Vaccines – Let’s Make America Smart Again

Continuing our Let’s Make America Smart Again series, Neil deGrasse Tyson, comic co-host Felicia Madison, and Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist Laurie Garrett eradicate unfounded disinformation and dish out smart, sensible knowledge and understanding about vaccines. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free. Photo: Neil deGrasse Tyson, Laurie Garrett, and Felicia Madison. Credit: StarTalk©.

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

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and beaming out across all of space and time, this is StarTalk, where science and pop culture collide.

• 0:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And today, we have a Cosmic Queries edition from our portfolio of "Let's Make America Smart Again." Love those.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Wise up, America.

• 0:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The topic today: vaccines. And we have one of the world's most knowledgeable people on the intersection of vaccines and the public's reaction to it. Laurie Garrett. Laurie, welcome to StarTalk.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 0:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thanks for coming. This is not your first rodeo.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 0:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're your third time with us. I had you for one. Bill Nye had you for another.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The first time, I think, we talked about the zombie apocalypse.

• 1:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Bill Nye, you talked about Ebola.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this time, we're talking about vaccines. So thanks for coming back.

• 1:14Speaker 01

  You bet.

• 1:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And my co-host, first-timer.

• 1:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm excited.

• 1:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me get your name right here: Felicia Madison.

• 1:23Speaker 01

  You got it.

• 1:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Felicia, welcome to StarTalk.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me.

• 1:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're a stand-up comedian and a producer of comedy?

• 1:28Speaker 01

  I am.

• 1:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a wonderful thing. And you also made sure to remind me you're a mom.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  I am. Three kids.

• 1:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, you're married to a fourth kid. That's your husband.

• 1:39Speaker 01

  My big baby.

• 1:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The biggest baby.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  My big baby. Gotta love him.

• 1:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you produce... What is Laughing Affairs? What is that?

• 1:48Speaker 01

  It's a company that produces comedy shows for corporations. I do a lot of charity events.

• 1:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nice.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nice, okay. All right, we'll keep looking for you out there. So this is Cosmic Queries. We have solicited questions from our audience on the topic of vaccines, which is always in the news, especially lately. And I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about it. And, and Laura, you're here to set the record straight. And let me remind people, if I did my homework right, you won a Pulitzer Prize for your coverage of the Ebola virus.

• 2:19Speaker 02

  I did.

• 2:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As a, as a science journalist. And right now, you're with, um, uh, what's the magazine?

• 2:26Speaker 02

  Foreign Policy.

• 2:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Foreign Policy. And you're a science journalist for Foreign Policy.

• 2:30Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 2:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is great. We need more science journalists out there who tell it like it is, not how people want it to be.

• 2:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that, oh, she looks really upset.

• 2:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What are you doing here? Get back out there and keep working.

• 2:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, tough job. Someone's gotta do it.

• 2:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Felicia, what questions you have for us?

• 2:48Speaker 01

  Okay, our first question is from Keela, Keilia Silves from Patreon.

• 2:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Patreon?

• 2:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're just kissing ass there.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, we love Patreon.

• 2:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. They, I think if you're a Patreon member, we read your question first.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  They gotta go first. That's what they're for. So I'm Keilia Silves, not me, but she's saying that. A neuroscientist from Minneapolis, Minnesota. What public health policy recommendations would you recommend to combat the growing anti-vax movement?

• 3:17Speaker 02

  Well, first, yes, the movement is growing, unfortunately. And so, yes, there are more anti-vax people today than there were five years ago, 10 years ago, what have you. Um, and that's bad news. Um, the problem is that more and more of the anti-vaccine movement is not specific to vaccines. It's actually more an anti-government movement, a lack of trust in governance, which extends to include science and scientific admonishments that may come from government sources, whether it's public health leaders or, you know, organized medicine, what have you. And it makes the battle of fighting this inappropriate, incorrect

• 4:02Speaker 02

  perspective about the role of vaccines in saving lives. It makes fighting it very, very difficult because you're not really fighting to the message. You're fighting to a larger social problem, a larger political problem, that very few people in public health are prepared to address. They don't have the skills, they're very uncomfortable with politics, very uncomfortable with talking about, you know, why, for example, is the anti-vaccine movement on one side, that would be the sort of Texas, Missouri, deep south side, very tightly linked to Donald Trump and his politics, whereas the anti-vaccine movement on the other side,

• 4:44Speaker 02

  that would be places like Seattle, Portland, Northern California, very tightly linked to kind of a suspicion of government and drug companies coming from a sort of Whole Earth Catalog place. How do you reconcile those and fight both of them? How do you deal with the fact that in Italy, the Five Star Movement, a decidedly populist, very right-wing movement, has taken over the Italian government, and they are, as part of their platform, opposed to all vaccines? How do you deal with the fact that one of the rising right-wing populist movements of France has as part of its catalog opposition to vaccines?

• 5:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Laurie, you're bumming us out here.

• 5:24Speaker 02

  I know, I'm sorry.

• 5:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The question was, what solutions do you have? And you just said, "It's worse than we ever thought, and we should just give up."

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Well, if it were simply...

• 5:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm paraphrasing, you just said, "Give up."

• 5:34Speaker 02

  I know, well, I didn't, but...

• 5:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She did, she said, "Give up."

• 5:37Speaker 02

  She did. But, but, but my point is, we had a moment of opportunity, maybe 10 years ago, when opposition was really about dealing with the facts. It was really about addressing specific concerns people had about vaccines. And today, it's more and more disconnected from any kind of fact base at all, and has more to do with kind of general political suspicions.

• 6:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're asking you for a solution here.

