have been giving billions. And so we're quite literally talking about a one in a million event. And it's probably actually even less than that. Because as I mentioned, some of the injuries are just from the ingestion. they're not actually from the vaccine. So vaccine court's not like regular court, right? So in regular court, you need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the person's accused for crime, responsible,

having commended. But in vaccine court, you actually basically just need to show that there's a plausible, plausible mechanism for the apparent adverse event that the vaccine does. And this is judged by a special person who's got expertise on the subject matter, but you can appeal a decision if you're denied compensation in civil court. But the truth is that this is the entire reason why they do this is because pharmaceutical companies do not generally make money from vaccines. And pharmaceutical companies, if this was not, because there's so much misinformation about vaccines,

that if they didn't have this specific protocol where you can go to vaccine injury court and file a response, we would probably never have pharmaceutical companies ever make vaccines. They probably wouldn't. Because every pharmaceutical company would end up, you know, there's so much misinformation that there would be no way to control it. What pharmaceutical company would ever want to, you know, make a vaccine and no one would do it?

And then we would be stuck in a world with no vaccines. You don't see this happening for other medications like statins. You don't need statin injury court because there isn't that much. misinformation about statins. There's so much misinformation about vaccines. So it's really rare. Less than one in a million chance that you're going to have, even less than that, one of these actual real reactions. And so, you know, that's really the thing, is that it's kind of just basic vaccine court allows people an easy way to at least get financial compensation if they do have an adverse event, but it doesn't make it more common. It's actually still incredibly

rare. All right. Well, thank you so much for breaking all of that down. You make it so easy to understand. And we're going to have to have you back on for part two to talk about nutrition and heart health and all of that. But the last question here is where should we expect our vaccine to come from? Is it going to be coming from our employer or from our primary health provider, our insurance? That's a great question. So a few things to know before we finished, too, is that one of the things I think that got lost in the, in the conversation of COVID in general was that there's so many times the public would cite things that scientists or physicians have said in March, and then they'd cite them in May and be like, see, they were wrong. And what I want everyone listening to know is that's science, right?

So science, we learn things as they go, and we can say things with a certain level of confidence based on research, but things are always subject to change. So just know that everything, thing I'm saying today is based on the data we have today and that this will also continue to change. So I think that the best thing you can do is follow good resources. And that's things that are truly evidence-based that are following the science. And that would be, of course, you're a physician. But one of the greatest also resources, there's this, if you look on Instagram called D-platform disease, there's a individual that's a huge, he's a scientist, huge vaccine advocate. His name Ed, and he does great evidence-based information. He actually even, we even went through some of this

data together for today. And I think that finding a good resource, especially CDC, D-platform disease, is amazing. And then, of course, you're a physician, but staying up to date because in general, it's going to just continuously change. So with regards to where can you get the vaccine, so this is still going to be worked out. So Pfizer's vaccine has this kind of challenging, storage requirement because of temperature. So most, maybe we'll see a difference, but maybe primary care offices might not be able to offer it. It may just be in larger healthcare systems. Boderre's a vaccine by comparison is easier to store, but we're going to have to wait and see for now. So the advisory committee on immunization practices, the CDC and the FDA, they'll all, you know,

be working together to get our vaccinations more throughout the community. once we go down the level of priority. It may take some time, but it's going to happen. For now, you know, keep masks, handwashing, avoid gathering, social distancing, try to keep some, you know, good ventilation inside and just use some, you know, good sense. But in general, the vaccine distribution, there have certainly been some hurdles with it. I by no means want to get political, but I'm hoping with the new team in January that we get some of our hurdles with vaccine distribution kind of ironed out. That's what we hope because it is

quite a challenge to get everyone vaccine in a timely basis. So stay tuned. You got vaccinated last week and your cell service is excellent. My fortune is working, guys. I'm just kidding. No side effects. I feel great. Just a little bit of a sore arm that day and that's it. Amazing. Well, thank you again. Where can everybody find you? You can find me on, I'm on Instagram as at Danielle, a D-A-N-I-E-L-E-L-E-B-L-A-R-D-O-M-D, so at D-N-B-E-L-A-R-D. And I'm on Instagram most often. And we'll link everything in show notes. And yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me. I hope you enjoyed that episode. If you liked it, and if you like the show in general, please take a second to rate, review, and subscribe.

It goes a long way, and it's actually the best way to support the show. Also, if you want to see more about each episode, you can head over to The Blonde Files podcast on Instagram. I'm always posting about each episode there, or over on my personal page at Ariel Laurie.