#069 COVID Vaccine Myths, Questions, and Rumors with Rhonda Patrick and Roger Seheult

Vaccine Science: Mrna

Today's episode is a special one featuring a conversation between myself and MedCram founders, Dr. Roger Schwell and physician assistant Kyle Allred.

"Hi, friends. Today's episode is a special one featuring a conversation between myself and MedCram founders, Dr. Roger Schwell and physician assistant Kyle Allred. You might remember Dr."

Vaccine Science: Mrna

Just to clarify, using that data to make a case that really COVID-19 is only killing people with multiple comorbidities is not accurate. Patrick, this next question is for you, and it's about spike protein.

"There are about 26 different spike proteins. I shouldn't say different. There are about 26 spike proteins that line the surface of a SARS-CoV-2 viral particle."

Vaccine Science: Mrna

There is something that seems to be going on with ivermectin, whether or not it's in combination with all these other things or by itself. We need more high-quality data.

"And, you know, the other thing to keep in mind is that there's been a lot of people that have now sought out a veterinary form of it because it is something that in addition to being used in humans..."

Vaccine Science: Mrna

Like we can only do that so quickly. You know, We may be at the point where our cells can't assemble all the viral proteins quick enough for it to become even more transmissible.

"So if something limits the transmission, then it's also going to limit the potential of the virus to become more virulent. And the factors that limit transmission are, one, physical constraints. So the virus infects human cells and the human cells then make viral proteins and, you know, are basically allowing the virus to replicate. So our own cellular machinery, the ability of our cells to assemble viral proteins, the ability of our cells metabolically to do it quick enough, like there's a limit to that. Like we can only do that so quickly. So once that happens, then, you know, a virus sort of reached its peak transmissibility in a way because our cells physically can't do it quicker than it's already doing it, if that makes sense. And so with the Delta variant right now, we may be at a peak transmissibility. You know, We may be at the point where our cells can't assemble all the viral proteins quick enough for it to become even more transmissible. We don't know. Maybe we're not there yet, but maybe we are. We have no idea. It's definitely a much more transmissible variant. So that's the one thing that limits the ability of a virus to become more virulent is the limitation on transmission. The other thing is host mortality. And so, you know, if a virus, you know, is killing the host within a certain time frame, you know, before transmission ends, then, you know, you start to, like, able to transmit the virus more and you're not going to have more variants crop up because the host is dying. And so this is something people have been very concerned about with vaccines because the argument is that vaccines are preventing more, you know, they're preventing hospitals, they're preventing people from dying from COVID-19, and therefore they're going to allow the virus to have a chance to mutate into something that is more virulent. Again, it has to mutate into something that's more transmissible, virulent hitchhike alongside of that. But if you look at the deaths in COVID-19, people that are unvaccinated or just generally speaking, people usually die much later than the transmission phase. They die, you know, days and days and days after actually becoming infected with SARS-CoV-2. And so the transmission phase is well over before people are even dying. So the reality is, is that people that are unvaccinated have, you know, they're creating these mutations and allowing variants to evolve even at a greater rate, because not only are they, you know, able to do it even before they potentially succumb to death, but, you know, the fact that we just talked about overall transmission reduced by vaccine. so people that are vaccinated are less likely to even get infected. And we talked about onward transmission reduced. In other words, people are clearing the virus faster that are vaccinated than unvaccinated. In every sense, people that are unvaccinated, there's more chances for the virus to replicate and to potentially mutate and form another variant that could become more transmissible and thus potentially more virulent. Now, people are also conflating the vaccine-escaped immunity. That is a completely different thing. It's not something that is relevant to virulence. If you look at the large body of scientific literature covering this topic, I shouldn't say large body. It's actually quite limited. So there's no example of human vaccines causing a more virulent strain. There are examples of vaccine escape. So in other words, variants crop up that can evade the antibodies produced by vaccines. And that's a different thing. That isn't something that's more virulent. That's something that's going to affect people that are vaccinated because now they're going to be more likely to be infected and their vaccine is less effective. That's a very different thing than what we're talking about, which is the evolution, the selective pressure on viruses to transmit, become more transmissible. And that is the selective pressure that exists, not virulence. Virulence hitchhikes alongside the transmission aspect of why viruses, you know, mutate, basically, and the selective pressure that's on them to do that. Dr. Schwal, I want to hear your thoughts on that. And also Dr. Patrick mentioned how, you know, with Delta variant and other variants and in the past with vaccines, how sometimes a variant can crop up that escapes vaccine antibodies. Can you talk a little about the other big aspect of the immune system, and that's the T cell response and how that can still offer us a lot of protection potentially? Sure. Yeah. So first of all, in order for you to have variants, you have to have replication because it's the errors in replication that cause variants. And so the only way you can have replication is if you have viruses in hosts. So if you look at the examples that we have, whether it's alpha, beta, gamma, delta, most of these variants, if not all of them, came from populations that were not vaccinated. Now, India has done a great job at producing vaccines, and they're well on their way to vaccinating their population, fortunately. But the Delta variant came out early on when they were not having a lot of people vaccinated. Same thing with the South African variant and the P1 that came out of Brazil. This was during a time where there was not