Both the vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna are categorized as messenger RNA vaccines, and the technology behind this is relatively new, said Dr. Joe Schwarcz, director of the Office for Science and Society at McGill University. Schwarcz outlines the process by which Pfizer and Moderna conducted their vaccine trials, and explains why vaccines are very low-risk.
Vaccine news have been making headlines from both Pfizer and now Moderna, but a lot of questions still remain about their tests. Are these vaccines effective? What are the risks? Should we take them? Should we not take them? These are the questions and issues that our next guest is here to address today.
Dr. Joe Schwartz is the director of the office for science and society at McGill university. He is well known for breaking down complex scientific issues and explaining them in layman terms for the general public dr. Schwartz. Welcome to Kitco. Thanks very much, uh, full disclosure. I took her class exactly 12 years ago.
It was a chemistry class. One of the more memorable classes. I don't remember all the details because it's been more. Oh, thank you. Neither to you now. I don't, I wasn't a very good student. I don't think I remembered everything from your class. I just remember it being a very memorable, uh, very memorable lecture.
So, uh, thank you for being here today. I like to run through a lot of the science behind vaccines and health issues starting with maybe. Giving us an overview of how vaccines work. The idea behind this vaccine, which is the one that we're really interested in is tricking the body into thinking that it has been invaded by the virus without actually being invaded by the virus so that it can produce antibodies to the virus and the technology that is behind both the Pfizer and the modern of vaccines is relatively new.
Uh, these kinds of vaccines didn't exist before, uh, they fall into the category of messenger RNA vaccines. Now, of course, I know that that sounds confusing for a lot of people. So let me try to, to simplify that RNA is a template that cells use to put together proteins. So, uh, Researchers have been able to isolate the genes from the virus that are responsible for these spike proteins.
When you look at the picture of this virus, as everyone has looked at, you see these outcroppings on the surface, this is what makes it a Corona virus, because it looks like a crack. It comes from the Latin for Corona, and that's the protein that the virus uses to invade the cell. So that's what you want to inactivate.
So the idea here is to inject into the body, the messenger RNA, which is the template to make pieces of that particular protein, the body that will then synthesize antibodies to this. And the next time when it encounters the real virus, the antibodies will recognize those proteins on the surface of the virus and will bind to it and inactivate the virus.
That's the theory behind it. But now we have more than just theory. We have facts because both Pfizer and Moderna have come out with their preliminary results. And again, we, you know, we emphasize that this is preliminary because these studies have just been going on for three months. And that is not a very long time.
Usually it takes a minimum of five years to get a vaccine onto the market. So this is a relatively short period of time, but the first results are very encouraging. And the way that you determine whether or not a vaccine is working is by. Setting up a group of people who are going to get the vaccine and comparing them to another group who will be injected in a similar fashion, but not with an active material, just with a salt solution.
And then you wait to see how many people come down with the disease and then you check whether or not those people were in the. Vaccine group or they were in the placebo group. So this is what both Moderna and Pfizer have done after three months. So they started the experiment in July, injecting people, uh, twice it's a two dose injection, three weeks apart, and now they have been monitoring to see what happens.
So after three months in the, uh, Pfizer study, 170 people developed symptoms of COVID. But the kicker is that out of those hundred and 70, 162 were in the placebo group. Now this can not happen by chance alone. This is a very meaningful result. So the 95% stat that we hear is the one 62. Compared to 170 that's 95%.
That's really quite an amazing result. The Moderna very similar result. They had a somewhat smaller study. They had only 15,000 per group, as opposed to 22,000 that Pfizer had, but still that's a, that's a large number of, of subjects. And they had 95 people who came down with the. Disease and 90 of those were in the placebo group.
Again, that would not happen by chance alone. So the vaccine is working. It is offering protection against the disease. That's the first step. Of course, there's still things that we don't know. We don't know how many people were infected without having symptoms. Because all they checked for were people who had the symptoms.
We don't know how long the production will last because the study has only been going on for three months. So it is a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, but we don't yet have a flood light in the tunnel. Yes. There are still some unanswered questions. Um, as you said, I'll run through some of the concerns that I've heard, uh, particularly in regards to the sample size of the participants, the studies, there's a, there's a.
