The COVID-19 Vaccines, with Irwin Redlener

What’s up with the COVID-19 vaccines? On this episode of StarTalk, Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice talk about all things COVID-19 vaccine with Dr. Irwin Redlener, Director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and for today's episode, we're talking about the COVID-19 vaccines. Chuck, you with me on this one? I am indeed. However, I am not vaccinated. You're not vaccinated, okay. And I'm halfway through that, so... Oh, did you? Yeah, I'm halfway through. Congratulations. Thank you. Did it up at Harlem Hospital, up in Manhattan. Nice. In Harlem, of course. So, obviously, neither you nor I have specific expertise in this field, so we go into our man who does, and that is Dr. Erwin Redlener, a friend for many

• 0:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  decades. Erwin, welcome back to StarTalk. Now, I'm so delighted in reading your title, because it's one of the baddest-ass titles that we've got here. So, you were the founding director of Columbia University's National Center for Disaster Preparedness. Sweet. And you created the Pandemic Resource and Response Initiative at Columbia University. So, this is... You are the man. If I ever see a disaster, I'm running to Erwin. We're gonna think of you. Help me, Dr. Redlener!

• 1:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, if you see a disaster, don't call me. I'll be really offended. I want you to know that. But when Godzilla comes, we're calling you, just so you know. Exactly, no matter what happens. By the way, you have a long history of the medical treatment of children who couldn't otherwise afford that treatment, and you're author of the book, I have to give this a shout out, "The Future of Us: What the Dreams of Children Mean to 21st-Century America." So, you're the man. Thank you for even agreeing to be on our podcast. My great pleasure, actually, Neil. So, thank you for having me. We got Chuck here to make jokes, so nothing you do is a joke. So, Chuck... Exactly.

• 2:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we'll try, we'll see how this goes, I don't know.

• 2:20Irwin Redlener?

  Yeah, we will.

• 2:23Chuck Nice?

  So I call Dr. Red Leonard, uh, our, our own Tony Fauci.

• 2:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got our own personal.

• 2:31Chuck Nice?

  We don't need, we don't need Tony Fauci. We got, we got Erwin Red Leonard, you know what I mean? That's, that's where we are.

• 2:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so let me just a- ask you, the, the vaccine.

• 2:42Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 2:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, I viewed like any other vaccine, if it can prevent illness, I'm, I'm getting it.

• 2:47Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 2:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But there seems to be this gurgling of attitude towards the vaccine.

• 2:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 2:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Holding aside the regular variety of anti-vaxers, okay? There's like a new subset, or, or are they, maybe they're not new, maybe it's old, who have specific objections to this, this vaccine. Can you tell us what's different about this vaccine from others?

• 3:13Irwin Redlener?

  Yeah, and I've thought about this a lot, you know, you know, one of the things was, remember when it was introduced, it was introduced during one of the strangest,

• 3:23Irwin Redlener?

  most bizarre presidential administrations in American history. That is, under the umbrella of Donald Trump. So almost anything that was introduced in that weird four-year span was viewed with skepticism and doubt. And, you know, when he would say, for example, that we're going to fast-track this, and he had something called Operation Warp Speed, which he actually did have, people either didn't believe it, they were skeptical about it. And it was a new technology, this sort of, uh, this so-called mRNA, the messenger RNA technology. So this was born in an environment of serious skepticism.

• 4:05Irwin Redlener?

  Also at a time simultaneously, Neil, where, where the anti-vax movement was growing anyway. So it was into this kind of

• 4:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Perfect story.

• 4:14Irwin Redlener?

  Very complex situation where people have doubt. And if it's fast-tracked, does that mean they, they bypass the safety assessment that we normally would expect? I mean, the fastest vaccine ever developed before this was the mumps, uh, which was a four-year process. Most vaccines take well more than 10 years. So there was skepticism.

• 4:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so what you're saying is we were a victim, in a sense, the vaccine movement was a victim of the cry wolf problem, right? Because if so much of what emerges in the Trump administration was not objectively, was not connected to an objective reality, and then he says something that is, then the entire anti-Trump movement has justifiable skepticism that it's going to be correct, when in fact, in this case, it was correct. So perhaps, we shouldn't, just in general, we shouldn't be getting our medical advice from elected politicians.

• 5:14Irwin Redlener?

  A very good point.

• 5:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 5:16Irwin Redlener?

  Think about this, he says, "Inject yourself with bleach to cure yourself of COVID and get a vaccine."

• 5:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you know, I forgot about that! Okay, alright, so, so, so, so that, okay, so that's, it's fascinating that it happened in this perfect storm of misinformation, and, but, what about the integrity of institutions, right? If NASA says an asteroid's coming, people are gonna listen, alright? So certain institutions have an integrity that has been preserved, or at least fared better than other institutions.

• 5:56Irwin Redlener?

  You mean like the CDC?

• 5:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, for example, the CDC, or any other sort of medical, you know, the Mayo Clinic, whatever it is that we trust. Are we in a post-institutional trust era? Forget an individual, how about just institutions?

• 6:11Irwin Redlener?

