Pod Insights StarTalk Podcast The COVID-19 Vaccines, with Irwin Redlener About this episode 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.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.
0:14 Neil 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
0:54 Neil 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!
1:32 Neil 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.
2:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So we'll try, we'll see how this goes, I don't know.
2:20 Irwin Redlener? Yeah, we will.
2:23 Chuck Nice? So I call Dr. Red Leonard, uh, our, our own Tony Fauci.
2:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We got our own personal.
2:31 Chuck 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.
2:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, so let me just a- ask you, the, the vaccine.
2:42 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
2:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know, I viewed like any other vaccine, if it can prevent illness, I'm, I'm getting it.
2:47 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
2:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But there seems to be this gurgling of attitude towards the vaccine.
2:53 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
2:54 Neil 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?
3:13 Irwin 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,
3:23 Irwin 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.
4:05 Irwin Redlener? Also at a time simultaneously, Neil, where, where the anti-vax movement was growing anyway. So it was into this kind of
4:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Perfect story.
4:14 Irwin 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.
4:37 Neil 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.
5:14 Irwin Redlener? A very good point.
5:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
5:16 Irwin Redlener? Think about this, he says, "Inject yourself with bleach to cure yourself of COVID and get a vaccine."
5:25 Neil 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.
5:56 Irwin Redlener? You mean like the CDC?
5:57 Neil 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?
6:11 Irwin 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
6:50 Irwin 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.
7:06 Neil 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?
7:30 Irwin 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."
7:58 Neil 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?
8:38 Irwin 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.
9:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The city, the city.
9:04 Irwin 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
9:49 Irwin 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.
10:16 Neil 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?
10:26 Irwin Redlener? Yeah.
10:26 Neil 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.
10:42 Irwin 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.
11:02 Irwin 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.
11:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is genetic engineering.
11:24 Irwin Redlener? It is genetic engineering.
11:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wow.
11:25 Irwin Redlener? Yeah.
11:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wow.
11:27 Chuck Nice? Which is great.
11:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
11:29 Chuck Nice? I mean, come on.
11:31 Irwin Redlener? Goodness, of course.
11:33 Chuck Nice? Because it's not, you're not changing my DNA, right? You're not engineering me, you know?
11:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, you kind of are. We're making your body think something is happening to it that isn't. That's
11:45 Irwin 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.
12:10 Neil 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.
12:18 Irwin Redlener? Yes.
12:19 Neil 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
13:01 Neil 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.
13:10 Irwin Redlener? I'm not in the government to do no experiments on me.
13:12 Neil 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?
13:20 Irwin Redlener? Yeah. So, there's a particular pinpoint in history.
13:27 Irwin 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
14:11 Irwin Redlener? cost of the lives and health of a large number of black Americans.
14:18 Neil 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.
14:31 Irwin 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.
14:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The eugenics movement was still sort of in progress in the early thirties when that was happening.
14:53 Irwin 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.
15:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We confirmed, there was the Public Health Service in collaboration with the Tuskegee Institute doing these experiments.
15:22 Irwin Redlener? Right. Right. So it was a government funding situation.
15:25 Neil 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?
15:40 Irwin 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.
16:24 Chuck Nice? And I have the answer. I figured it out.
16:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What's the answer?
16:29 Chuck Nice? It's called the racial buddy system for vaccination.
16:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
16:34 Chuck 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.
16:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
16:44 Chuck Nice? The white, the white person goes first, like a food taster, like a food taster.
16:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, no, that's brilliant.
16:51 Chuck Nice? And then the black person gets to say it. And then we know. And we know.
16:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And they would drew it from the same source?
16:56 Chuck Nice? From the same source. It's just like, all right, here's my white buddy. He goes first. Bang.
17:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because if you could be killing black people, you're going to be killing white people right alongside them.
17:05 Chuck Nice? There you go. Right.
17:07 Neil 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?
17:29 Speaker 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.
17:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're back. Tyson here. I got Chuck Nice tweeting at Chuck Nice Comic.
17:55 Chuck Nice? Thank you, sir. Very kind.
17:56 Neil 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.
18:06 Chuck Nice? Well, listen, I'm very much like the Public Health Service of Comedy.
18:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Experimenting. Our Twitter is your sample base. Is that what it is?
18:19 Neil 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?
18:39 Chuck 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.
18:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Cameron Bishop, okay.
18:58 Chuck Nice? Yes. He says, "I was recently listening to a StarTalk episode about pandemics years ago," which had to be Laurie Garrett.
19:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Laurie Garrett, for sure.
19:09 Chuck 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.
19:29 Neil 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?
19:38 Irwin Redlener? Yeah. SARS-CoV-2.
19:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so that's the name of the virus and COVID-19 is the...
19:45 Irwin Redlener? That's the name of the specific virus.
19:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And the disease you get from that is COVID-19?
19:49 Irwin Redlener? Right.
19:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is that a fair way to put that? Okay.
19:51 Irwin 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.
20:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, but I thought it was COVID-19 because it was 2019 when it was discovered.
20:07 Irwin Redlener? Yes, but the name, that's the disease, but the name of the virus is SARS- C O capital V hyphen two.
20:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Two, so it's the second virus.
20:19 Irwin Redlener? It's the second virus in this family of viruses.
20:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In this family of viruses, got it, got it, okay. All right.
20:25 Chuck Nice? Perhaps you know my father, SARS-CoV-1.
20:32 Irwin Redlener? Yeah, we called him Big Dog Kobe.
20:34 Chuck Nice? Big Dog Kobe, that's what they called my dad.
20:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You shot him down in Tombstone, Arizona, and I come for my revenge.
20:47 Chuck Nice? My name is SARS-CoV-2. You killed my father. Prepare to die.
20:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, so, so, so if smallpox is done, then what, can we have similar hopes for this one?
21:05 Irwin Redlener? No, because.
21:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Damn. Okay, next question.
21:13 Irwin Redlener? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
21:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Go ahead.
21:15 Irwin 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.
21:38 Neil 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?
21:54 Irwin Redlener? That is correct.
21:56 Neil 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.
22:07 Irwin 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.
22:30 Neil 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.
22:37 Irwin Redlener? Yeah, we are.
22:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right. All right, Chuck, next question, excellent.
22:40 Chuck Nice? Okay, let's go to Tove Sonnenberg, who says hello from New Jersey. We're so sorry for you.
22:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I know, I just thought. But first of all, Chuck lives in New Jersey, so that's a joke.
22:55 Irwin Redlener? That's why I could say it's a joke.
22:56 Neil 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.
23:06 Irwin Redlener? Exactly.
23:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? From Tasmania, no, from New Jersey, okay.
23:11 Irwin Redlener? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
23:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Go ahead.
23:13 Chuck 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?
23:31 Neil 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?
23:39 Irwin 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
24:22 Irwin Redlener? to get the protection if we were using the old techniques.
24:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Erwin, you used a word, "infective." Is that the same thing as contagious?
24:32 Irwin Redlener? It is, in the context of how we're talking about, yes.
24:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's the same thing, okay, got it. Okay.
24:37 Chuck 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?
25:13 Irwin 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.
25:37 Neil 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.
25:47 Irwin Redlener? Yeah.
25:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, Chuck, keep it coming. Give me more.
25:50 Chuck Nice? All right, let's keep going.
25:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Love these.
25:52 Chuck 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?"
26:14 Neil 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?
26:39 Irwin 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.
27:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And we'll let you do that. And in this country, we let you do that.
27:18 Irwin 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,
28:03 Irwin Redlener? and taking a risk on behalf of a lot of other people.
28:06 Neil 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?
28:24 Irwin 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.
28:37 Irwin 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.
29:13 Chuck Nice? Or it could very well be that those people are anal apertures, better known as a-holes.
29:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so that's explained the whole thing. There you go, okay.
29:28 Irwin Redlener? Do I dance for that, Neil?
29:30 Neil 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.
29:41 Chuck Nice? Okay, here we go. This is Woody. Woody doesn't give us anything except he's Woody.
29:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
29:47 Chuck 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."
30:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, so is it, okay.
30:10 Irwin Redlener? I don't think I saw.
30:10 Neil 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?
30:28 Chuck 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.
30:45 Irwin 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.
31:03 Irwin 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.
31:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So the more demographics that you have to address, the bigger that original sample has to be?
31:45 Irwin 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.
32:14 Neil 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.
32:24 Irwin 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?
32:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
32:43 Chuck Nice? So easy, so easy. Here's some cookies and some juice. And the answer will be yes.
32:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Or it's a candy.
32:52 Chuck Nice? Here's a lollipop. Okay, I'll take it.
32:55 Neil 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.
33:13 Chuck 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.
33:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're back. StarTalk. The COVID vaccine. Chuck, we're in question mode for Erwin Redliner. Let's give me some more.
33:52 Chuck 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.
34:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Did you feel that as a diss, Chuck?
34:05 Chuck Nice? No, I mean, I mean, you know, I'm the only one that's not a doctor here.
34:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He could have said "help doctors" plus Chuck. He could have said that.
34:13 Chuck Nice? Yeah, he could have said, you know.
34:14 Irwin Redlener? We're finally getting our doom, Neil. This is, uh, sorry, Chuck.
34:21 Irwin Redlener? We trained hard for this moment.
34:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, all right.
34:25 Chuck Nice? All right, he says, "Hi, doctors. Do the current vaccines really decrease the spreading? Or just make the symptoms less severe?"
34:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, so the vaccine people, are they spreaders? And they don't, and they don't, but they don't get it?
34:42 Irwin 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...
35:14 Irwin Redlener? Unclear.
35:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's unknown. It's pure and simple. Okay.
35:17 Irwin Redlener? Yeah.
35:19 Chuck Nice? Right.
35:19 Neil 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.
35:27 Chuck 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?
35:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, I love that question.
35:39 Chuck Nice? While others have no issue being stored close to room temperature.
35:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Erwin, I was looking at the temperature for the Pfizer vaccine, seventy below zero. Come on now.
35:48 Irwin Redlener? Ninety.
35:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Excuse me. Ninety below.
35:53 Irwin Redlener? Seventy, you're gonna ruin the vaccine.
35:56 Neil 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.
36:07 Irwin Redlener? Yeah, of course.
36:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, so yeah, what's up with that?
36:10 Irwin 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.
36:24 Chuck Nice? Wow.
36:25 Irwin 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.
37:05 Neil 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.
37:16 Irwin Redlener? Absolutely.
37:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because that will have the widest distribution.
37:18 Irwin 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.
37:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's the first positive thing I've heard about it. So it's good to realize this.
37:58 Irwin Redlener? Yeah, I would take it for sure.
38:00 Neil 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?
38:16 Chuck Nice? Yeah, except that it doesn't have to be stored at, you know, um, moon-like temperatures.
38:23 Irwin Redlener? Yeah, yeah.
38:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right. Give me some more, Chuck.
38:26 Chuck Nice? Here we go. This is Matthew Power.
38:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We should collect all the names that would be great superheroes from our fans.
38:35 Chuck Nice? I know.
38:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
38:37 Chuck 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?
39:00 Irwin Redlener? Is he talking about, you think the J and J versus the Pfizer?
39:04 Chuck Nice? I know we just.
39:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, I guess about just the two RNA ones.
39:08 Chuck Nice? He's talking about the two that are pretty much the same. So that's Moderna and.
39:12 Irwin 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.
39:51 Chuck Nice? Get, get, get it.
39:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's the lesson.
39:53 Chuck Nice? Get whatever's there.
39:53 Irwin Redlener? Get what you got.
39:54 Chuck Nice? Yeah. Get what you get. Right. Uh, okay.
39:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right.
39:57 Chuck 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?
40:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I like that. Yeah. So did, was this a leap in any way, Erwin?
40:19 Irwin 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.
40:40 Neil 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?
40:48 Irwin Redlener? Yes. There's no question about it.
40:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
40:50 Irwin 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.
41:32 Irwin 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.
42:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Cool. Very cool. So you do have something positive to say, Mr. Dastardly Preparedness Person. Okay.
42:07 Irwin Redlener? I do. You know, one of the radio shows that I'm on a lot, Stephanie Miller Show, they call me Dr. Doom.
42:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Dr. Doom. There you go.
42:17 Irwin Redlener? Which is, well, anyway, no comment.
42:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right. Keep going, Chuck. We've got time for like two more questions. Go.
42:25 Chuck Nice? All right. Let's, uh, let's go to Josh V. Josh V. says.
42:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He don't, he don't trust you with his last name. That's why.
42:33 Chuck Nice? I know. He's clearly just one more person who knows.
42:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm not trusting Chuck.
42:38 Chuck 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.
42:53 Irwin Redlener? Yeah.
42:54 Chuck Nice? Is, is there clarity on what percentage of the population needs to be vaccinated to actually achieve herd immunity?
43:04 Neil 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?
43:15 Irwin 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.
43:50 Neil 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.
44:09 Irwin Redlener? Correct.
44:10 Neil 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.
44:19 Irwin Redlener? Exactly, exactly. That's the whole point.
44:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right. So that's just to think that through.
44:23 Chuck 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.
44:47 Irwin Redlener? Yeah.
44:48 Chuck Nice? Does that change the whole prospect of herd immunity?
44:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
44:53 Irwin 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...
45:19 Irwin 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.
45:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Chuck, what, we got thirty seconds. Give me something.
45:38 Chuck 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?
45:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, I like that.
45:56 Chuck Nice? Oh, look at that.
45:57 Irwin 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?
46:05 Neil 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?
46:25 Irwin Redlener? No, we're not in that situation.
46:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Damn.
46:27 Irwin 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.
46:46 Chuck 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?
46:54 Irwin 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.
47:15 Neil 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.
47:21 Chuck 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.
47:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Life is cruel.
47:40 Chuck Nice? Yeah, life is cruel. Damn.
47:42 Neil 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.
48:25 Neil 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.
48:52 Irwin 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.
49:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, yes.
49:05 Irwin 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.
49:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We got it. Finally, we got Erwin to end on a good, on a positive note.
49:15 Chuck 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.
49:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, Chuck.
49:27 Irwin Redlener? I'll quote you.
49:28 Neil 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.
49:33 Irwin Redlener? My pleasure.
49:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Chuck, you know I love you.
49:35 Chuck Nice? Love you too, man.
49:36 Neil 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.
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