Difference of sample size between Moderna and Pfizer. Maybe you can comment on that and whether or not the 95% efficacy that they're both reporting are equally valid. I think they are equally valid. Both of them have sufficient numbers. Uh, you know, I mean 44,000 for Pfizer and 30,000, uh, for, uh, now in phase three trials, that is a significant number, as you can imagine, it's pretty difficult to do studies with.
So so many people. So this is a standard kind of, of number. What is a little bit surprising about these studies is that the number of people who got infected is a very low number. And, um, you know, when you look around, uh, these days, uh, where people are in the U S and in Canada, you know, random testing, you're finding anywhere from 5% to 50%.
Positive cases, indeed. In some cases in the U S now, where of course it's running rampant, they're finding 85% positive cases out of, you know, out of every hundred people tested 85 are positive. So in these studies here, the infection rate was very low. It was a less than 1%. Which is somewhat surprising at how is, how is that?
Well, my interpretation of this is that the people who are role in such studies are people who are health conscious. Anyway, you know, it's not your, your senior sick people who enroll in these studies. So they're much more likely to wear masks. They're much more likely to keep physical distancing. So that's, I think why we have the low infection rate, but I think that the, the, the numbers are pretty solid and for, uh, you know, uh, for a phase three trial of a vaccine to find 95% success rate, uh, is unusual.
Nobody would have predicted this. So I, I think that, um, you know, we, we are on the right track here. Uh, of course there, there are going to be stumbling blocks along the way. Uh, the first one is that the Pfizer vaccine has to be stored at minus 70 degrees. Celsius means dry ice temperatures, and that is going to be quite an impediment to distribution.
Uh, but it. That can be overcome, you know, technologies is available. Uh, modernize is somewhat better in that sense, because it only requires minus 20 degrees. And, um, the, the freezers that pharmacies have can go down to that temperature. So, um, Yeah. Th th there's that difficulty then of course, there will be the difficulty of producing enough of the vaccine when you're talking about, uh, having to vaccinate billions of people globally.
That's a lot of vaccine to produce, and you have to remember that this is a two dose vaccine. So when you hear that a company is going to be able to produce by January 50 million doses, which is what I think Pfizer is saying. Uh, Those 50 million doses will vaccinate only 25 million people because you need two doses per person.
So it's going to be quite some time until we have billions of doses that the world requires. Yeah. That was my next question, which is logistical issues that you're brought up. Do you, as a scientist, do you foresee a reasonable timeline for delivery? Can we expect. Just United States. There's 300 million people.
We can expect a rollout in, in, uh, December or January, uh, on a relatively small scale. Uh, and that will, I think we, uh, targeted towards, uh, frontline healthcare workers as should be the case. There'll be the first ones to get it. And then, uh, there'll be a, you know, a slow. Uh, evolution. Uh, first it will be people who are at risk.
People who have, uh, comorbidities who are various kinds of diseases and then the senior citizens, and then the rest of the population. Now, as far as children go, that's a bit of an issue because, uh, neither the Pfizer or the modernist studies looked at children. So that will have to be explored before, uh, children get vaccinated.
But, uh, I think the rollout will start in December and January, but, uh, again, in order to, to really get a handle on, on this, uh, terrible. Plague. That's what we're dealing with. We're going to be looking for what we call herd immunity. When about 70% of the population has developed immunity to this disease, which is going to require billions of doses of this vaccine.
And that's not going to happen within a couple of months that that will take a year in order to, you know, to vaccinate billions of people in the world. But. It's not an impossible task, you know it, uh, okay. Professor, we're going to do a challenge round here. So I'm going to give you a few, um, should I say commonly held beliefs about vaccines from the general public?
And I like to color like you to clarify whether or not they're true or not. And if the not true, can you please explain why it's not true? So the first one is that vaccines can kill you. Yes, vaccines can kill you. Uh, going out on the streets can kill you. You can be run over by a car. Uh, everything in life has a certain risk associated with it.
The risks with taking vaccines is very, very, very low. It is non-sterile you take an aspirin and the risk is not zero. You can, you know, you, you can get a hemorrhage from, uh, from aspirin. And so what you always have to look at are the statistics and the risk benefit ratio. The benefits of vaccine are legendary.
Uh, the risk is, is very, very low, but again, it is not zero. Anytime that there's any kind of medical intervention, any kind of surgery, any kind of drug, there is always some risk associated with it. Well professor, where does this belief come from? I think I've read various theories. One of them being that there are harmful chemicals, metals inside vaccines, like aluminum and whatnot.