  Well, here's, here's what happened with that. So, within a month of the recognition that we're dealing with a pandemic, based on this particular coronavirus, the CDC sends out 100 test kits across the United States for people and laboratories to be able to test to see if one has COVID or not. Those test kits, one-third of them failed. So the CDC stepped out of the gate with a very unusual demonstration of incompetency that immediately eroded the public sense of faith in the CDC as an institution, to

• 6:50Irwin Redlener?

  your point. So, again, this is like you said, it's this kind of collision course of incompetencies, disbelief, dishonesty, et cetera. And here we go, and we should not be surprised that people are skeptical about the vaccines.

• 7:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And holding aside the scarcity of masks in the early pandemic, weren't there official statements, and wasn't CDC included among them, declaring that you should not wear masks? Holding aside the scarcity and you want the medical professionals to be first in line. But wasn't there also some widespread statements from authorities declaring that masks are not helpful?

• 7:30Irwin Redlener?

  There weren't. There absolutely weren't. In fact, Tony Fauci himself was not all that enthusiastic about masks early on. And that changed, obviously. But yeah, there was a lot of rumbling and grumbling and people making statements that were not necessarily true, or things that they probably should have said, "We think they are, but we'll see. We'll be doing a lot of tests and experiments and observations."

• 7:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me get back to that, because that's a very important point about how science works, and how experiments works, and how new information arises. And I'll get back to that in a minute. There's a larger point I want to make about that, but let me keep moving this forward. What about the distrust of Big Pharma? That's out there. That's real. And the people who might be all in on their mistrust, if you sift through that, there's going to be some things in their mistrust that, yeah, that actually did happen. Yeah, there is the profit motive. So how do you address that dimension of this misinformation?

• 8:38Irwin Redlener?

  You know, let me say this. In 1947, and I'm making a point here. The country was worried about a new influx of smallpox into our country. New York City called up the six pharmaceutical manufacturers that made vaccines. They ordered 6 million doses. They didn't have to check with the state. They didn't have to check with the federal government. They just ordered it.

• 9:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The city, the city.

• 9:04Irwin Redlener?

  New York City, the mayor and the health commissioner met. Yeah, it's totally badass, man. This is like, yeah, we need 6 million doses. We need it now. They got 6 million doses and in less than 6 weeks, they inoculated the smallpox 6 million New Yorkers. And the pictures are astounding. There's New Yorkers lined up for blocks and blocks. You know, these kind of 40s images of black and white images. It was amazing. People trusted the health commissioner and the mayor. They said there was a bad thing coming, this smallpox. Go get vaccinated. And they did, in droves. Now we've had, in the 60 years since, a gradual increase in absolute skepticism

• 9:49Irwin Redlener?

  about institutions, about corporations, about government. And all of this is now, you know, it's all congealed in this massive mistrust of everything, including the institutions that we should be trusting. One good thing, a good thing about the Biden administration is the restoration of trust is happening already and it's happening much faster than I even anticipated, Neil.

• 10:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so now, what about this idea that you're, unlike other vaccines, where you put sort of a denuded version of the, of the virus and your body thinks it's the full virus?

• 10:26Irwin Redlener?

  Yeah.

• 10:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you don't get the disease, but you get the antibodies. So that's the more traditional understanding of, of vaccines. This one is actually modifying DNA. And that's kind of has a spooky feeling to it.

• 10:42Irwin Redlener?

  Well, RNA for the, for the Pfizer's and the Moderna's and DNA for the new J and J, Johnson and Johnson that's coming out. But yes, it is spooky. It's actually the so-called mRNA, the messenger RNA in vaccines are actually tricking the body's cells.

• 11:02Irwin Redlener?

  Into thinking that they've been invaded by some foreign virus when they're in fact been been tricked into thinking that there's a protein because of a protein that's inserted into the body, they're tricked into thinking that it's some sort of external virus and then they manufacture the antibodies. It's pretty fancy stuff.

• 11:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is genetic engineering.

• 11:24Irwin Redlener?

  It is genetic engineering.

• 11:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 11:25Irwin Redlener?

  Yeah.

• 11:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 11:27Chuck Nice?

  Which is great.

• 11:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 11:29Chuck Nice?

  I mean, come on.

• 11:31Irwin Redlener?

  Goodness, of course.

• 11:33Chuck Nice?

  Because it's not, you're not changing my DNA, right? You're not engineering me, you know?

• 11:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you kind of are. We're making your body think something is happening to it that isn't. That's

• 11:45Irwin Redlener?

  But Neil, we do the same thing with the old style viruses. Let's say if we give a dead, different, like what's called an adenovirus, a dead or attenuated version of the actual virus, you're also tricking the body to thinking that, oh, I got, I got a real enemy here. I'm going to mount an immune response. And, you know, this is what vaccines do.

• 12:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so it's just, it's a more sophisticated version of what we've been do, what we've been doing for our bodies for decades.

• 12:18Irwin Redlener?

  Yes.

• 12:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a fair way to say that then. Well, okay, so this is also a cosmic queries, and we did solicit questions from our fanbase on the vaccines. And so I'm curious, let's, oh, by the way, one last point. The trust or mistrust of vaccines does not land equally in the demographics of this country, or even perhaps the world. And I think that may be rooted in a distrust of organized medicine. All right. And let's look at sort of the black community, for example. Just, there is some really ugly history there. And so

• 13:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  there's got, there's some explaining that needs to happen. There's some really significant effort in the restoration of trust that's necessary.

