COVID-19 Vaccine Informational Webinar by Dr. Peter Antevy

Hi, everyone. My name is Dr. Peter Antevi. I'm an EMS medical director down here in South Florida. And I wanted to give this short presentation on the COVID vaccinations. I titled it COVID 19 vaccines. Should I take it? And will they be able to track my every move once I do? Obviously, that's a little bit of a joke, but surprisingly, these are the questions I'm getting for many people, not just here locally, but also around the country. So I figured I'd take you in a little deeper into the science and then let you make your own decision.

So here's how I look at it. What is the COVID 19 reality with respect to vaccinations? There's three categories of people, and you fit truly into one of these three categories. Number one, you're a hell yes, taking it no matter what. First in line, you're calling. You're wondering when that next vaccination is going to be available to you. Okay. Or you're a hell no. Okay. So if you're watching it and you're a hell no, you probably already turned it off. And there's probably little I can do to convince you. If you still watch and you change your mind, that'd be great. Let me know why that happened. But I do think that there are a lot of people out there who just don't want to even listen to this at this point in time. That will change once more data comes out. And once people understand that this vaccine will save many lives, then there are those who are not sure, so they're right in the middle. Okay? So first and foremost, let's do this with the hell no people. All joking aside, but what I would want to do now is look at the folks who are really not sure. Those folks, I think of them as people who are thinking about it. This is, of course, Rodin's the thinker. You have a lot of questions have not been answered, perhaps, and you're wondering about the science, about the things you're hearing on the Internet and so forth. And I think this could be a good opportunity for you to learn exactly how this vaccine was built and perhaps even a little history of where we've come throughout the last over 100 years of science. So the agenda, I want to start off with a video that was really well made with Palm Beach County Fire Rescue Department that I'm very humbly associated with. Great department, great people. And you'll see in the video that I'll show shortly that we've had a lot of issues with people who have gotten Covid and who have suffered for months afterwards. These are young, healthy people. These are not what you would think of as elderly people who have had issues. Most, you have heard the term long haulers. These are them. We'll go into a little bit of vaccination history, which I think is always very important. And then we'll talk about how did we get here to the day where we can make vaccinations this quickly during a pandemic like we've experienced. And then a really big one is how does the MRNA vaccine work? This is technology that's about 10 years old. And I think it's important to understand that it's a clean vaccine. And I think that once you see the kind of what's under the hood, I think you'll feel more comfortable with it. What's in the vaccine? A lot of people want to know, is there live tissue, placenta? Is my wife going to get pregnant? All these questions, these are very fair. We'll talk about that and then the efficacy studies. I think it's important to know exactly what's in the data that was submitted to the fda and we'll have a lot of in depth review of that data. And then what are the side effects? Short term, people want to know their long term consequences. Autoimmune issues, am I going to grow a third arm? I mean, a lot of questions people have. We'll try to answer those to the best of our ability and then we'll try to bust any myths. And then I'll tease it right now that there will be a reference to Chick Fil a nuggets which my son happens to love very much. So we'll get to that later in the show.

So let's go ahead first and watch this short video. This is Tara Cardoso of the Palm Beach County Fire Rescue and she's gonna help narrate this great segment that talks about the long haulers we have at Palm Beach County Fire Rescue and take a look at the video. And this is kind of how we'll kick things off.

Well, the pandemic is definitely wearing on all of us. And coronavirus fatigue, that's a real thing. As firefighters, you probably feel like you've heard everything there is to hear about coronavirus already. But there's actually one story you haven't heard yet. That is the recount from our own firefighters about how they went through the very worst of what COVID 19 has to offer. And that's a story worth listening to. The stories are eerily similar.

Imagine that very deep cough. You really have to dig deep. That's what every cough was. And once you started, you couldn't stop it, or I couldn't stop it. So it was like a.

The coughing fits were so bad, I simply couldn't breathe around them.

The breathing part, that's the main thing. Everybody has the other symptoms. Once you bring the respiratory aspect into it, it's a game changer.

It's terrifying, yet also very different.

I didn't see what everyone. Why everyone was making such a big deal about this virus. And then the coughing started, and things went down very, very fast.

Everybody's surprised that I got it, and I was too. I thought I'd be one of the people. If I did get it, I'd have for two days and be fine.

These symptoms kicked in after I was, you know, diagnosed with rhabdo. And then the COVID reared its ugly head.

There is no rhyme or reason to why COVID 19 affects some people with mild to no symptoms and lands others in the hospital. Battalion chief WALTER Dillian, age 51. Hospitalized for 10 days. Recovery time three months.

