COVID Update

All right, so what I'd like to talk about today is the COVID 19 vaccine. Two of the major studies that you may have heard about, the first one being the Moderna and the second one being the Pfizer vaccine study. There are two other major studies that are ongoing that will come and some information will come out about them over the probably the next week or two. I want to focus on the Moderna and the Pfizer, mainly because they are similar platform, which is a nanoparticle platform and it's a novel platform. It's the first time this kind of platform has actually been used at this scale. And so I want to briefly talk about that those two vaccine studies now just to remind the audience. I am a principal investigator in the Pfizer vaccine. So I've been a part of this since the summertime. Our site was up and running about three months ago, and we are continuing to do studies with Pfizer on this vaccine. So I'm intimately aware of the data in the literature as well as the actual. I have actually boots on the ground experience with the vaccine. So I feel uniquely equipped to talk about this as well. We started doing videos on COVID 19 back in January and I started following it about mid January. So I've been tracking this now for 11 months. So again, I feel like I have a pretty good perspective on the both the disease as well as the vaccine. And as also a functional medicine practitioner and integrative medicine physician, that helps me be a little more aware of some of the nuances to the disease as far as things that can cause complications, et cetera. So what I want to briefly do today is talk about these two vaccines, the Moderna and the Pfizer. Now, the literature, depending on how you've been following this, it's a little varied. But as of this past week, it appears that both Moderna and the Pfizer vaccine study, they appear to be roughly about the same, about 95% effective. So when you hear that, what does that mean? Now, in the Pfizer study, There's been about 183 people to date that have actually gotten COVID 19 in the study. There's about 43,000 people in this study itself. Of that number of that, 183, only about 5% of patients got the vaccine. What that means is the 95% of people who got ill did not get the vaccine. This is quite profound because this shows a very, very, very robust response to the vaccine as far as efficacy. So this. We need a few more patients to actually get enough data to put to the fda. But this is very, very strong, much more than we expected. A typical flu vaccine response is anywhere from 40 to 60%. So that means that this preliminary information suggests that this vaccine is actually better than a typical standard flu vaccine. Now, the Moderna vaccine, which is the other one, I'm not as intimately aware of some of the details because I'm actually not boots on the ground with that study. So I only have the data available that's being put out to the medical community, but it appears to be about on par, about 90, 95% effective. Their numbers are not quite the same, not as many as the Pfizer study. They had to hold, they had to stop their study for a brief period in time due to some safety concerns. But the preliminary data is looking for both these to be quite safe. The major side effects related to the Pfizer vaccine are fever, headaches, all these kind of basic things, and typically the symptoms resolve within 24 to 48 hours. The interesting thing about these vaccines, the two that I'm talking about today, is their manner of delivery. A lot of people are concerned about actually how clean, how safe these vaccines are. They appear to be quite clean and quite safe. There's only four major ingredients in these vaccines. One is the MRNA virus. The second is some kind of nanoparticle, which is usually a lipid, whether it's from sunflower, soy or something like that. The third is an alcoholic or benzoyl alcohol and then normal saline. So there's not a whole lot in these vaccines. And the adjuvant, or the thing that actually activates your immune system is the MRNA virus. So it's unlike other vaccines like the flu vaccine, for example, that might have other adjuvants, metals, aluminum, or the preservatives like we used to use, actually a lot of thymosol, which is a mercury derivative, as a preservative. This, this vaccine appears to be quite clean. That does cause some difficulties, however, because it means that the vaccine has to be kept clean and preserved in a different way, which is cooling. The freezers that are required for this have to go down to about negative 40 to 70 degrees, which is quite cold. So it requires a special freezer. You can't use a standard freezer. So there's a nuances that we'll have to figure out how to deliver this going forward. But the point is it appears to be quite a clean vaccine and pretty, pretty safe. Typically, the ingredients in the vaccine are cleared by your system within about 48 hours. Again, saline, lipids, a little bit of alcohol and then the RNA is gone within. The MRNA is gone within 24 to 48 hours. There is some concern about the RNA being put into people's DNA. And just to kind of describe that briefly, typically what