What, what they are referring to there are the so-called edge events. And these are substances that are added to the vaccine in order to rev up the immune system so that the vaccine will actually work better. And the first Agilent, uh, that was introduced, this goes back to 1926 were aluminum compounds.
Um, and this was an actually interesting and, uh, sort of a serendipitous discovery when researchers were first working on the diphtheria vaccine, which was one of the first, uh, uh, vaccines that was, uh, introduced. Uh, they found that when it was injected into test animals, like, like Guinea pigs, when there was a local, uh, inflammation that developed at the site of the injection, then the vaccine worked better.
So then they thought of a G what can be added to the vaccine to develop this local inflammation. And they, uh, started to try different things. And aluminum compounds worked very well. Now they are added in a very, very small doses, and these are called Agilents. That comes from the Latin for, to help because they help the vaccine work.
The amount of aluminum that is added is, is. Trivial. In fact, we ingest far more aluminum in our daily diet. Aluminum is a naturally occurring element. It is found in virtually everything that we eat. So the amount of this put into, into the vaccines is, is totally insignificant. That is not going to cause any kind of, uh, of harm.
You've recently talked to the media about sharks being an Agilent. What is that about? Yes, sharks. Uh, the shark liver contains a compound called squalene and this like aluminum also works as an edge event and it is used in a number of vaccines. Except it is not used in, in either of the Pfizer or the Moderna vaccines.
These vaccines, these messenger RNA vaccines do not require an adjuvant. So there's no aluminum. There's, there's no squealing in there. Some of the other vaccines, some of the flu vaccines contains quite lean, but squalene is present naturally in the human body. It is a metabolic product. The body makes squalene from the food that we eat and uses it to make important biochemicals like.
Adrenal hormones, for example. So there's no issue with the squalene. And they they're concerned. The environmentalist concern is that sharks are going to be hunted in order to get the, this way lean and the pharmaceutical companies that you squealing will tell you that they don't go out hunting sharks for this.
They use the liver of sharks that have been caught for food and sharks are served as food. You know? Yes. The other concern is that I've heard that vaccines usually take at least a year to develop. Now, if you look at a timeline of the coronavirus outbreak, it hasn't been a year. So the scenes. Yeah. Surely has, has been a feather in the cap of science, uh, how quickly this has happened.
And, you know, human ingenuity comes to the fore when the back is against the wall. And our back is against the wall here. I mean, this is a terrible scourge. And, uh, the pharmaceutical companies geared up and there was more collaboration than there ever had been before, because let's face it. These companies are rivals.
There's a lot of money to be made with vaccines, billions of dollars made, but there was a lot of cooperation and never in history, I think. Has. There being so many researchers working on the same project at the same time. And so, uh, yeah, it has been a short timeframe, but I, from what I have seen and I've followed this quite closely, there have not been any shortcuts.
So it's, it's not that, uh, you know, uh, we're taking more risks than otherwise we would have taken it is because. More brain power has been applied and there has been more hands-on research. So it has been such a concentrated effort. And, uh, they managed to come out with this, uh, in a surprisingly short time.
The other, uh, misconception here is that, uh, vaccines cause autism and that it can kill babies. Yes, this, this, yeah, this is the, the main weapon that the anti-vaxxers use, uh, which is totally ridiculous. This goes back to a paper published in the 1990s in the British journal Lancet by Andrew Wakefield, a gastroenterologist in England who maintains that he has found evidence that, uh, uh, the MMR vaccine, the measles mumps rubella vaccine, uh, was causing autism.
This, uh, started, uh, really, uh, uh, fear among a lot of people because he was, you know, a very reputable journal publishing this information. Well, it, uh, eventually it turned out that it was fraudulent that the researcher Wakefield, uh, in fact, was trying to capitalize on, uh, on a vaccine that he himself was developing to cast shadow on the other vaccines.
And he had made some deal with insurance companies, uh, so that, uh, the parents of children who were autistic could Sue vaccine companies anyway, a great deal has been written on this, uh, Wakefield, losses, medical license licensee. In fact, how to leave England. He he's become a pariah in the scientific world and there's absolutely no evidence that vaccines cause autism.
But the myth is still out there and the anti-vaccine people keep bringing it up. And it's really been a surprise to me how this anti-vaccine movement persists in the face of overwhelming evidence that vaccines work, you know, for example, we've been able to wipe out smallpox that no longer exists in the world.