And I felt. I felt like I was a fairly healthy person. I try to eat right, I exercise, I try to do the right thing. I don't smoke.

I didn't see me as being a high risk. So I thought if, you know, I would be able to weather it. And I simply couldn't do it.

Driver operator Michael Redmond, age 28. Hospitalized six days. Recovery six weeks.

It completely took me out. I lost 17 pounds in a week and a half. I'm still trying to gain my weight back, my strength, my endurance.

Firefighter paramedic Raymond Gosa, age 34. Hospitalized five days. Recovery three months.

I am not in control of this thing. I thought I could try to will myself out of this, and that wasn't the case. I thought I could fight through this, but no, this is. You are at the mercy of whatever this thing is going on, that this novel virus that no one has ever seen and no one really knows what it is and how it works.

Raymond Gosa of Station 30 remembers vividly in what he calls high definition how close he came to being placed on a ventilator.

I see probably five or six people gowned up, ready to go. And I'm like, what's going on? It's like, well, we're taking you to icu. And I'm like, really? It's like, is that bad? And she's like, yeah, you need someone to really pay close attention to you.

All of a sudden, instead of the person providing care, he was the patient.

That was when things started getting real. Because now I'm on this side of patient care where it's someone else on that stretcher. It's someone else who's been on the monitor. Now it's me. They put me in the room, and I just see all the equipment coming. They put a nasal cannula up my nose at like 40 liters a minute.

4.

0 with a non rebreather. So imagine sticking your head out of your car window going down 95. That's what this was like.

But he still got worse.

Respirations were probably sustained over 36 to 37. My heart rate was 44. 0, and I'm still with it. We run fire calls, and we run extrications. We have bunker gear. We got equipment, we got crew. I know what to do. We run medical calls where we have the best protocols, the best team and equipment. I know what to do. But this, what do I do with no gear, no protocols, no interventions, no bunker gear? What's protecting me from going down right now?

Doctors told Gosa he would have to lay prone or they would be forced to intubate him.

Tell them not to intubate me, because for me, that equaled demise. That was death. I mean, it's like, you kidding me? I'm 34 years old. Like, I'm at 84. I'm 34.

Gosa remembers every detail around him. One in particular had a major impact on him. He heard the doctor say, one hour.

I never thought that it was going to come to this. When someone says one hour, that's where you visually see the hourglass tip over and the sand starts dropping.

And I start to ask myself, how did I get here?

All the while, his mind is racing.

I come to work every day.

I work hard.

Why do I have an hour?

I have three young kids at home. I want to walk my daughter down the aisle. I want to see her walk down and get her diploma. I want to hold my son's hand to his first day of kindergarten.

But he eventually did it. With a prayer and a will to survive, he was able to lay prone.

So with everything in me, I knew if I started coughing, they were going to tube me, because that's what I was afraid of, because they were going to see this literal drowning and choking from the inside, and I didn't want them to see that. So with everything in me, I rolled over.

For firefighter Gosa, the hardest part was over. For each of these Firefighters. There was still a long road to recovery after the hospital.

Yeah, I'm still nervous. I'm working out and everything now, but I can still feel the stretching in my lung, still have the presence of COVID in my lungs.

This took so long.

You know, to get back to normal. You know, making a sandwich left me breathless. A month out of the hospital, a.

Resounding theme is gratitude for their brothers and sisters who helped them out, stood by their families, and the fire department behind them.

I can't thank the fire rescue family enough for what they did. I don't know if they'll ever know the magnitude of what they did behind the scenes, whether it was the meal train.

I've had tons of support from Chief Coyle, the fire chief. Everybody I've ever worked with has reached out to me, and it's awesome.

Coyle got on the phone, got him all kinds of heavies at the hospital. Contact the direct nursing station. The woman in charge of the floor found out who our doctor was and how to contact them, and he called every day.

So what's their message to our people? Be aware and take care of yourself and those around you.

This is not a state of paranoia. I'm not promoting being paranoid, but I am going to say, you know what? You do need to be prepared, and you should have a plan. Should you be the person that falls ill with this? If you have a hard fire, you know, you got to watch yourself now because you're in that gear. And now your immune system is lower. If you have already been exposed and have been asymptomatic.

You know, that's something to consider.

It's not worth not wearing a mask. It's not worth not wearing your half mask. Showering after these calls, deconing the trucks.

I am still very, very careful where I go and the PPE I wear. If anything else, just to set an example to those around you.

