April 14, 2021 • 28 mins
In December, we saw the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines authorized for emergency use in an unprecedented timeline. Following close behind was the single-dose Johnson & Johnson/Janssen vaccine. Unfortunately, language like “unprecedented timeline” has some Americans concerned about cutting corners to produce these vaccines in record time. In this episode, we chat with Jay Greene, a journalist initially skeptical of the vaccine development speed, who, after learning the truth, came around to getting vaccinated. Then, we talk with Drs. Barney Graham and Kizzmekia Corbett from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), who break down what allowed for the rapid timeline, the ways safety was prioritized above all in the process, and how vaccines safely went from development and into arms in less than a year.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Well, hello there, I'm Robin Roberts of ABC's Good Morning America,
and welcome to COVID nineteen Immunity in Our Community. It's
an innovative new podcast series brought to you by the U.
S Department of Health and Human Services. COVID nineteen Immunity
(00:27):
in Our Community has been created to provide you with
the groundbreaking science, honest facts, and unvarnished truth about the
deadly coronavirus and the revolutionary vaccines that could put this
pandemic behind us and bring a bit of normalcy back
for all of us. And in the second episode, we're
talking about how safety was prioritized throughout the ambitious development
(00:51):
and roll out of the vaccines that were produced so quickly. First,
we are going to hear from Jay Green, a healthcare
reporter for Crane's Detroit. Initially a vaccine skeptic, Jay had
(01:12):
said he would turn down the vaccine if it were
offered to him. But you know what, after hearing from
leading experts and digging into the latest research, he became
convinced that the vaccine was not only effective, but safe.
Will uncover what exactly Jay learned about the vaccine that
changed his mind. And convinced him to get vaccinated. After that,
(01:33):
we went to the stay tuned as we get answers
from two leading vaccine scientists. Dr Kizmikia Corbett, a research
fellow at the National Institutes of Health in the Vaccine
Research Center and the scientific lead for the coronavirus Research Team,
and Dr Barney Graham, Deputy director of the Vaccine Research
Center and chief of the Viral Pathogenesis Laboratory. They're gonna
(01:57):
help us understand how these new vaccines were, how we
know they are safe, and how they could have been
rolled out so quickly without cutting corners. The vaccines that
can protect us from COVID nineteen and prevent severe illness
(02:20):
and death were deployed in less than a year. And
it's that rapid turnaround, along with phrases like unprecedented timeline
that have some people rightfully asking questions about what allowed
both the private sector and government to move so quickly
from development to authorization to now administering vaccines in our neighborhoods.
(02:43):
So in this episode, we talk through it all to
assure people that the vaccines are safe and they help
prevent COVID nineteen infections, hospitalizations, and deaths. Journalist Jay Green
knows how to examine the science behind health claims. As
an experience reporter for Crane's Detroit, He's been covering healthcare
(03:05):
for nearly forty years. He has seen his share about
breaks before, having reported on a bola and swine flew,
and while an expert at separating truth from myths, for
most of Jay was uncertain the FDA could authorize a safe,
effective vaccine against a coronavirus, so quickly telling people that
(03:26):
he had no plans to get vaccinated. The first to
authorize vaccines in the pipeline from Fiser and Maderna use
something called m r n A technology, and Jay wanted
to see the evidence behind how it works. So he
did what any good journalists would do. He took a
close look at the research. He read dozens of articles
(03:48):
about the vaccine approval process, interviewed top infectious disease doctors
and scientists, really dug into the vaccines clinical trials, and
talked to some just everyday people who got vaccinated. After
the deep dive, Jay would come to change his mind,
determining that the evidence was clear, the vaccine was safe
(04:11):
and effective and it would protect him against getting infected
with COVID nineteen. By late December, he decided he would
get vaccinated when he could. At sixty six years old,
Jay's turn to get vaccinated came up relatively quickly, and
on January eleven, he called his doctor to schedule an appointment.
(04:31):
He was lucky enough to get his first vaccination that
same day and a second a few weeks later. Here
now is Jay with his story about how the research
changed his mind and why he thinks people should listen
to the experts to When COVID started hitting in Seattle
(04:58):
and January, the hospitals I covered were prepared, of course,
but I didn't really start writing about it until the
end of February, when some of the nursing homes that
I cover started preparing a little bit. My wife's healthcare
worker she got COVID at the hospital. Her diagnosis actually
(05:22):
was not too surprising. She was in an elevator where
there was a patient on a stretcher and he was
coughing and he didn't have a mask. On four or
five days later, middle of the night, she started getting fevers.
The next day she lost her taste, all the classic symptoms.
Fast forward to October, I think when I when I
(05:44):
wrote in my blog that I was skeptical, part of
it was because the speed the researching developing the vaccine
usually took two or three years. I was skeptical for
for that reason. But I also got my flu shot.
But as I've been writing about the COVID pandemic and
(06:08):
also the vaccine research, I wondered if I was going
to get a call and they were going to ask
me if I would get a vaccine or not. And
I wasn't sold on it at the time. I told
my wife, I said I'm gonna say no. And I
remember telling some of my doctor friends and some other
researchers that and they were shocked. You know, Jay, you're
(06:29):
a healthcare reporter. You've read the research and everything. I said, yeah,
but I want to read the final research. I want
to hear some doctors and nurses get it. And so
probably mid December, when the doctors and nurses started getting inoculated,
I interviewed them and they told me that it was
a very mild reaction that they had. It varied. Some
(06:54):
people just had sore arms, some people felt a little
bit sick. There wasn't any serious reaction. But side effects aside,
Jay's main concerns were with the m r n A
technology and the speed at which the vaccines using it
produced by maderna adviser were released. That is, until one
(07:15):
doctor changed his perspective. I had spoken with Dr Phil Levy.