• 13:10Irwin Redlener?

  I'm not in the government to do no experiments on me.

• 13:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, well, exactly, exactly. So, so can you, could you just remind us of sort of the pinnacle of the source of this distrust?

• 13:20Irwin Redlener?

  Yeah. So, there's a particular pinpoint in history.

• 13:27Irwin Redlener?

  That happened in the thirties and forties, which was called the Tuskegee experiments, where researchers, legitimate scientific medical researchers, decided, you know, we'd like to figure out what happens to somebody who gets syphilis and we don't treat them. So they rounded up a bunch of men with syphilis, black men in Tuskegee, and said, you know, we're going to give you free medical care, and we want to just observe you over the next few decades to see how you're doing. They did not tell them they were denying treatment for syphilis. So over the decades, they learned what happens with untreated syphilis at the

• 14:11Irwin Redlener?

  cost of the lives and health of a large number of black Americans.

• 14:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the point is, there were, treatment was available, if not cure. They believed they were getting treated, but they were just getting a placebo. And there they were unwitting medical experiments.

• 14:31Irwin Redlener?

  Yeah. Horrendous. I, I, I like to use the term Nazi-like. I mean, you know, I, and I mean that in a, in a particular way, because normal people don't experiment on other people like that. It's not okay in any way.

• 14:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The eugenics movement was still sort of in progress in the early thirties when that was happening.

• 14:53Irwin Redlener?

  It was best during long there, of course it was. But, you know, this is also on top of few hundred years of slavery, of Jim Crow, of institutional racism. This was like the caper. This was the, this is a very explicit horrendous experiment on top of mistreatment and of African Americans that had gone on.

• 15:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We confirmed, there was the Public Health Service in collaboration with the Tuskegee Institute doing these experiments.

• 15:22Irwin Redlener?

  Right. Right. So it was a government funding situation.

• 15:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it went through the sixties into the early seventies. So it was multi-decades. So, so what, why would you expect anybody to believe anything you're saying when we have that kind of history?

• 15:40Irwin Redlener?

  That's the question. And this is what the challenge now is, how do we embrace what actually happened and move on from that at a time when it's critically important that black Americans, brown Americans, Native Americans must get vaccinated? And one of the things too, Neil, is they are, those populations are particularly prone to catching disease, dying from disease, and getting hospitalized from the disease. So they are the highest risk groups who have the most hesitancy about getting the vaccine. And this is, this is going to be tough work convincing people that they really do need to get the vaccine in spite of that history.

• 16:24Chuck Nice?

  And I have the answer. I figured it out.

• 16:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's the answer?

• 16:29Chuck Nice?

  It's called the racial buddy system for vaccination.

• 16:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 16:34Chuck Nice?

  If any black person that goes to be vaccinated, a white person must go along with them, and they must get vaccinated from the same vial.

• 16:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 16:44Chuck Nice?

  The white, the white person goes first, like a food taster, like a food taster.

• 16:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, no, that's brilliant.

• 16:51Chuck Nice?

  And then the black person gets to say it. And then we know. And we know.

• 16:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they would drew it from the same source?

• 16:56Chuck Nice?

  From the same source. It's just like, all right, here's my white buddy. He goes first. Bang.

• 17:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because if you could be killing black people, you're going to be killing white people right alongside them.

• 17:05Chuck Nice?

  There you go. Right.

• 17:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, we got to take a quick break. When we come back, we will indeed get to our questions from our fan base on the COVID vaccine. What's it all about when StarTalk returns?

• 17:29Speaker 03

  Hi, I'm Chris Cohen from Hallworth, New Jersey, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. Please enjoy this episode of StarTalk Radio with your and my favorite personal astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 17:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. Tyson here. I got Chuck Nice tweeting at Chuck Nice Comic.

• 17:55Chuck Nice?

  Thank you, sir. Very kind.

• 17:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, Chuck. I'd love your tweets. They're insightful and I'd laugh most of the time. Some, they look like you're experimenting on us with whether something is funny.

• 18:06Chuck Nice?

  Well, listen, I'm very much like the Public Health Service of Comedy.

• 18:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Experimenting. Our Twitter is your sample base. Is that what it is?

• 18:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we're talking about the COVID vaccine, all nuances of it with our friend of StarTalk, Dr. Erwin Redliner, who's chief honcho of all disaster preparedness that we know of in this country. So, Erwin, we've got questions from our audience, if you don't mind taking them. Chuck, you've got them lined up. What do you have, Chuck?

• 18:39Chuck Nice?

  I got them right here. So let's start things off. These are from our Patreon patrons, and of course, if you are listening to this, feel free to go to patreon.com/startalkradio, support us, and we will give you priority, so to speak. Okay, this is Cameron Bishop.

• 18:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cameron Bishop, okay.

• 18:58Chuck Nice?

  Yes. He says, "I was recently listening to a StarTalk episode about pandemics years ago," which had to be Laurie Garrett.

• 19:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Laurie Garrett, for sure.

• 19:09Chuck Nice?

  He says, "I was curious, the guest said that back when we no longer have to vaccinate for smallpox, it's because we eliminated the virus. How likely is something like this with SARS-CoV-2? Please stay healthy." There you have it.