It doesn't exist. It was wiped out by vaccine rotavirus, which is a terrible infection in children basically has been wiped out of North America with the rotavirus vaccine, measles almost non-existent, uh, you know, so vaccines work. Okay. Now let's talk about other health issues. Finally, professor people are saying that should a vaccine be introduced to the public.
We no longer have to have measures of social distance, see, and mask wearing. Those are no longer relevant and unnecessary. Can you comment on that? Yeah, that that's a dangerous view because even though the results of this vaccine are encouraging and it will, uh, be effective, I think, and it will be rolled out relatively soon.
This is not going to be like a light switch where all of a sudden everything gets resolved, because first of all, uh, it's going to be the beginning, relatively few people who got the vaccine. So the rest of the population of course, is still, uh, uh, you know, uh, At risk for the disease. So it's going to be a slow evolution until.
Sufficient numbers of people get vaccinated. So we still have to respect the distancing. We still have to do the wearing of the mask and something else to, to appreciate, uh, when we say 95%, uh, efficacy, which is really astounding. It's it's, it's, it's great. But that still means that in 5% of people, uh, it doesn't work.
Now, when you are talking about large numbers of people we're talking in, in North America of 400 million people, right? So 5% of 400 million people is still a significant number, right? You're still talking 20 million people who are. At risk, even though they may be vaccinated. So, uh, we are going to still have to respect the distancing and the wearing of the mask.
So I think that, uh, uh, the fear of this virus is going to be with us for quite some time, uh, slowly we'll, we'll learn to live with it, with the help of the vaccine, and it will be put on the back burner, but it's never going to be totally disappear. Uh, people should not get the idea that as soon as the vaccine starts to be rolled out, that you can just relax and everything is going to be fine.
So, so your statement is predicated on the assumption that masks are effective. A lot of people would disagree with you and say that not all masks are equally effective. Can you comment on that finally? Well, not all masks are, are the same. It depends on the kind of mask that you use. Uh, the surgical, the masks, the, those blue mask once, uh, our three layers of pro polypropylene, they are very, very effective in terms of reducing the, the, uh, droplets that can enter through it.
Then you also we'll have the so-called cloth masks, uh, this kind of mask. Right. And, uh, these, uh, as if they do also have three layers there, they're pretty effective. Uh that's of course, why we made these effective professional, what should people not be buying and, and saying that, well, this is going to help me.
The, the bandanas don't work well, uh, you forget those, but, uh, any kind of mask is better than wearing no mask. When you are in close proximity to people. Now, I, I don't think, uh, you need to be neurotic about this when you're outside, walking, hiking, whatever you do not need to wear a mask. It's not, it's not like the viruses they're in the air.
Just waiting to attack you, uh, where it is important is. Indoors where you are in close contact. Uh, because we've seen infections rise from bars. You know, people congregating in bars, weddings, uh, other sites that are celebrations where you're indoors and close confinement, breathing at each other, especially loud talking, singing.
That's what causes droplets to come out of the mouth there. The, the masks are, are very important. So you have to. Use a bit of common sense here. You know, I, I don't think you have to wear a mask 24 hours a day. I mean, when I go outside running or walking, I don't wear a mask, but you go into a supermarket.
Yeah. That's a different story. And that, even though we don't really have at this point, concrete evidence of, of just how effective. Mask wearing is, uh, it is a benign enough activity that poses no risk to take the chance that it is doing us some good, you know, and that's always the question risk versus benefit.
So even when the, the potential benefit is small and the risk is zero, which is what it is with the mask. Why not try it? Let's wait a few months, see whether or not we can get people to wear masks and see whether or not we can. So try to sweep this thing under the carpet. I want to thank you so much for coming on the show today.
It was a real pleasure talking to you and, uh, sorry, I didn't become a scientist like you, I hope you're not disappointed. Well, I, you seem to have done pretty well and you've maintained an interest in science and that's the key. Yeah. I want to help the public understand, uh, you know, the important facets of science.
I actually, I looked at my transcript for last night. I had to, somehow I got an a in your class. I don't know how it happened, cause it never studied. But somehow it happened that you very much professor. Okay, thank you. And thank you for watching Kitco news. I'm David Lynn. Stay tuned for more.