• 6:05Speaker 02

  So, I mean, if we do want to address the facts, and we do want to get people on board, you know, one of the big problems we have to deal with in rich countries like the United States is that most people haven't really seen someone with measles. They haven't really seen a child face diphtheria. They haven't actually seen any of these diseases, and so they've grown very nonchalant about it. And it's easy to get cavalier. We even had Darla Shine, who's the wife of the White House Communications Director Bill Shine, who has been tweeting that it's good for you to have measles. You should get your children exposed to all these, and they should get sick with all of them, because she, who

• 6:48Speaker 02

  of course has no medical training, falsely claims that they protect you from cancer. So we have all kinds of disinformation out there that should, needs to be constantly countered. And we have a fantastic toolkit available for multiple sites, online, books, etc., to help you know how to give the correct information regarding the efficacy of vaccines and their safety.

• 7:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But in terms of social policy, what you're saying is, we, it's that, it's that famous, so you use an anti-dandruff shampoo, and I come to you and I say, "Why do you use an anti-dandruff shampoo? You don't have any dandruff." Right? So, it's, it's, "Why are you vaccinating your kids against measles? You don't, we don't have measles here." What is, so, do you just have poster children who are completely infected with vaccine-preventable diseases and say this could be your kid?

• 7:45Speaker 02

  Well, one of the things that has been happening is more and more parents of children with cancer are coming forward, going online, going on Facebook and so on, and saying, "Please vaccinate your children, because my child's immune system has been devastated. And if your child is a carrier, my child will die."

• 8:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. At that point, it becomes a very serious public health thing because it doesn't affect you alone, it affects other people.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  That's right, because it's about herd immunity. So this is the other reason.

• 8:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Herd immunity.

• 8:16Speaker 02

  So this is the other reason that it gets so balled up with politics. Because what public health is really saying to the masses out there is, hey, if 98% of you get a measles vaccine properly and your booster properly, then the good news is, the whole society is protected. The herd is immune. Because for measles, which is the most contagious human pathogen there is, we need about a 98% level of immune protection to protect the whole herd. So that child with cancer, for example, is protected if 98% of the other kids have been immunized.

• 9:00Speaker 02

  But if, as soon as that herd immunity falls, gets down, and in some parts of the United States where resistance is high, people oppose vaccines, it's down to the 50% level, you know, which is insane, which is zero herd immunity. This is only individual immunity.

• 9:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But presumably, there are other kinds of diseases that don't require 98%.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 9:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Protection.

• 9:28Speaker 02

  Influenza.

• 9:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Influenza. Is that 50% protection? Because it cuts off, if you have half the exposure, and these are not people you're necessarily close to, you can get through it without catching it.

• 9:41Speaker 02

  Right.

• 9:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that how that works?

• 9:43Speaker 01

  That's why I don't get the flu vaccine.

• 9:45Speaker 02

  Well, no, there's a, you should, but that's another story.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  I figure all my friends are doing it, so I'm not gonna get it, so I'm covered.

• 9:51Speaker 02

  Well, we have, we have this, this concept of reproductive rate, and that has to do with, if, if you have the flu, and you're coughing and you're sick in this room right now, which better not be true, then you, odds are statistically, would infect three people in this room, as a matter of pure statistics. So the reproductive rate is three. If it's measles, the reproductive rate is 15 to 18.

• 10:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People in a crowded room?

• 10:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, so in other words, you know, there are, how many of us here in this room right now? Five. So just purely statistically speaking, if I had measles and you folks weren't vaccinated, every one of you would get measles from being in this room with me. And here's another way of looking at it. Measles, one of the things that makes its reproductive rate so horrible is it's airborne and the virus can linger in a space and successfully infect somebody who comes in later. I can leave this room, Anil's office is a site of contagion for everybody else that walks in.

• 10:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can leave this room and yet you'll still be here.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  I'll still be here. Linger on, oy oy oy.

• 11:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, next question.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  Okay, now we'll do another Patreon one right now from Brett LaRue. In the future, if we were able to travel to other planets with a breathable atmosphere, what would be the steps to vaccinate against the unknown dangers?

• 11:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  You know who first thought about that? Joshua Letterberg, who was a Nobel laureate, one of the greats, was at Rockefeller University for many years. And he thought about it when he was, I think at the time, the youngest Nobel laureate in history, I think he was like 33 or 34, something unbelievable.

• 11:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think Reece Carrier was pretty young, too, I think.

• 11:38Speaker 02

  Well, and he had, you know, discovered the first examples of antibiotic resistance. So one of the things Josh Letterberg said was, wow, we're sending men to the moon. What if we unwittingly took our microbes to the moon with those men to the moon and infected a life form, if there is any on the moon? Or conversely, what if there is some kind of microbial life on the moon and those guys bring it back with them, right?

• 12:06Speaker 01

  Scary, huh?

• 12:07Speaker 02

  So that was the beginning of Michael Crichton's book Andromeda Strain.

• 12:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Loved the book and the movie.

• 12:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, you know, that has been a constant question.

• 12:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just for those who didn't know, in the Andromeda Strain, there is a space probe that returns to Earth, but it had been contaminated by a space virus.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 12:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it basically killed everyone in the town where this thing landed. And it became a major public health issue, how to deal with it, what they're doing, why. Was it militarized? Was it a project? What was going on? So, a very fascinating topic. Michael Crichton, the same author of Jurassic Park.

• 12:44Speaker 02

  Jurassic Park, yes. Yeah, so that prompted NASA to look at this problem, and it's been constantly revisiting the problem. And in fact, in the current space station, now there are microbiomes.

• 12:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a whole division of NASA, the Division of Planetary Protection, where you protect where you're going and you protect Earth coming back.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  Right.

• 13:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just in response to this.

• 13:07Speaker 02

  Right, and in the current space station, you know, we had the twins, the twin brothers, the Kellys, who were identical.

• 13:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We had one on StarTalk.