• 19:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, excellent question. I love it. So, Erwin, so SARS-CoV-2, that's the official, that's the geeky name for COVID-19?

• 19:38Irwin Redlener?

  Yeah. SARS-CoV-2.

• 19:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so that's the name of the virus and COVID-19 is the...

• 19:45Irwin Redlener?

  That's the name of the specific virus.

• 19:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the disease you get from that is COVID-19?

• 19:49Irwin Redlener?

  Right.

• 19:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that a fair way to put that? Okay.

• 19:51Irwin Redlener?

  It is. And the reason it's called COVID-2 is because we had a COVID-1 back in 2003, in fact, which is when people started thinking about how we were going to confront it with vaccines and so on.

• 20:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but I thought it was COVID-19 because it was 2019 when it was discovered.

• 20:07Irwin Redlener?

  Yes, but the name, that's the disease, but the name of the virus is SARS- C O capital V hyphen two.

• 20:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Two, so it's the second virus.

• 20:19Irwin Redlener?

  It's the second virus in this family of viruses.

• 20:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In this family of viruses, got it, got it, okay. All right.

• 20:25Chuck Nice?

  Perhaps you know my father, SARS-CoV-1.

• 20:32Irwin Redlener?

  Yeah, we called him Big Dog Kobe.

• 20:34Chuck Nice?

  Big Dog Kobe, that's what they called my dad.

• 20:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You shot him down in Tombstone, Arizona, and I come for my revenge.

• 20:47Chuck Nice?

  My name is SARS-CoV-2. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

• 20:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so, so, so if smallpox is done, then what, can we have similar hopes for this one?

• 21:05Irwin Redlener?

  No, because.

• 21:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Damn. Okay, next question.

• 21:13Irwin Redlener?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 21:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go ahead.

• 21:15Irwin Redlener?

  No, it's the, the problem is that it's a very, these coronaviruses, which is this, this is one of, are very, very common. You can't really eliminate them, and it's gonna end up being endemic, meaning around all the time. It may well get mixed, the, the vaccine for this may well get mixed into the annual flu shots that we get, and that's that, we'll control it, but we're, I don't think we're gonna stop it.

• 21:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But more, isn't it true, equally as important is that humans, Homo sapiens, were the only victim of smallpox? So if you get rid of smallpox, it's not jumping to you from a bat or from some other creature that we handle?

• 21:54Irwin Redlener?

  That is correct.

• 21:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so smallpox had, was unique in that way. Now, if you're gonna have species jumping viruses, uh, you, it's not clear that you would ever be able to stamp them out entirely at all.

• 22:07Irwin Redlener?

  Correct, and then you have also the, the so-called variants or mutations that we're confronting, where you have a little bit of a change in the makeup of the virus that causes to have different characteristics or less sensitive to the vaccines and so on. So, this is gonna be around for a while, but I think we'll learn to live with it and we'll adapt to it, but, um, it, it's not going away like smallpox.

• 22:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and like you said, if it's, if it's a part of every season's cocktail, then we're good to go. All right.

• 22:37Irwin Redlener?

  Yeah, we are.

• 22:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. All right, Chuck, next question, excellent.

• 22:40Chuck Nice?

  Okay, let's go to Tove Sonnenberg, who says hello from New Jersey. We're so sorry for you.

• 22:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know, I just thought. But first of all, Chuck lives in New Jersey, so that's a joke.

• 22:55Irwin Redlener?

  That's why I could say it's a joke.

• 22:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You could say it's a joke, but also, just the way you said that, I was ready for it to be from a really exotic place. It's like, Tovey, from, you know.

• 23:06Irwin Redlener?

  Exactly.

• 23:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From Tasmania, no, from New Jersey, okay.

• 23:11Irwin Redlener?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 23:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go ahead.

• 23:13Chuck Nice?

  Tovey says this, why couldn't Pfizer and Moderna start using standard vaccine techniques for COVID-19? Why was it necessary to use the RNA vaccine?

• 23:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so Ern, wouldn't it have been easier just to denature the virus we already know is in the house? Why is one faster than the other?

• 23:39Irwin Redlener?

  Well, maybe, but you know, the mRNA technique is really quick and it's very effective. And you're not fooling around putting live or attenuated vaccines of viruses into people. So there are a lot of advantages, even now, because you know, now we're seeing all these variants and mutations. We're worried about them being more infective and maybe more lethal. You can make a, very rapidly, a booster shot. Let's say, in fact, Moderna is, as we speak, working on booster shots that will specifically address these new variants. Otherwise, we would have had to start from, start fresh in a very different and much more prolonged process

• 24:22Irwin Redlener?

  to get the protection if we were using the old techniques.

• 24:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Erwin, you used a word, "infective." Is that the same thing as contagious?

• 24:32Irwin Redlener?

  It is, in the context of how we're talking about, yes.

• 24:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the same thing, okay, got it. Okay.

• 24:37Chuck Nice?

  So is it also not true that, because a lot of people are... Someone concerned that this technology, if you will call it, this advancement was rushed. But is it not true that this has been in the works for quite some time because of some people, after the SARS outbreak, saw the opportunity to make these advancements? And through these hedge fund investments, started working on this years ago? So it's not like last February, they started working on this mRNA technology?