vaccinated. If it was vaccination that caused variants, then we should be seeing variants coming out of Israel and the United States. Now, in terms of B cell, or I should say antibodies, antibodies are very important when it comes to neutralizing a virus that is outside of your cells predominantly. So neutralizing it before they infect the cells. So that's very, very important. But there's a whole other aspect to the immunity that help in terms of hospitalization, in terms of there's memory T cells, and that is what we just mentioned was the T cells, the cytotoxic T cells and the rest of it. What's interesting that I found about T cells is that when they reproduce, they also reproduce in a way where they put errors in there so that as the virus may mutate, there seems to be some evidence that the T cell response may be able to anticipate and mutate along with it. Now, that's not 100% science yet, but there seems to be some evidence of that, at least in the research articles that I've read. And if you look at what's happening right now with the Delta variant in Israel and the United States, we see a reduction in the ability of the vaccines to reduce transmission, right? So with the Delta variant, instead of the 80% to 90% that we enjoyed early on in the pandemic, it's been knocked down somewhat. But we really haven't seen an erosion to that extent in prevention of hospitalization and severe disease. And that has more to do with T cell responses and cytotoxic, because by this point, the virus is inside the body already, inside the cells, and antibodies have very limited ability to take care of those types of situations. So the immune system is very complex, and I think we need to just sort of look back and always couple our in vitro hypotheses with real-world data. And so far, the real-world data is still holding up in terms of prevention of severe disease. And I'd also like to add, there's been some sort of a false equivalence, if you will, that is made in terms of what we know that overuse of antibiotics can cause bacterial resistance to those antibiotics. And there's no question about that. That's a whole other topic of discussion, the overuse of antibiotics in humans and in animals especially. And that gives rise to these superbugs that emerge that are no longer susceptible to the antibiotics that we have. But that's a different situation. That's where the antibiotics that are being used are basically selectively killing out all of these susceptible bacteria and only leaving those that are resistant. So in other words, the resistant bacteria already exist, but we're knocking out the bacteria that are susceptible and allowing the resistant forms to produce. That's very different than what we're talking about with vaccines, because in the terms of vaccines and viruses, the resistant viruses don't exist. What allows them to be created is the ability to replicate, okay? And that's very different with bacteria. In bacteria, very few resistant bacteria are occurring because they're being allowed to replicate. The only way that they can become resistant is if they acquire DNA that gives them—they're called plasmids or vectors—that allow antibiotic resistance to then be incorporated in their DNA. That's not the case with viruses. Viruses and bacteria are very different. Dr. Schwelt, I think the most common reason I've heard for people choosing not to get the vaccine is that they feel like the process may have been rushed, that there isn't enough long-term data yet. They may be willing to get the vaccine at some point, but they will look at the historical timelines for vaccines and realize that it takes often 10 years, maybe the average, for a vaccine to actually be manufactured and go through the authorization and approval process. So what are your thoughts about this sentiment? And, you know, do you feel like the vaccine was rushed? Do you feel like we can trust the process in this case with this particular technology? That's a great question. So there's no question in my mind and anyone else's that this process was accelerated. No question about it. The question is, was the quality of the product compromised by the acceleration of the process? And here you can see on the screen a typical vaccine timeline. If this was done under normal situations, we would have started in 2020, and we wouldn't have had a product until 2034. And the reason for that is because there is risk in making these vaccines, but there's also processes that they have to go through. So there is the research that has to happen. Then there's the preclinical trials, the benchtop trials, and then phase one to figure out the right dose. Phase two to do the small randomized controlled trials to see if there are problems. Then finally, the big phase three trials leading up to building the factories to make these vaccines, and then the manufacturing, and then the approval process, and then finally the distribution. So what you can see in the lower portion of that screen is everything got compressed. Now, notice that nothing got skipped. So we still had the phase one trials and the phase two and the phase three. Some of these were being run concomitantly, which means at the same time. But notice something very interesting. The factories were being built at the same time that the phase one and two trials were being done. And why is that? Why were they able to do that? What the government did by stepping in and providing them money and resources and providing those barriers is they're saying, look, we'll give you the money to build the factories, realizing that if these phase one, two, and three trials are a bust, you're not going to be held liable for the amount of money that you've spent in building these factories that aren't going to do anything. And so that was one of the major barriers to getting this thing done was the risk that the companies would not normally be willing to take on these vaccines. But the government was saying, we don't want you to take that risk. We want you to get those things started. Now, this sort of thing has happened before. If we go back to World War II and we talk about the Nazis in World War II and the tremendous machinery that they had and the war machine of the Nazis, what happened was Franklin Delano Roosevelt sat down with a guy by the name of William Knudsen, who was basically the most powerful man in terms of Detroit and the auto manufacturing process. And he basically offered him a salary of $1 to basically coordinate the infrastructure plan to build the war machine that would be able to go against Hitler. This is what William Knudsen, the president of General Motors, said in a meeting of the executives, he said, the first half of 1941 is crucial."