• 13:16Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 13:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know which one it was.

• 13:18Speaker 02

  The one who's running for senate, or no?

• 13:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, we had the better-looking one, apparently.

• 13:23Speaker 02

  Scott, Scott or Michael.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  Oh, God.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  Well, one of them was in space and was the longest American in space.

• 13:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Scott Kelly.

• 13:31Speaker 02

  And while his brother was on Earth, and one of the things they did was test their own microbiome every single day. So that on Earth, one is keeping track of what microbes are inside his body, and in space, the other's keeping track of his. And you saw an actual clear change in space.

• 13:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  While it's possible for an invading species, an invading virus or bacterium, to completely take out a whole population that has no immunity to it, such as what happened when the explorers went back and forth from Europe to North America and back, all right? There was smallpox, there was, what's the other one?

• 14:15Speaker 02

  Well, influenza, smallpox, syphilis, all of it.

• 14:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Syphilis, yes, syphilis actually went back to Europe, right? So, and then it infects people. But the difference is, they're human beings on both sides of the ocean, right? So...

• 14:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  An interesting point of safety is can you catch a disease that has no experience in your species at all?

• 14:40Speaker 02

  Right.

• 14:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like, so for example, can, can an oak tree catch whooping cough?

• 14:46Speaker 02

  Answer no.

• 14:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No. Maybe the Wizard of Oz trees can catch whooping coughs.

• 14:53Speaker 02

  Well, and another way of, another way of asking that is, um, why do we assume that a foreign life form, an alien life form, would have a four-based pair DNA construct?

• 15:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. The, the kinds of biochemistry to match and marry with our biochemistry so that anything can happen at all. So, right, so it may be safer than we otherwise thought, but I'd rather be on the safest side by putting in these precautions. And of course, um, the, uh, 2019, the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, when they came back, they were put in quarantine, uh, in a little, uh, what do you call the, it's not a Winnebago.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  I love this game, Alzheimer's trade.

• 15:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not a jet stream, it's a something stream.

• 15:37Speaker 02

  Golf, no.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  Airstream.

• 15:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Airstream, thank you, airstream.

• 15:40Speaker 02

  Bingo!

• 15:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so I think they were in airstream.

• 15:43Speaker 02

  Ding ding ding ding ding.

• 15:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there they were crowded near the little window, looking out to have a conversation with people, just to keep them quarantined. And I, what always worried me was, well, wait a minute, they had to get into that somehow.

• 15:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, how'd they get there?

• 15:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, how'd they get?

• 15:58Speaker 02

  Well, the other side of-

• 15:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What, what steps did they take?

• 16:01Speaker 02

  The other side was War of the Worlds. The premise was what saved the world was that the invader got infected by an earthly virus.

• 16:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. Exactly.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  Do do do do do do do do.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is taking a creepy turn.

• 16:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In, in fact, wait, wait, funny you mentioned War of the Worlds. I keep with me a quote from the original book that summarizes the entire story. And if you, with your permission, I will read it.

• 16:27Speaker 02

  Please do.

• 16:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As we take out this first segment of StarTalk Cosmic Queries, let's make America smart again. For so it had come about, as indeed I and many men might have foreseen, had not terror and disaster blinded our minds? These germs of disease have taken toll of humanity since the beginning of things, taken toll of our pre-human ancestors since life began here. But by virtue of this natural selection of our kind, we have developed resisting power. To no germs do we succumb without a struggle. And to many, those that cause putrefaction in dead matter, for instance, our living forms are altogether immune. But there are no bacteria on Mars.

• 17:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And directly, these invaders arrived. Directly, they drank and fed. Our microscopic allies began to work their overthrow. Already when I watched them, they were irrevocably doomed, dying and rotting even as they went to and fro. It was inevitable. By the toll of a billion deaths, man has bought his birthright of this earth, and it is his against all comers. It would still be his with the Martians ten times as mighty as they are. For neither do men live nor die in vain.

• 17:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chills.

• 17:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oof, this novel was written after the astronomer Percival Lowell reported that he believed he saw canals on the surface of Mars, and published them. And this was headline news. There are Martians up there. H.G. Wells says, "I will make some money off of that." Out came War of the Worlds. A year later, two years later, out came the novel. When we come back, more of Cosmic Queries, the vaccine edition, on StarTalk.

• 18:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk. Let's Make America Smart Again. Cosmic Queries Edition. Vaccines. Laurie Garrett. Vaccine professional extraordinaire.

• 18:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you're just, it's not so much vaccines as you're just good about all diseases.

• 18:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How's that go at the bar? Your specialty. Infectious diseases. What's your?

• 18:59Speaker 02

  Well, the pickup line. The best way to kill romance is to start talking about deadly pathogens.

• 19:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Deadly pathogens.

• 19:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alicia Madison. Come on down. What's the next question?

• 19:10Speaker 01

  The next contestant is Thel Jacques on Twitter. What is the main driver that causes parents not to vaccinate their children these days?

• 19:18Speaker 02

  Well.

• 19:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Today, the number one driver. What would that be?

• 19:20Speaker 02

  Um, doubting the safety of the vaccines themselves.

• 19:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. And wasn't there a time when some people refused them on religious grounds?

• 19:29Speaker 02

  That continues. That's ongoing.

• 19:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 19:31Speaker 02

  And right now, we have an outbreak in New York City that's among Hasidic Jews because there's a very high level of opposition religiously to vaccines.

• 19:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And our nation has always respected religious rules, provided it didn't infringe on other people's freedoms. So are they more likely to, is a public health agency more likely to allow a religious person to not vaccine rather than someone who just fears the vaccine?

• 20:03Speaker 02

  Well, you know, the thing is, the religious objections, it was like less than 1% of the population. That was okay. But now 17 states have created a category called philosophical objection. And that means pretty much anybody.