Through the experiences of Chief Dillon, driver Operator Redmond, and Firefighter Goza, we can see and feel just how devastating and long lasting COVID 19 can be, not just physically, but emotionally as well. The reality of COVID 19 is that while we know that people being infected with compromised immune systems are at greater risk of substantial health impacts. We just saw how Dillian, Redmond, and Gosa, three perfectly healthy and active firefighters, were critically impacted, not just in the short term, but over an extended period of weeks and months. The emotional toll taken, not just by the individuals infected, but by their families, friends, and co workers, is immeasurable for me. I can specifically Recall being told by one of our chiefs that he received a text from a firefighter in a hospital saying, please don't let them intubate me. This firefighter was in a hospital all alone, without family, without an advocate from the fire department. It was just him, short of breath, fatigued, frightened and all alone, facing what he thought was his last days. I still get chills thinking about the helpless feeling that night and the days to follow, hoping and praying that he would pull through. Thankfully, he did. I'm asking that you please take heed of the precautions and guidance given by the CDC and fire rescue protocols regarding COVID 19, and let's work to stop the spread of this virus. Our community, family and friends are counting on us.

Well, I hope that video was impactful for you. It truly is for me. I get many calls every week related to Covid. Happens every day. It happened today where we have young, healthy people who are very ill in the hospital currently with COVID So let's really circle back now and talk about the vaccination history. Where did we come from? I think this story you'll find quite fascinating. I know I did. So let's go back and talk about the history of vaccination. Where did it come from? And believe it or not, it all started with a disease called smallpox. Now, smallpox was a disease that caused the deaths of 3 to 500 million people. 300 to 500 million people, until it was finally eradicated in 1979. But it all started here with Edward Jenner, who's an English scientist who was born in the 1700s. And he figured out how to cure adults and children from this disease. And he did it not with something called vaccination, but inoculation. And I think this is really the fascinating part of the story that I like to tell. So let's start with this picture here, which is a picture of a cow and what we know is a milkmaid. Now, the word in Latin for cow is vacca. And it turns out that what they noticed in the 1700s is that that disease of smallpox, which was killing 80% of children who were infected with it and up to 60% of the adults who were infected with it. But the one group who did not get the disease at all were the milkmaids. And someone put two and two together. This is right before Edward Jenner came along and said, hey, wait a minute, why aren't those milkmaids getting smallpox? Well, it turns out they were getting something else from the cow. As they were milking the cow, they got on Their arms, something that looks very similar, but it's much more mild. And it's called cowpox. So the Latin term for cowpox was vaccinia. So you're kind of putting two and two together here, but you're asking now, how does cowpox relate to smallpox? Well, it turns out Edward Jenner had an idea. He said, what if I take a needle and take the pus out of this cowpox and then I inject it into another person, give them cowpox, and then see if we can give them the smallpox. And so Edward Jenner had the idea in May of 1796 to ask his gardener, who had a son of 8 years old named James Phipps. He said, hey, is it okay if I take some of the pus out of one of these milkmaids and give it to your son? And the gardener said, yes. So Sarah Nelms was a milkmaid who had cowpox, the mild form. Then they expressed the pus into a needle and injected James Phipps, an eight year old boy. He then gets the cowpox, mild case of it. Then they go and they get the infection of someone who has smallpox and they get that virus from that patient. And then they inject the little boy with smallpox sometime later, after his cowpox had already been resolved. And indeed they waited to see what would happen. Would he die? Well, it turns out the little boy, James Phipps, never got smallpox. So this sequence of taking another virus, cowpox, injecting it into somebody, and then testing the theory by injecting the actual virulent disease, smallpox, into that same person sometime later is now called vaccination. And so we've come a long way. This took thousands of years until we kind of came to this point, right? 1796 is when this all happened. And now here we are in 2020. But I think we should look at the history of smallpox to understand that it stuck around for quite a while even after there was a determined cure. And I think we should learn from that history and talk about it. So I told you that in 1796, the first child gets inoculated against smallpox, and that in 1979 was the last case, the last recorded case, and in between.

Suspected, up to 500 million people died. And you can see the numbers here on the graphic. Why is that? How could it be that for so many years people just kept dying? And the answer is similar to the story we're hearing today, is that a large portion of the population, specifically in America, said, I'm not taking that vaccine. You guys are going to try and sterilize me and so forth. And for many, many decades.

