Dr. Seheult: About mRNA vaccines, it's like an envelope with a message in it. And that message is going to tell the cell what kind of proteins to make. This is exactly what happens, by the way, when you get a viral infection. When you get Coronavirus or any other Coronavirus, or any other RNA virus that comes along is that virus fuses with your cell, whether it's in the cells in your nasal mucosa or anywhere else. And it basically tells those cells to make foreign proteins. And so, in that sense, this is no different. We're just doing it in a way that doesn't cause more viruses to be made. When you get infected with a virus, the virus tells the cells to make more of everything. Make more RNA, make more viral proteins, so your cell can make more virus. In this sense, the mRNA vaccine is only telling your cell to make a portion of the protein which we want the immune system to recognize so that if it ever comes around again, the immune system is ready to attack it and to prevent it from invading your body. So in that sense, this is, sort of, a dead-end virus that we're putting in. But it's not even that, it's not even a virus. It's just a portion of the mRNA. mRNAs are like post-it notes. They're here today. Maybe a few days later, they're gone.

So there's really not a danger that this mRNA is going to hang around. And even if it were to hang around, the purpose of the immune system is to find these cells with this foreign mRNA in it, because it makes proteins that are foreign and to destroy those cells.

So that, would explain Moderna's vaccine and also Pfizer's vaccine. The other one that's coming out is the AstraZeneca, Oxford one. Does the very same thing, except instead of using mRNA in a little, like, a lipid droplet, like a butter droplet, if you like, it's using a different vector, it's actually using a chimpanzee adenovirus that you're like, why would you use a chimpanzee adenovirus? Well, it's because humans haven't seen chimpanzee adenovirus. And so we don't want to have a vector used in that situation that could be recognized by the immune system and destroy the vector before the message gets into the cell. In this case, the message is not an mRNA, it's actually a DNA. And so the DNA goes into the nucleus in the AstraZeneca, Oxford version, where it is transcribed into an mRNA. And then the rest is the same from there.

So that's basically the three types of vaccines currently available, except for the Oxford. The Oxford one, I believe, was just approved a couple of days ago in Great Britain. So that'll be coming out. There's a whole bunch of other vaccinations, even sort of the conventional type where they actually have the protein and they inject that. Those are in process still, they have not come out. The reason why they're probably taking longer is because it takes a long time to make the protein. And there is a lot of regulation that goes along in making the protein. And that's why these vaccine companies who choose not to use mRNA, who choose to do the conventional way, are taking a long time. And that's why in the past, it took a long time to make a vaccine because there's a lot of regulation that goes involved, there's a lot of making sure that everything is purified.

What Moderna and what Pfizer, and what AstraZeneca are doing is they're moving that factory production points out of their realm and they're putting it into your body. So it's your body that's now making the protein, it's your body that's doing this, they don't have to do that. And therefore they can get a product faster.

And the other advantage with it, by the way, is we've talked about a little bit about these mutations or variants of the virus, and we're worried whether or not the immune system is going to be able to track this and actually be effective against it. Well, the nice thing about the information, the mRNA is that if this mutation, or if this variant is significant, they can always change the information on the mRNA so that it matches the variant. And so the immune system can respond to that. And they can do that actually, fairly quickly. So these are all sort of interesting advances.

I could completely understand how people would say, Well, I don't know, this is kind of new, let's see how this works. That's a perfectly rational response to have to see. Because obviously, there's a lot of things that we don't know about, and we're not going to know about it until we actually immunize and vaccinate a large population of people, but so far, it seems to be very safe, and it seems to be effective.

Dr. Patrick: With vaccines, you know, there obviously are potential side effects that may or may not happen in an individual. I mean, you can go on the CDC website and look at the variety of vaccines and look at the potential side effects for a variety of vaccines that are available. It seems, at least looking at, you know, the list that those side effects typically are acute. They're not like a long-term thing that you're looking at, you know, a year from now all of a sudden appearing. Or is that something to worry about, in general with vaccines? Has it ever really been documented?

Dr. Seheult: Yeah. So yeah, so there are there can be long-term effects that can happen. Generally speaking, though, 90% of those long term effects usually pop up within the first month or two. And so, we're going to know pretty quickly whether or not there's going to be long term effects into postmarketing. Probably the worst-case scenario that we've seen so far was a flu vaccine that was, it was a regular flu vaccine, it was not an mRNA, it was not a DNA, it was just a regular flu vaccine that was administered in Europe a number of years ago. This is back in 2009, 2010. And they did find an increased risk of narcolepsy in patients that were vaccinated with that type of vaccine. And the thought process there was that perhaps there was an immune response that cross-reacted with the portion of the brain that produces hypocretin, which is the basis for narcolepsy. And so that didn't happen in all of those patients, but it was substantially increased in the general population.

So those are the types of things that we would be looking for. It's usually an autoimmune response. But I would just say at this point that right now, right now, what we're seeing in terms of COVID infections and vaccinations, your risk of getting a post-infective autoimmune condition is probably higher in COVID if you were to get infected with COVID versus getting the vaccine. Remember, you're going to make antibodies against multiple portions of the Coronavirus. And so your chances of getting an antibody that might be directed against something in your body is higher when you have more epitopes, like you would with a natural infection with COVID-19, than you would against a very specific portion of a very specific protein of SARS-CoV-2, which is the spike protein.

So, for instance, Guillain-Barre syndrome. It's very well-known that people who come down with viral infections can get this thing called Guillain-Barre syndrome, which is an autoimmune condition where your antibodies attack your nerves. And it's, sort of, called ascending paralysis where you can't walk at first, then you can't breathe. It's very rare, but it's definitely known to happen after a natural infection. Well, does it also happen after immunizations? Yes, it can. But we believe it's probably higher in a natural infection than it would be in immunization. And when we're talking about a pandemic situation, we see the weigh the risks and the benefits and I believe that the benefits of getting the vaccine outweigh the risks, at least at this point, given the information that we have.