• 20:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's the catch basin of any argument you have.

• 20:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. Okay.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  Sounds like something my kids are gonna say to me.

• 20:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, Mom, I hate shots. I'm philosophically against needles.

• 20:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, if your kid says, I'm philosophically object, it's like, that's kind of like, you have no rebuttal to that because they've thought about it.

• 20:38Speaker 01

  They just don't want to go to school.

• 20:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Philosophically object to school.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  Because you have to fill out these forms. You can't go to school if you don't get the vaccines.

• 20:45Speaker 02

  Depending on the state you live in.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 20:47Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is there a state that is most egregious in this matter?

• 20:51Speaker 02

  Well, Texas is way up there. So, State of Washington is way up there, although they're now, because of their current measles outbreak, State of Washington has a bill before the state legislature, supported by the governor, that would eliminate the philosophical objection.

• 21:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, what you're saying is, echoing how we started this, this show, people now see their kids and their friends have measles, they're more likely to vote differently than if you live in a world with no measles.

• 21:24Speaker 02

  So Disneyland, 2014, Mickey Mouse at all, measles. It spreads because of a visitor who's infected, and all the not vaccinated people in Disneyland then disperse all over the country. California, at that time, had philosophical objection possibilities. The state boomeranged, the legislature and the governor all said, "Okay, we eliminate all this. You can't go to school unless you're vaccinated." Now, California has one of the lowest rates of vaccine-preventable disease in the nation.

• 21:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm. So it just took a real example?

• 21:59Speaker 02

  Took a real example.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  Sounds like you need a better PR campaign.

• 22:03Speaker 02

  You know, it's...

• 22:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what you need? You need, you need Mr. Measles.

• 22:07Speaker 02

  Mickey Measles!

• 22:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mickey Measles, right, right.

• 22:11Speaker 02

  Well, you know, I, I, I mean, just to be sober for a moment, I'm one of the few people that could say, as an American, "I've actually held a child in my arms that died of measles in my arms."

• 22:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  There's very few people in my generation, and certainly in younger generations, that have ever even seen the disease. And doctors today have a hard time diagnosing diphtheria, or whooping cough, or, uh, you know, even chickenpox. They, they, they just haven't seen them. And it creates a lot of resistance in the public mind. You know, my favorite objection, which I have often heard, is, "You know, it's not that I think there's anything..."

• 22:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, the most laughable objection.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  No, it's, it's, it's the one that's kind of the in chic vogue at the moment, okay? It's, it's not that there's anything specifically...

• 23:02Speaker 02

  Some nasty chemical in the vaccine. It's just that they're giving too many vaccines. My children can't take so many. They need to space them out more. They can't, you know. And I always say, look, a baby has only two jobs. Two jobs. One, look at everything and listen to everything to finish the hardwiring of your brain and to learn language and, you know, what's going on in your world. And the second job, pick everything up and stick it in your mouth. Lick it. Slobber all over it. Grab another kid, slobber all over them. You're programming your immune system. In any given day, a kid is picking up more junk off the floor and throwing it in to program

• 23:46Speaker 02

  their immune system than is contained in all the various shots they will have for their entire life.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  Nowadays, infants aren't getting all that, though, because parents are crazy.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  But if what we know is if you don't do the grovel on the floor and stick the dirt in your face, you end up with asthma. You end up with autoimmune diseases because you've never properly got your immune system knowing what is foreign and what is friend.

• 24:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My sister has a barn, and she makes sure when they had their kid, had the kid crawl around the floor of the barn.

• 24:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He, he, he's not, he doesn't get sick. All his friends have all these allergies. He's got no allergies.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  I wonder if third children are healthier than first children because of that.

• 24:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  Well, everyone always lets their, nothing touches the first kid, but the third kid, ah.

• 24:31Speaker 02

  Right then, the parents are like, go whatever.

• 24:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, whatever.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  We should study that.

• 24:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Felicia, next one.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  Next question. Okay, Alana from StarTalkRadio.net. I understand that science points to the benefits of vaccines, but there is still so much fear and disbelief as to their benefits versus harm. I would like to know why they use the chemicals and preservatives they use. Aluminum? Formaldehyde, coloring, polysorbate, why haven't they moved forward with better vaccine technology? And what is the real statistics around the effectiveness versus injury in children and adults?

• 25:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 25:05Speaker 01

  Long question.

• 25:06Speaker 02

  Well, let me take the preservatives part because that is the objection that has been most commonly raised amongst those that fear there's a contaminant that will poison their child and then...

• 25:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Separate from the vaccine itself?

• 25:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's used because you want the vaccine to be stored.

• 25:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 25:24Speaker 02

  You don't want to have to make it every day.

• 25:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 25:27Speaker 02

  Right? And especially when you're going overseas into humid, hot climates and so on. You need a vaccine to be able to withstand a range of temperatures and so on. In the past, we're talking 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, there were some preservatives used that contain mercury,

• 25:51Speaker 02

  methyl mercury and ethyl mercury. And there were some that contained...

• 25:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the mercury family.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  Ethyl, because ethyl's a good friend of mine.

• 26:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ethyl!

• 26:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is Joey Mercury, this is ethyl mercury, okay.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  And there were, you know, other preservatives used, but they've been greatly, greatly reduced. And in fact, all the mercury-containing ones were banned by the FDA quite a long time ago. And worldwide, mostly what's done has more to do with the storage and how you store the vaccines than what preservatives you put in the vaccine. So we've greatly reduced all of those threats.

• 26:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, isn't it true that some percent of children who receive a vaccine will have an adverse effect? What percent is that?

• 26:42Speaker 02

  It depends on the vaccine and on the child's health at the time they receive a vaccine. And also what you're calling an adverse effect. A lot of people get a swollen arm wherever they get injected. Is that an adverse effect? Well, not one that anybody should be worried about.