Millions and millions of people continued to die until around the 1960s, when the world Health Organization and others made the big push to mandate smallpox vaccination. And finally, they eradicated this disease. And that's why you don't get the vaccine. Your children haven't gotten the vaccine. And you're hearing the stories now in the news with coronavirus that there's a large number of people who don't want to take the vaccine. Well, it turns out if we have that many people who stay away from the vaccine, we will travel in the same road, the same path as smallpox did. And unfortunately, COVID 19 will be around in our communities for years to come. So let's take a look at the medical advances we've had. First thing is important. You know, measles, right? My children get vaccinated against it. That's actually a live virus that's been attenuated, basically, kind of kind of tapped down a little bit. So it's not the real virus. You can see the immune response for a live attenuated virus is strong booster often not required, but it can become virulent again, as opposed to the next version, which is a killed virus. You know, that as influenza or hepatitis A vaccines, the immune response, you can see is poor. The booster is required, but it's safer because it's a killed virus. So again, this is kind of where we live now in this area of either live, attenuated or killed. And then we made another leap. And so in 1995, we had a new generation of vaccines that were genetically modified. And this is how hepatitis B vaccination came along. And just a quick little image here showing that they took the actual gene from hepatitis B, they combined it with the genetic material of a bacteria, and then they actually grew that bacteria inside a yeast cell. And then, you know, through the process of using things like fermentation tanks and so forth, they finally got the vaccine. But notice on the screen that there's genetic material of a virus inside of a bacteria. You're using yeast. And so this is not such a clean process. And again, newborns get the hepatitis vaccine really within weeks after birth. What was the next leap after that? This is where we are now, which is the MRNA vaccine. So hopefully I can give you the analogy here and explain why the MRNA vaccine, so much better. It's so much cleaner, and you'll see why in a minute. And it's really A brilliant mechanism. And for all the people who have, you know, considered vaccination or have taken vaccinations in the past, you'll soon see why the MRNA vaccine is much safer because of how it's quote, unquote built. And so what is mRNA? All MRNA is, is a piece of genetic code that allows the cell to form a protein. So what is a good analogy for me to explain? MRNA, which is different than DNA, right? And so the best way I can explain this is using this analogy here with a computer and a printer. Now, imagine that this paper that came off of the printer is what we really need to give the body the immunity, right? So in the case of the flu virus, the flu vaccine, you're actually forming this killed virus in the lab, you're putting into a vial, and then you're injecting it into the person. So the final product, which is, again, this piece of paper, is being formed outside and then being injected on the inside. But what if we could actually come convince the body to make the actual material itself instead of us injecting the foreign material into the muscle? And so this is the perfect analogy here, where I'm sitting at my computer and when I press print, a message is going wirelessly through the air to that printer and telling the printer to print the message. So that is what MRNA is, all MRNA is. It's not a physical thing, if you will. It's just a genetic code. It tells the body what to make. In this particular case, I'm using the printer as an example. It's telling the printer what to print. And so what the scientists did is that they said, hey, you know what? Let's use the cell. And I outlined here in white the cell wall. And what makes proteins inside the cell, it's called a ribosome, like the printer. And then once the ribosome gets that MRNA message, it produces the antigen or the printed paper. And so the scientists got smarter and they said, hey, wait a minute, let's not inject the antigen into the human being. Let's just send in the MRNA and then let it get picked up by the ribosome inside the cell and let the human cell itself in the muscle, create that antigen. So if you think about the cleanliness of that, where if you can bring in this little MRNA particle, and as soon as it gets in and gets released, it creates that antigen, and then like a Snapchat message, it disappears. And so the MRNA is not made from living tissue. The MRNA is not fermented. It's not made with adenovirus or bacteria. It's none of those things. It's made from a genetic code. Right. And so it's a much cleaner process. There's no live human tissue that's ever being used here. And so you're probably wondering, well, why is this technology just coming about in this last 10 years? It's because the MRNA is so fragile, they couldn't figure out how to inject it. And for the MRNA to get into that cell without being zapped by the body. And so this is where the technology has come in. Now, for those of you who think that the cell is the vaccine is going to change your DNA, well, let me remind everyone that inside of the human cell of all cells, there is a nucleus. That nucleus contains all of our DNA. So you can see here that the MRNA comes into the cytoplasm, not into the nucleus. It cannot get into the nucleus, therefore it cannot change your DNA. So all those theories of it's going to change your DNA, just patently false. So I think that this explanation really hit home for me that we're sending in a code to actually let the cell build that antigen. And what is the antigen? It. It's a piece of the coronavirus, the spike protein of the coronavirus. So we're telling our own body, hey, build this spike protein, and then once the spike protein is built, then we'll form antibodies against it. Pretty brilliant move, actually. And so I mentioned earlier that the MRNA molecule is very fragile. So the discovery, the main discovery, is something called a lipid nanoparticle. And here is where my favorite chick fil, a chicken nugget, comes in. Imagine that they took this very sensitive.