happens, Coronavirus is a RNA virus and with these viruses you have to make RNA or messenger rna. Now as you turn rna, one of the things with an enzyme called a reverse transcriptase, that's an enzyme that takes RNA and turns it into DNA, which is what we have in our bodies, this vaccine actually is a messenger rna. So what happens is typically in our body, DNA makes rna, RNA makes messenger RNA and then messenger RNA goes to the protein making factories in your cells called ribosomes and they make proteins. So what with this vaccine is we're putting in the system through a shot in the arm, this messenger rna which is a little bit downstream, it can't go upstream, it can only go downstream to make the proteins. And then your body has enzymes to break down the MRNA so that after again, about 48 hours, it's out of your system. So there were a couple other platforms that we were looking at back this past summer to investigate, actually back in the spring, I'm sorry, to investigate. The platform that was chosen was this particular one that does not self replicate, does not go to reverse transcriptases, only goes forward to the ribosomes, again meaning that it clears your system within 48 hours. So it appears to be pretty clean, pretty safe. All this is preliminary. I have to stress that there's a little bit of confusion as far as what this means. The study themselves are about two year studies, so the studies are not even close to being over. But the preliminary data appears to be strong enough and persuasive enough that they should be pushed to the FDA and we would get emergency clearance usage for that. Now what that means is it can only be used in special populations that the FDA feels that it's safe to use a vaccine, probably higher risk individuals, probably healthcare workers. Look, some other nuances to it that we're kind of waiting to work out. So I'm just kind of not going to talk about those right now. But the point is that if this does get cleared for emergency usage, it'll be only for certain subsets of the population. So what that means is hand washing, wearing masks, social distancing are still our mainstay for prevention for spreading this. But this is super, super encouraging because it appears that hopefully maybe by the end of this year we'll actually have the vaccine being pushed out. It appears there's about 50 million doses of vaccine ready to be deployed. And so we're just waiting for this to be pushed to the FDA and the FDA to review the information. Of note, one of the things that happened this past summer, due to some of the political things, the original study was only supposed to look at about 32,000, 33,000 patients. And due to some of the concerns with political wranglings, Pfizer decided to up the number to 43,000 to make sure that data that was obtained would be more clear, more concise, and more convincing. So if anything, we have more people involved, the data will have more emphasis behind. So I'm feeling fairly good about this, the vaccine safety. Now, to put this in perspective, we have to compare this to other vaccines, like polio, like the mmr, like flu, like pertussis, et cetera. And when I was in the military, I actually, when I was down in Florida at the CENTCOM Clinic, we had people from around the world getting smallpox vaccines and other vaccines, anthrax vaccines. And so one of the things I was over was actually seeing monitoring for adverse side effects, these vaccines. So I'm very, very familiar with the constituents, what goes into vaccine, how clean they are, particles in them, et cetera. And so just to rewind that, I do feel like looking at what's in this vaccine. It's very, very clean compared to what's on the market currently. And ultimately, you have to compare this vaccine to what we're currently using. Not some theoretical perfect product, but what we actually have on the market, and it is quite, quite clean. So, anyway, those are my basic thoughts on it. The Moderna and the Fives appear to be roughly similar. Some nuances are different between the platforms, but that appears to be robust for both. It'll be interesting to see how things play out over the next month to the end of the year. But I do feel good about it. Hopefully, as things come out, we'll just update you all about that. But again, as one of the principal investigators, I am getting access to some information that is, I feel, like, helpful, and it's helpful for people to understand what's going on. So if you have any questions, you know, feel free to, you know, put those below in this video. Feel free to interact with us on Facebook, on Instagram, and we took a little hiatus on doing videos probably about a month ago because we're doing our class on resilience, which will be launching again in January. So, you know, as things ramp up, numbers are going up for COVID 19. So with some new changes with the vaccine, I felt like it was important to put a little quick video as things change. We'll let you know. But again, continue to follow us if you like this information. Like it? Share it. The best way to get good information out there is to like it and then share it. So you all take care, be safe, and be well.