• 26:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. Swollen arm that unswells after time?

• 27:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, okay.

• 27:03Speaker 02

  And a child may complain of a headache. Did they have the headache already before they got vaccinated?

• 27:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 27:09Speaker 02

  Did the vaccine give them a headache? Or was it the experience of screaming in the doctor's office that gave them a headache?

• 27:16Speaker 01

  Gives me a headache.

• 27:17Speaker 02

  But the adverse events are...

• 27:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Didn't it give you a lollipop when you finished?

• 27:21Speaker 01

  That was my kid screaming that gives me a headache when they get the shot.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  But the adverse events problem is very, very, very, very, very, very, very low.

• 27:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, this is a scientific program, so I'm interested in you quantifying the five varies.

• 27:33Speaker 02

  The problem is it's based on the vaccine.

• 27:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  So it varies widely.

• 27:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Does any percentage of the kids die?

• 27:41Speaker 02

  The only deaths that we've seen associated with vaccines have been, at least in contemporary time, have been with inappropriately manufactured products in India and China.

• 27:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:53Speaker 02

  And in fact, China has reached a point where they've made so many bad batches of vaccine that have harmed so many children that now they've had public executions of vaccine makers, they've imprisoned vaccine makers.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  And a lot of parents are refusing to use locally made vaccines and are trying to get American vaccines for their children.

• 28:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Interesting, okay. All right, Felicia.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 28:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  This is not a question, but Barry Fallon from Facebook says all patents should be removed from vaccines and medication.

• 28:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good one. So let's ask about that. What's the ethics of having a cure for something? And maybe you spent a billion dollars for that first pill. And, but now I want to recoup, but it's going to save lives.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  Well, let me take that apart. First, on the vaccine side, there's no drug company getting rich off vaccines.

• 28:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 28:50Speaker 02

  It's such a tiny, tiny piece of the profit pile. And a lot of companies, in fact, are abandoning making vaccines. Our real danger is that it's concentrated down to just four corporations on the planet that are really making vaccines because it's so low profit. On the drug side, we have another whole story.

• 29:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 29:10Speaker 02

  And without a doubt...

• 29:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It could be another show, so maybe...

• 29:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, without a doubt, there's profiteering in the manufacture of pharmaceuticals. And you're going to have hearings on Capitol Hill about it. You're going to see that it's across the board politically. Everybody's mad about it.

• 29:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we need some public health guidance. We need some ethical...

• 29:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sense that doesn't completely remove the profit motive. There's gotta be some middle ground in there.

• 29:36Speaker 02

  But you know, here's the thing, when the people blame patents, and believe me, I'm not a big defender, but when they blame patents, they fail to notice that right now, the biggest profiteering skyrocketing is in the generics industry. You know, you all heard of that fellow Shkreli who's now gone to prison. Well, he was buying up generic manufacturing. It was off patent.

• 29:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, Felicia.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 30:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give it to me.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  This is my favorite question.

• 30:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 30:03Speaker 01

  It's from Daniel J. Saltzman from Instagram. Can we create a vaccine to eliminate people that are against vaccines?

• 30:13Speaker 02

  Well, I'll take that as a rhetorical question.

• 30:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  Well, let's add that to this one, but from Wilhelmina Van, I can't even pronounce her last name, D I J K. Any guesses how you pronounce that?

• 30:25Speaker 02

  Yik.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  Yik.

• 30:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yik.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  From Facebook. Can science ever undo the damage caused by the anti-vaxxers and their celebrity spokespeople?

• 30:33Speaker 02

  Well, that's very much like the very first question we had in the first segment today, because...

• 30:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, the first one was asking about policy, but now we're talking about the power of popularity.

• 30:45Speaker 02

  Right.

• 30:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As a face of a movement.

• 30:48Speaker 02

  You know, we have a lot of celebrities out there, you know, Jim Carrey and so on, who are anti-vaccine. What we don't have are a lot of very prominent celebrities coming out saying, yay, vaccinate your kids, and let me show you my children. I've had each one of them vaccinated for everything according to doctors' recommendations. And that's a shame, we could really use those voices.

• 31:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's life in general, though. They're always the naysayers, they're never like the positive ones. Let's do this, let's do this.

• 31:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like, let's not do this.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're always just the complainers.

• 31:21Speaker 02

  I mean, think about, do you remember Michelle Bachmann?

• 31:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  She ran for president of the United States. What, three times ago, three rounds ago? And she claimed that the HPV vaccine, which protected you against the virus that causes cervical cancer, that that caused mental retardation. And she said that she, in one of the presidential debates, she claimed she knew someone whose child had become, had mongolism as a result of being vaccinated with HPV. Well, first of all, it's utterly ludicrous. You don't develop trisomy 21, a genetic disease, as a result of a vaccine. And you were administering the vaccine at age 14, so are you saying that for 14 years

• 32:08Speaker 02

  she was, you know, without trisomy 21? But it was utterly absurd. And in fact, a lot of the far right opposes the HPV vaccine, mainly because there's this crazy idea that if you're protected against a sexually transmissible disease, you'll go out and have more sex. You know, it's the same crazy notion that said you shouldn't use condoms or promote condoms, because then everybody will go out there and have more sex because they have condoms.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  And that's why I'm not getting the HPV vaccine.

• 32:40Speaker 02

  Right.

• 32:41Speaker 01

  I don't have to go out there and have more sex.

• 32:43Speaker 02

  And meanwhile, now we go all these years later, and we can see all over the world a dramatic decline in cervical cancer. I mean, this vaccine has, is the first genuine anti-cancer vaccine on the planet, and its efficacy is absolutely, I'm getting goosebumps even thinking about it. Because I've lost, I lost a dear friend to cervical cancer. I watched her suffer and die. And if only that vaccine had been available just a few years earlier, she might have been with us today.