• 25:13Irwin Redlener?

  Exactly. That's exactly correct. And like we're just talking about before, Chuck, it's actually started, as you just reminded us, after the SARS, the initial SARS pandemic. And yeah, and we had a real running start getting prepared to rapidly develop the vaccines that are confronting the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

• 25:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's a dimension of this entire landscape that I think is unrecognized or unappreciated, that it was a running start up to the starting line.

• 25:47Irwin Redlener?

  Yeah.

• 25:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, Chuck, keep it coming. Give me more.

• 25:50Chuck Nice?

  All right, let's keep going.

• 25:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Love these.

• 25:52Chuck Nice?

  Let's go with Fernando Gomes, or Gomez, I'm not sure. He says, "Why do our policies fail so badly in enforcing mass vaccinations? Since it is a collective protection measure, shouldn't everybody partake?"

• 26:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, well, I think Erwin kind of addressed that, that like 70 years ago, we all did agree. So, Erwin, let me just jump before you answer that. Is there some renewed sense of individual freedom that people feel the need to express in this country? So that the idea of being free means I don't have to listen to anybody tell me anything?

• 26:39Irwin Redlener?

  Yeah, actually, that's a really big problem, of course, again exacerbated by Donald J. Trump, who made a political agenda from this public health catastrophe. And which, here's the thing about this. So it's a question of, I'm deciding to take a risk, and you don't have a right to tell me not to. Except, that's not really applicable. If your risk-taking means that you're gonna climb up a, you know, straight wall cliff, or go skydiving, good luck to you.

• 27:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we'll let you do that. And in this country, we let you do that.

• 27:18Irwin Redlener?

  Yes, you can do that. But if your risk threatens me, that's not okay. You can't, you can't say, "My risk is I'm not gonna wear a mask, let's say. That's, I'm taking that risk, so I'll get Covid, SARS-CoV-2, and that's my choice." It is not your choice, because your choice is actually, if you implement it, if you do what you say you're gonna do, which is not do the protections that are required, and you make me, or my family, or my friends, sick because of your recklessness, that you are declaring your personal right, that is not okay in a society like ours. So it's differentiating between the individual risk,

• 28:03Irwin Redlener?

  and taking a risk on behalf of a lot of other people.

• 28:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so the people who are now doing that, did they just not learn civics? Did they just not, are they have no empathy? Are they, I mean, you're a medical doctor with presumably some training in psychology, or psychiatry, how do you analyze this?

• 28:24Irwin Redlener?

  It's a little narcissistic, it's a little self-centered. It's about focusing in a very egotistical way on you personally, with some disregard.

• 28:37Irwin Redlener?

  For the people who are around you, and I think that's really what we're talking about. And that could get obviously extreme, which doesn't happen all that often. But people who say, who have no empathy whatsoever, and they sort of are drifting into the realm of psychopathology, and that's not okay. But for most people who are in that category, I don't think they're thinking properly or broadly about what they are implying when they say, "I'm taking this risk, you be damned." And that's where we run into trouble, Neil.

• 29:13Chuck Nice?

  Or it could very well be that those people are anal apertures, better known as a-holes.

• 29:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so that's explained the whole thing. There you go, okay.

• 29:28Irwin Redlener?

  Do I dance for that, Neil?

• 29:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you don't have to ever steep as low as Chuck goes, okay? This is not a requirement. So Chuck, any more? We've got time for another, a couple more before this segment ends.

• 29:41Chuck Nice?

  Okay, here we go. This is Woody. Woody doesn't give us anything except he's Woody.

• 29:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 29:47Chuck Nice?

  And he says, "What level of efficacy would different groups have receiving the first round of vaccines? How does preventing spreaders like youth compare to protecting the vulnerable like oldies? Shout out to Australia's CoronaCast for the idea."

• 30:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, so is it, okay.

• 30:10Irwin Redlener?

  I don't think I saw.

• 30:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are those two different questions? Like, one of them is, what is the, let me split that. What is the efficacy of the very first round of experiments that are conducted? Right? If you're gonna say it's safe for me because you experimented on some other humans, what is that about?

• 30:28Chuck Nice?

  So I think what he's asking is exactly what you just said, but he wants to use the first round as a means of comparing and contrasting the efficacy between the elderly and young people, instead of just trying to protect certain people.

• 30:45Irwin Redlener?

  Yeah, so let me, let me say, so first of all, the long history of medical research and the use of human subjects was originally about the subjects being, you know, middle class, middle-aged, white males.

• 31:03Irwin Redlener?

  And many, many experiments to figure out what drugs work and so on were done with that very narrow group. And then people started to say, well, what about women? What about African Americans? What about children? And I think our understanding of if you're going to do a broad-based, full-population vaccine, for example, you can't say that if you gave it to 10,000 white guys, that it will definitely, middle-aged white guys, that'll definitely be effective in older people, or African Americans, or kids.

• 31:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the more demographics that you have to address, the bigger that original sample has to be?

• 31:45Irwin Redlener?

  Exactly right. Exactly right. And so when people say, are we going to give the vaccine to children, for instance? And Dr. Fauci recently said, yeah, we'll probably in the fall, we'll be starting to give it to children as young as six years of age, which is probably fine. But then they're going to have to, before that, give a lot of young children the vaccine to make sure it's safe and effective, which is ethically a little tough, as you can imagine.