• 33:15Speaker 01

  People are afraid. I was afraid to give my kids the vaccine, because you don't know, right?

• 33:19Speaker 02

  But what are you afraid of?

• 33:21Speaker 01

  It's new, you don't know the effects of it.

• 33:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're going to find out more of what she's afraid of after this break.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 33:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alicia, we want to hear your whole story on StarTalk Cosmic Queries, the vaccine edition, when we return.

• 33:45Speaker 03

  The future of space and the secrets of our planet revealed.

• 33:54Speaker 03

  This is StarTalk.

• 34:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk, we're back. Let's make America smart again. Cosmic Queries, Vaccines. Laurie Garrett. Always good to have you. We've got to have you more.

• 34:18Speaker 02

  I love it.

• 34:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent. And Felicia, my co-host, first-timer.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  First-timer.

• 34:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  Been unplugged.

• 34:29Speaker 02

  You were just saying that you're, you were resistant to vaccinating your kids against the human papillomavirus, HPV.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  I was. I was very nervous, mainly for my youngest one who had psoriasis. And they said that if you have an autoimmune disease, it could be dangerous. I've heard stories about people.

• 34:47Speaker 02

  Who said that?

• 34:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, who said that?

• 34:48Speaker 02

  Where did you hear that?

• 34:49Speaker 01

  Friends. Friends. People involved.

• 34:53Speaker 02

  The internet?

• 34:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:55Speaker 02

  Facebook?

• 34:55Speaker 01

  A girl that had it, like you said, a reaction, which could have been totally irrelevant. I was just nervous for her. It kind of makes sense if you have an autoimmune.

• 35:02Speaker 02

  Did you end up doing it?

• 35:03Speaker 01

  I did.

• 35:04Speaker 02

  Good, and why?

• 35:06Speaker 01

  I did a little research, and everyone that I spoke to that was knowledgeable in the field said, well, I had one or two people that still said no, but I basically decided the risk outweighed. I joked around, that I told my daughter.

• 35:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Benefits outweigh the risk.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I told my daughter that, you know, there's a vaccine that if you have sex before, you could die of cancer, and the doctor's busy for about six years. To keep her from having sex.

• 35:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So how about your sons?

• 35:34Speaker 01

  So my son, then it came out that you should give it to your sons also. And I decided that he was older at the time. I let him make the decision and the doctor was talking to him about it and telling him the risks. And he said it could prevent you from getting, giving someone cancer. It could prevent you from getting cancer. He was undecided. And then he said, and, and it could prevent you from having, um, warts on your balls. He's like, I'll get it.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  That's what made him decide to go forward with it.

• 35:58Speaker 02

  So cosmetic.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  Cosmetic. He was like, okay, I don't, large warts on the balls. He's like, I'm gonna have it. But, but people were nervous. And I remember in my schools, there's a lot of controversy in meetings and people talking about it. And there were experts saying, you should definitely do it, definitely do it. And the detractors were saying that the doctors get paid by the pharmaceutical companies to push it.

• 36:19Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:21Speaker 02

  You know, what we've seen worldwide is such a dramatic reduction in the numbers of women all over the world dying of cervical carcinoma. It's, it's astronomical and.

• 36:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good word on this program.

• 36:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, astronomical. You know, when I was young and very, you know, a teenage, sexually active teenager, the only protection we had against cervical cancer, um, other than trying to convince a partner to use a condom, was getting routine pap smears. Well, the pap smear is actually detecting that you already have it, you know? So it's already showing that cells are beginning to transform. And at the very least, you have what's called dysplasia, precancer, in, in your cervix or cervical area. Um, so that's, that's like, oh, the horse is already running down the hill. You know, somebody, please lock up the barn.

• 37:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like the radiation badge you wear in nuclear power plants.

• 37:19Speaker 02

  Right.

• 37:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's, you hand it in and say, okay, you were exposed today. You'll die in 18 hours. So thank you.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  Badge turned black, happy news. Yeah, whereas now people are tested for the presence of HPV viruses. And so you're actually not waiting to see, do you have transformed cells? You're waiting to see, do you, are you infected with the virus? That will transform those cells and lead to cancer. And good news is, we have a vaccine so that you don't even have to worry about it.

• 37:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go. We did my daughter.

• 37:53Speaker 02

  Oh, you did?

• 37:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 37:54Speaker 02

  Hallelujah.

• 37:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And my son, actually.

• 37:57Speaker 01

  Got to equal rights, right? Okay, Lee Daly from Facebook says, "I've been hearing of children and teenagers asking doctors to be vaccinated without their parents knowing. Is it possible for doctors to do this, or would it be considered unethical?"

• 38:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So these are personally their minors?

• 38:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. This is a new trend. We only have anecdotal reports of it in various places around the United States and in Europe, but it does seem to be happening, and that is, parents who refuse to vaccinate their children at the appropriate ages before age five. Now those kids are growing up, they're about to go off to college, where they will be exposed and live in dorm rooms and so on, with other kids that potentially could be carriers, or they are carriers, or they might expose the other kids.

• 38:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So these are kids who are more rational than their parents were?

• 38:46Speaker 02

  More rational than their parents, and are going to their pediatrician and saying, "I want the shots."

• 38:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if they're 12, can a pediatrician do that?

• 38:54Speaker 02

  No, the pediatrician is going to have to have a long conversation with the parents.

• 38:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so at age 18, can they do it?

• 39:01Speaker 02

  Yes, in most states, and in fact, in many states, at 16, they can do it.

• 39:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 39:07Speaker 02

  It just depends on the state law.

• 39:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  It's probably too late for many of these kids if their parents are anti-vaxers, right?

• 39:13Speaker 02

  You know, it's, one of the things I say to parents that express doubts, I say, "Do you really think that when your child is 20 years old and now is ready to, has wanderlust and wants to travel and do the thing that kids do in college, travel and go, 'Let's go to Morocco and check out Algeria and Casablanca and blah, blah, blah,' do you really think they're going to say, 'Thanks a lot, Mom and Dad, for making me vulnerable to every single darn disease I'm going to be exposed to because you refused to let me get vaccinated.'"

• 39:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, next one.

• 39:45Speaker 01

  Okay, this is from JTR Machine from Instagram. What is a measles?

• 39:50Speaker 02

  What is a measles?

• 39:51Speaker 01

  That's what he said.

• 39:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good question. I'll re-ask the question. When you get the measles, what the hell is going on in your body?

• 39:57Speaker 02

  Wow, that's a really great question, because measles, um...

• 40:02Speaker 02

  is so contagious and we have so much history and we know a great deal about what it does to the human body. When measles gets in, you inhale it, it very quickly goes through your lungs and into your bloodstream. So it is, you know, almost immediately systemic. But here's the really tricky thing that makes it so hard to conquer it. You can be infected and have no symptoms for a couple of weeks.

• 40:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so you're a carrier.

• 40:30Speaker 02

  You're a carrier and you don't know it. You're not being a bad person, you just don't know.

• 40:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's being an awesome virus.

• 40:36Speaker 02

  It's an awesome virus.

• 40:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 40:38Speaker 02

  Because it, it takes care of its host for a really long time.

• 40:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because if it killed you instantly, it wouldn't be able to spread itself.

• 40:44Speaker 02

  Right, well, that's why Ebola, we have yet to have a world epidemic of Ebola because you are immediately debilitated, you're so sick, you're not out tromping around. And in the case of measles, people can-

• 40:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it means the, the best viruses, from a human survival standpoint, are the most deadly?

• 41:04Speaker 02

  They're, well, the best-

• 41:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that a sentence?

• 41:07Speaker 02

  The best viruses, from their own perspective-

• 41:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, I'm talking about my perspective.

• 41:11Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, super deadly, rabies. Rabies, in the absence of vaccine, rabies is 100% deadly to humans.

• 41:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To all mammals.

• 41:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, all mammals. So you get exposed, you die, and it's fast. But you're not gonna give it to anybody else.

• 41:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, because you're dead on the floor.

• 41:27Speaker 02

  Right, you're dead and you have to bite them to-

• 41:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, and you have to bite.

• 41:32Speaker 02

  So, you know, it's a kind of vampire virus.

• 41:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have to be infected and cannibalistic.

• 41:38Speaker 02

  Right. But it, okay, so what is measles? So, the first symptoms of measles would be very hard to distinguish because it's fever, it's malaise, it's achy muscle, all the stuff that is like, oh, I have the flu. It's similar. Until you get the distinctive red splotches, which is petechia, and this is because your capillaries are responding to the virus, and you get these little tiny red, and then the red splotches join and then they look like big red, you know-

• 42:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm getting all itchy, listening to you describe this.

• 42:10Speaker 02

  I'm examining my body as she's talking.

• 42:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, I think I saw something earlier.

• 42:14Speaker 02

  You have what's called medical student disease.

• 42:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that it?

• 42:19Speaker 02

  As they learn about it, they start feeling it.

• 42:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I'm itching now.

• 42:23Speaker 02

  And then, at that point, you're feverish and you're down for the count, you know? And you're just gonna tough it out. And it really is just, is your immune system able to muster a response or not? When I was a child, I had measles, and it was before there were vaccines readily available. I had chickenpox, I had rubella and rubiala. So I went through the list, and in every case-

• 42:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are these all like ice cream flavors? Rubella.

• 42:52Speaker 02

  And they were miserable experiences. I mean, anybody that tries to minimize it has just never been around it. Measles, I remember being so delirious that mother would come in to the bedroom, and I wasn't sure it was her, or a ghost, or some image from somewhere. You know, she would speak to me and I couldn't hear. And that's another thing that people don't think about. They look at something like measles and think it's either lethal or not lethal. Well, measles used to be the number one cause of profound deafness in America. And a very high percentage of people who get measles will have permanent hearing loss. It also kills brain cells.

• 43:35Speaker 02

  And a lot of people will find that they are permanently intellectually impaired by having suffered from measles.

• 43:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you had measles.

• 43:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if it created brain damage-

• 43:46Speaker 02

  Well, maybe it did.

• 43:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You might have had two Pulitzer Prizes by now. Now you're just an idiot, you only got one.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  I won't get political right now, but there's probably a lot of people-

• 43:54Speaker 02

  Well, I was a finalist two other times.

• 43:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  And shingles, like shingles is the, everyone's questioning whether to get the shingles vaccine.

• 44:02Speaker 02

  Oh, get it, I've had shingles. Ooh, ow, awful.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  I hear, it's terrible, right?

• 44:08Speaker 02

  Oh my goodness.

• 44:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm shingles vaccinated.

• 44:09Speaker 02

  Well, I had shingles, I was, it was in 1980-

• 44:15Speaker 01

  Three?

• 44:16Speaker 02

  I had heard that-

• 44:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She remembers the day, date, time.

• 44:19Speaker 01

  No, I really do. I really do because I was, I was very young forgetting measles.

• 44:24Speaker 02

  I mean, shingles, it's usually considered a problem for seniors. But I was covering the first documented cases of babies with AIDS. And this is in the very early days of the AIDS epidemic. And the tragedy I was seeing, living for weeks among screaming, crying children for whom we had no treatment, nothing, and seeing them separated from their dying parents on another ward. And it was so traumatic, I, I came down with profound shingles. And it went right up my spinal cord. And believe me, you do not want shingles.