• 32:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, because plus, a child is not, unlike an adult, a child is not entirely accountable for having received the trial dose of vaccine in the first place.

• 32:24Irwin Redlener?

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

• 32:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 32:43Chuck Nice?

  So easy, so easy. Here's some cookies and some juice. And the answer will be yes.

• 32:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or it's a candy.

• 32:52Chuck Nice?

  Here's a lollipop. Okay, I'll take it.

• 32:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're going to take a quick break, our final break. And when we return, it's to the COVID vaccine and Dr. Irvin Redner. We'll see you in a moment.

• 33:13Chuck Nice?

  Hey, it's time to give a Patreon shout out to the following Patreon patrons, Joe Selmsor, Daniel Smith, and C. Howe. Thanks, guys. C. Howe, you're helping. All right, I'm gonna stop now. Without you, we couldn't do this show. And for anybody who is listening, who would like their very own Patreon shout out, please go to patreon.com/stargtorkradio and support us.

• 33:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk. The COVID vaccine. Chuck, we're in question mode for Erwin Redliner. Let's give me some more.

• 33:52Chuck Nice?

  All right, let's keep it moving. Let's go with Roman Prekop, who says, "Hi, doctors." Okay, well, thanks for leaving me out.

• 34:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you feel that as a diss, Chuck?

• 34:05Chuck Nice?

  No, I mean, I mean, you know, I'm the only one that's not a doctor here.

• 34:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He could have said "help doctors" plus Chuck. He could have said that.

• 34:13Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, he could have said, you know.

• 34:14Irwin Redlener?

  We're finally getting our doom, Neil. This is, uh, sorry, Chuck.

• 34:21Irwin Redlener?

  We trained hard for this moment.

• 34:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, all right.

• 34:25Chuck Nice?

  All right, he says, "Hi, doctors. Do the current vaccines really decrease the spreading? Or just make the symptoms less severe?"

• 34:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so the vaccine people, are they spreaders? And they don't, and they don't, but they don't get it?

• 34:42Irwin Redlener?

  Well, they might be. And unfortunately, we didn't set up the trials well enough to know, or appropriately enough to know the answer to that question. But what we do know is that they're very effective in preventing disease, serious disease, and hospitalizations. All of them are, including the new Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which will be out in, you know, a month or so. So that's what we know. And the degree of spreading...

• 35:14Irwin Redlener?

  Unclear.

• 35:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's unknown. It's pure and simple. Okay.

• 35:17Irwin Redlener?

  Yeah.

• 35:19Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so that would mean you could be a carrier with no symptoms is what that comes down to. Yeah, okay. Got it. Okay. Keep it going, Chuck.

• 35:27Chuck Nice?

  Alright, let's keep it going. Sam Couch would like to know this. What makes certain vaccines have the requirement of being stored under super cold temperatures?

• 35:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I love that question.

• 35:39Chuck Nice?

  While others have no issue being stored close to room temperature.

• 35:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Erwin, I was looking at the temperature for the Pfizer vaccine, seventy below zero. Come on now.

• 35:48Irwin Redlener?

  Ninety.

• 35:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excuse me. Ninety below.

• 35:53Irwin Redlener?

  Seventy, you're gonna ruin the vaccine.

• 35:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So. So you're not gonna have the corner vaccine dispenser doing this. This is gonna have to only be in major institutions and hospitals that have freezers that long.

• 36:07Irwin Redlener?

  Yeah, of course.

• 36:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so yeah, what's up with that?

• 36:10Irwin Redlener?

  So Pfizer requires about minus ninety Fahrenheit. Moderna about minus five. The new Johnson and Johnson single dose vaccine will be able to be stored for three months in a regular refrigerator.

• 36:24Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 36:25Irwin Redlener?

  Which is an amazing advance, and even though the J and J vaccine is said to be less effective, it still is an incredible vaccine when it comes to preventing serious illness and hospitalizations. But the big problem here, really the big problem, is the global impact of trying to deal with vaccines that need this sort of arctic temperature for containment and storage. So we will not be able to use the Pfizer vaccine, for example, in many, many developing countries where that's called the cold chain, that cold chain capacity does not exist.

• 37:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it may be that your less effective vaccine, which stays preserved in a refrigerator, will in fact be the most effective force fighting COVID.

• 37:16Irwin Redlener?

  Absolutely.

• 37:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because that will have the widest distribution.

• 37:18Irwin Redlener?

  Right. And by the way, if we don't address COVID-19 in every single country on earth, it really will, will affect our ability to get this virus under control in general. So we can't say, oh, we're doing great in the US and in, you know, 90 other countries, we're not doing so great because those will become pockets for infecting, mutating, and causing resurgence of the COVID-19 disease. So we have a lot of global work to do, which is why the J and J vaccine is so critically important as part of our armamentarian.

• 37:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the first positive thing I've heard about it. So it's good to realize this.

• 37:58Irwin Redlener?

  Yeah, I would take it for sure.

• 38:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, in fact, on, on late night comedians were poking fun of, they were third in the list and they ended to 50% rather than 95%. And so, yeah, it didn't look good. It's like the laggard students in your class, you know?