• 45:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So your immune system was compromised in your emotional state?

• 45:05Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 45:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There it was.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  I didn't know that's how you get it.

• 45:08Speaker 02

  Because the chickenpox virus hides in your nerve cells.

• 45:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so hence it's opportunistic when you get older.

• 45:15Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 45:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When you're more susceptible.

• 45:17Speaker 02

  Yes, and it's opportunistic when you're under high stress.

• 45:21Speaker 01

  Another reason for me to stay calm. Okay, let's hear from-

• 45:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, let's do lightning round. Okay, now your answers have to be-

• 45:26Speaker 02

  Really short.

• 45:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sound bites.

• 45:28Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 45:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I don't know if you can do that. Do you have this power?

• 45:32Speaker 02

  I do.

• 45:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll be the judge of that.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  Okay, this is a long question.

• 45:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Felicia, go.

• 45:36Speaker 01

  It's a long question.

• 45:37Speaker 02

  You gotta pick short.

• 45:37Speaker 01

  Okay, I don't have any short ones left. Okay, Arlene Condon, I'll talk fast. Okay, StarTalkRadio.net, there's now an AI that can check to see if a baby is autistic at six months old with 96% accuracy. If this AI can predict autism at six months old at a 96% rate, but vaccines aren't given until 12 months old, doesn't this completely kill the notion that vaccines cause autism?

• 45:59Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 46:00Speaker 01

  There you go. That was quick. Okay, give her the-

• 46:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was good.

• 46:03Speaker 01

  This is from Firecat711 Instagram.

• 46:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was a sound bite.

• 46:07Speaker 01

  That was great. No question about that one. She was, no doubt on that. Okay. Given the current trend of people moving away from vaccines, how do you approach anti-vaxxers? I live in an area with a high concentration of anti-vaxxers and I'm finding it increasingly difficult to sway their opinions.

• 46:24Speaker 02

  Tell them that by not vaccinating their children, they're putting your children at risk and that that is not a fair way to participate in democracy or be part of a community.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  Grace22Burrows Instagram, why aren't all vaccines 100% effective?

• 46:41Speaker 02

  Oh goodness, that's a hard one to do really short, but let's just say it has to do with the nature of the kind of immune response that would be properly mounted in order to defeat that microbe.

• 46:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let me follow up. Are there any vaccines that are 100%?

• 46:57Speaker 02

  Um, well, the Ebola vaccine looks to be 100%.

• 47:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nice, and what's the vaccines that's sort of the lowest percent, would you say?

• 47:04Speaker 02

  Influenza.

• 47:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Influenza, that's because it's not matching the right virus.

• 47:07Speaker 02

  That's because of two problems. It's not matching the right virus that's circulating and it's your inherent immune system memory, which is against whatever was the first form of flu you were exposed to as a baby.

• 47:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  I have a question about flu because someone said, if you get the vaccine and it's the same strand, how come you're not immune to it the second time around? Why do you have to get the flu vaccine again?

• 47:30Speaker 02

  Because it never is the same.

• 47:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's changed.

• 47:32Speaker 02

  But it has come back the same. No, no, no, it would be the same family. So like you, we might say there's an H1N1 flu circulating.

• 47:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I hope not.

• 47:42Speaker 02

  And you might-

• 47:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Isn't that the 1918 flu?

• 47:45Speaker 02

  Yes. And so you, and you might have been exposed to H1N1 when it came through in 2009, which was that huge global pandemic we had, right? But-

• 47:55Speaker 01

  School canceled, everything.

• 47:56Speaker 02

  But it's a different H1N1. So your immune system only partially recognizes it.

• 48:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, next question.

• 48:02Speaker 01

  Merle at Merle from Twitter, what is the difference between a disease being eliminated and eradicated?

• 48:08Speaker 02

  Ah, I love that.

• 48:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 48:09Speaker 02

  Eliminated means it's, you know, not in circulation.

• 48:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't even know to ask that question, that's great.

• 48:15Speaker 02

  Smart person.

• 48:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good.

• 48:16Speaker 02

  So eliminated is it's not in circulation in your given community, state, nation, whatever group you're defining. Eradicated, and we only have eradicated one human pathogen, smallpox, means it doesn't exist on planet Earth anymore.

• 48:33Speaker 02

  Except in laboratories.

• 48:35Speaker 01

  So people aren't vaccinated anymore for it?

• 48:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's correct.

• 48:38Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 48:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. Well, we are going, that ends the lightning round. Lori, thanks for coming back.

• 48:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like I said, I mean, I don't like having you on the show because it's about stuff that makes me itch and scratch and it's always apocalyptic.

• 48:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But we need you.

• 48:57Speaker 01

  It's important.

• 48:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In spite of this. Yeah, yeah. And Felicia, so Felicia, where are you most active on social media?

• 49:04Speaker 01

  Instagram and Facebook.

• 49:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  Felicia Madison, comedian on both.

• 49:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But we can find you easily.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 49:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And do you tweet?

• 49:11Speaker 02

  Oh, I do.

• 49:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, ooh, ooh. Excuse me.

• 49:14Speaker 02

  A lot.

• 49:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excuse me. And your Twitter handle?

• 49:18Speaker 02

  At Lori underscore Garrett.

• 49:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got it. We got it.

• 49:21Speaker 01

  I'm following you right now.

• 49:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll be looking for both of you. This has been StarTalk, Let's Make America Smart Again Edition, all about vaccines. I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and I thank Lori and Felicia, and maybe we can do this again when the next disease that we have to eradicate comes up. As always, I bid you.

• 49:43Speaker 01

  Can you eradicate stupidity?

• 49:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can you eradicate stupidity? Good one.

• 49:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As always, I bid you to keep looking up.