• 38:16Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, except that it doesn't have to be stored at, you know, um, moon-like temperatures.

• 38:23Irwin Redlener?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Give me some more, Chuck.

• 38:26Chuck Nice?

  Here we go. This is Matthew Power.

• 38:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We should collect all the names that would be great superheroes from our fans.

• 38:35Chuck Nice?

  I know.

• 38:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 38:37Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. So Matt Power wants to know this. He says, uh, hello, Dr. Redlener, Dr. Tyson, it's my understanding that two, at least two vaccines by different companies are on the market. Are these vaccines basically the same thing? Are they so different that it makes a difference?

• 39:00Irwin Redlener?

  Is he talking about, you think the J and J versus the Pfizer?

• 39:04Chuck Nice?

  I know we just.

• 39:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I guess about just the two RNA ones.

• 39:08Chuck Nice?

  He's talking about the two that are pretty much the same. So that's Moderna and.

• 39:12Irwin Redlener?

  Yeah, yeah. Pfizer, yeah. There's not enough difference to talk about with those. You know, um, I've been vaccinated, my wife's vaccinated at the same place. She got Pfizer, I got Moderna. They're, they're close enough in the way they function. Uh, we're very confident in the results and the safety of both of them. Uh, there were some differences in how they're manufactured, which account for why they require different temperatures for storage. You know, like I said, minus 90 for Pfizer, minus five for, uh, Moderna. But, you know, i- if you're worrying about which to get, don't worry about it. Take whatever's available.

• 39:51Chuck Nice?

  Get, get, get it.

• 39:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the lesson.

• 39:53Chuck Nice?

  Get whatever's there.

• 39:53Irwin Redlener?

  Get what you got.

• 39:54Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Get what you get. Right. Uh, okay.

• 39:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 39:57Chuck Nice?

  All right. This is Mike Bertruccio. Mike Bertruccio wants to know this. Hello. What advancements to vaccines in general were developed for the COVID-19 vaccine? Do you anticipate that we'll see new vaccines coming on to the market? For other diseases?

• 40:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like that. Yeah. So did, was this a leap in any way, Erwin?

• 40:19Irwin Redlener?

  It was definitely a leap. But, uh, again, I think we should mention once again that this was not a leap that happened, you know, a year ago. It's a leap that started happening. The leaping began at least as far back as 2003, when people were looking at new mechanisms for developing vaccines and came up with this so-called mRNA, uh, technique.

• 40:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But also in, in the last 20 years, there's been great advancements in medical tools and technology to even accomplish this. Isn't that correct?

• 40:48Irwin Redlener?

  Yes. There's no question about it.

• 40:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 40:50Irwin Redlener?

  And, um, yeah, and this, this advancement is occurring non-stop and we will certainly be getting things that we can't even imagine now. This is one of the things, the beauty of looking into the future is that the research and the developments, the innovation doesn't stop. Like in other areas of science, this is an iterative process. We learned this last year. Wait, what if we modify it this way? What will we get? Or what if we have a whole new vision of how to make a vaccine? And that's what's happening. And by the way, I want to say one other word that's really important to the discussion of vaccines. The new tool that we'll have in our toolbox will be medications that you can take as an outpatient.

• 41:32Irwin Redlener?

  If you have the early signs of COVID and you test positive for it, where the doctor can prescribe a new medication you take by mouth and you're done with it. So that the combination of the vaccines, as they get more effective and more distributed, and new medications to actually treat the early forms of disease, is what's going to allow us to gain control over this terrible pandemic. And that's the light at the end of the tunnel, really, both of these things.

• 42:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cool. Very cool. So you do have something positive to say, Mr. Dastardly Preparedness Person. Okay.

• 42:07Irwin Redlener?

  I do. You know, one of the radio shows that I'm on a lot, Stephanie Miller Show, they call me Dr. Doom.

• 42:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dr. Doom. There you go.

• 42:17Irwin Redlener?

  Which is, well, anyway, no comment.

• 42:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Keep going, Chuck. We've got time for like two more questions. Go.

• 42:25Chuck Nice?

  All right. Let's, uh, let's go to Josh V. Josh V. says.

• 42:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He don't, he don't trust you with his last name. That's why.

• 42:33Chuck Nice?

  I know. He's clearly just one more person who knows.

• 42:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm not trusting Chuck.

• 42:38Chuck Nice?

  I don't blame him, you know? All right. Josh V. says this. I read a lot about herd immunity and the numbers of immune people needed to defeat the virus.

• 42:53Irwin Redlener?

  Yeah.

• 42:54Chuck Nice?

  Is, is there clarity on what percentage of the population needs to be vaccinated to actually achieve herd immunity?

• 43:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and isn't that, wait, wait, isn't that dependent on how close we ever are to each other on average? Isn't herd immunity different for, for rural and that it is for urban?

• 43:15Irwin Redlener?

  Not so much. Well, we talk about whole populations, really. So in any community, any community, we'll need to get a certain number of people who've either had the disease or who are vaccinated with an appropriate immune response. So that number was once thought to be sixty-five to seventy percent of the population that had to have the immunity. It's now well into the eighty-five, ninety percent that must have it. And that's a hard row here to hoe here. And we're gonna see what happens, but it's a lot higher number or percentage than we thought.

• 43:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the point is, so the way that herd immunity works then, correct me if I'm wrong, is you're one in ten that has the disease, but nine of us can't get it because we're vaccinated, so you're not gonna spread it. And so what are the chances of you finding someone else who is one in ten? Well, that's sufficiently low.

• 44:09Irwin Redlener?

  Correct.

• 44:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That even if you do spread it, that person has to have sufficiently low likelihood of something happen as well. So it rapidly tamps down back to zero.

• 44:19Irwin Redlener?

  Exactly, exactly. That's the whole point.

• 44:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. So that's just to think that through.

• 44:23Chuck Nice?

  So one of the, I know we're running out of time, but I just wanna follow that up with, when you said, what you said initially was, enough people either have to be vaccinated or get the disease. So with that in mind, we are now seeing some cases, I don't know if they're isolated or not, but we're seeing some cases of reinfection.

• 44:47Irwin Redlener?

  Yeah.

• 44:48Chuck Nice?

  Does that change the whole prospect of herd immunity?

• 44:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 44:53Irwin Redlener?

  Yeah. No, well, the thing of it is, it's a tiny number of cases, or reinfected cases. And, you know, this is weird thing happening that people have had the disease documented and presumably have the antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 are still getting vaccinated. So my son, by the way, who had documented...

• 45:19Irwin Redlener?

  Covid nineteen in March last, you know, last March, um, recovered, had antibodies. He still, his doctors wanted to get the vaccine, which he's getting. Okay. So, small chance, but really small. Okay.

• 45:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, what, we got thirty seconds. Give me something.

• 45:38Chuck Nice?

  Okay. Hello, Neil. Hello, Dr. Red Leonard. As the virus continues to mutate and become more immune to vaccine, that's an assumption he's making. How often do you think we'd have to vaccinate to maintain life from all the mutations of Covid?

• 45:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I like that.

• 45:56Chuck Nice?

  Oh, look at that.

• 45:57Irwin Redlener?

  I do too, but we don't know. We don't know. Sorry. Who wants to end this segment with, I don't know?

• 46:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, I, I got another way to come in on that. But just to, to, to shed a little bit of light on that. Are you saying there's not something sufficiently in common with all of the mutations? That by attacking that thing they have in common, it'll get any mutation that could ever take place? You're telling me you're not in that situation?

• 46:25Irwin Redlener?

  No, we're not in that situation.

• 46:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Damn.

• 46:27Irwin Redlener?

  You know, the South African version is like, you know, dangerous. And it may be more lethal than other ones. And, and we just, it's a work in progress. And viruses are smart. They're wily. They'll figure out a way around whatever we put there. So we have to be very careful and very diligent in addressing it.

• 46:46Chuck Nice?

  All right. Wow. Well, let me see. You could end up, could you end up making a supervirus by trying to attack a virus?

• 46:54Irwin Redlener?

  A supervirus by attacking virus. All I know is, all I'm telling you is that viruses mutate like crazy. And we got new mutations, by the way, in the United States right now. And we just have to stay ahead of it. We just, this is why we have to get everyone vaccinated as quickly as possible so that the mutations don't run wild, Chuck.

• 47:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, because the more viruses there are out there, the more opportunity there is to mutate. So you want to take that down.

• 47:21Chuck Nice?

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

• 47:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Life is cruel.

• 47:40Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, life is cruel. Damn.

• 47:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I just want to sort of conclude by noting. That I think something needs to be updated in our educational system for people to recognize that anything that's scientifically new will have uncertainties. And but the best access to what is good for you will not come from people who are not the scientists. All right, the scientists will find out on that frontier, what is working, what is not. And if at any given moment, you got to jump in, you can jump in. But if things change, it doesn't mean the scientists don't know what the hell they're talking about. It means at that time, that was the known understanding. And you and that comes with a risk. So the press generally doesn't talk about that risk. They just say, the scientists don't know anything.

• 48:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that is because it hasn't been taught in a way where people can understand the actual undulating, moving frontier of discovery. And so I applaud your candor when you said, we don't know yet whether after your vaccine, if you can spread it. We don't know. That that is so important. And it's not a sign of weakness. It's a sign of this is how the science works. And stay with me on that.

• 48:52Irwin Redlener?

  This is what you've been teaching everybody forever, which is that this is the beauty of science. We we learn this, there's more to learn. We keep learning. It's it's constant exploration.

• 49:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes.

• 49:05Irwin Redlener?

  And that's a beautiful thing. And that's what we have to teach in school. This is this is how we know and and learn to know.

• 49:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got it. Finally, we got Erwin to end on a good, on a positive note.

• 49:15Chuck Nice?

  There you go. That's great. And I'm encouraged. I'm encouraged because if not knowing makes science beautiful, then I'm the most beautiful scientist there is.

• 49:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, Chuck.

• 49:27Irwin Redlener?

  I'll quote you.

• 49:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, well, we all got to quote Chuck on that one. All right, Erwin, always good to have you. Thanks for being a friend of the show.

• 49:33Irwin Redlener?

  My pleasure.

• 49:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, you know I love you.

• 49:35Chuck Nice?

  Love you too, man.

• 49:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, Neil deGrasse Tyson here, concluding our episode of the COVID-19 vaccine. As always, I bid you to keep looking up.