He's an e er doctor and infectious disease doctor that
I've been really talking with all year on this journey.
We started talking about the vaccines and he was explaining
in great detail about how elegant they were. He used
(07:37):
a lot of very positive type words, and he was
totally sold on it. He pretty much broke it down
for me. I think for most people, they hear things
word of mouth, Hey get this chicken sandwich at Popeye's,
it's really great. They don't read the ingredients, They just
get these testimonials for people. And I happen to have
(07:58):
a great sourceless of doctors and researchers, and they really
sold me on the idea. In addition to Dr Levy's recommendation,
there was one other personal factor that convinced Jay of
vaccination was well worth it, his wife's experience with COVID
nineteen at the start of the outbreak. My wife Olga,
(08:20):
when she got COVID that heavily influenced my decision to
get a vaccine later on, because I did not want
to get her sickness, and so that was a h
a motivating factor that eventually overtook my skepticism. I decided
to make an appointment for the vaccine because I felt
(08:45):
that I had heard enough from people that it would work.
To my surprise, a couple of weeks ago, I got
an email back, You've got an appointment on Tuesday afternoon,
and I out like I got I got the lottery,
so I had to go cash it in. I got
(09:05):
down there at the clinic at the henry Ford Hospital,
put on my mask, went inside, went up to the
fifth floor. The nurses were extremely nice. One of them
led me into a room where I read a five
page document explaining the vaccine, explaining the possible side effects.
(09:26):
Then she asked me about ten questions, if if I
had COVID, if I'd been exposed to anybody with COVID,
if I had any other vaccine like a flu vaccine
in the previous fourteen days. I just answered the questions,
and I sat back and gave gave me the shot,
just like any other shot. Then she said, go out
(09:48):
and wait for fifteen minutes, see if there's any side effects.
I didn't have any side effects at all. I was
actually feeling quite hyper because I was excited. So at
fifteen minut it's nothing, no side effects. I walked up.
On the way home, my left shoulders started to be
a little bit sore. But then that afternoon I actually
(10:11):
felt very hyper because I felt really good, And the
next couple of days I was back to normal, so
that that was it. Ultimately, Jay has some parting advice
for those who are still on the fence about the vaccines.
He recommends listening only to bona fide experts and those
who have firsthand experience with the vaccines. You need to
(10:34):
speak with experts. If you want to get information from
a friend. The only thing I would rely on is
if that friend or family member took the vaccine, I
would rely on their explanation of how they felt about it.
I would not listen to any friend who said, well,
(10:55):
I don't trust vaccines because I don't trust the government.
That sort of thing. There there's too much of that
going on. I mean, people really need to listen uh
to experts. Dr Fauci, I know that he was a
big promoter of the vaccine research. At a certain point
he started reading the early literature about the results and
(11:17):
the clinical trials, and he felt optimistic. Dr Sanjay Gupta
is especially good to listen to. So I would just
caution against any lay person giving their analysis about the
efficacy of the vaccines and go to the experts. If
(11:40):
methodical medical research is what encouraged Jay Green to go
ahead with his vaccination, we wanted to dig a little
deeper and talk to two of the experts who developed
that research. Dr Kazmikia Corbett and Dr Barney Graham are
responsible for coming up with safe, effective vaccines at the
Vaccine Research Center at the National Institutes of Health. An
(12:03):
African American scientists who was featured in Time magazines one
Next Innovator's list as an up and coming leader, Dr
Corbett was cited by Dr Anthony Fauci as producing work
that quote will have a substantial impact on ending the
worst respiratory disease pandemic in more than a hundred years
(12:24):
end of quote. As a scientific lead for the coronavirus
research team at the National Institutes of Health, she's been
working on coronavirus vaccine development for the last six years.
Dr Corbett explained to us how the systems that were
already in place made it possible to develop the COVID
nineteen vaccine so rapidly, pointing out the many safety checkpoints
(12:47):
that the vaccines had to clear as a move through
each phase of clinical trials. She's gonna help us understand
how the vaccines could have been distributed so quickly after
they were given the green light by the f d A.
I lead a team of scientists who study and have
(13:10):
studied coronavirus vaccine development for the last six years. We
have been instrumental in the design and development of coronavirus
vaccine in collaboration with Madonna, and so our work really
is around the orchestration of the vaccine design. The clinical
(13:31):
trials for the COVID nineteen vaccines have been so rapid
because of a large body of work that happened prior
to the onset of this pandemic. But also there was
already established collaboration in our instance with Madonna, So when
we understood that this was a coronavirus that was circulating
(13:54):
in the beginning of two thousand and twenty it was
very clear exactly what we could do by way of
vaccine development, and not only just very clear from a
data perspective, but also how to make that vaccine and
collaboration with Madonna, and so we really had this system
running and it was well oiled, tried and true because
(14:15):
we've been to this rodeo before. As I like to say,
really these companies and also all of the people who
funded the manufacturing, whether it be the federal government or otherwise,
took the risk on each of these products in the
portfolio to say that if it is approved, we already
want x amount of doses to be able to be delivered.
(14:36):
So in that way, as things are moving along the
clinical trials, the companies are able to manufacture vaccine product
and stockpilot in a way so that FDA vetted vaccine
product is ready to go. Dr Corbett speaks to the
concerns that Jay Green had had about m r n
(14:57):
A technology. So vaccines are not a monolith. They're all
made very differently. So for example, the standard seasonal flu
shot is an activated virus, so you're actually getting whole
virus that is just weakened to the point that while
it alerts your immune system and does cause immunity to
(15:20):
the real virus, it is still a weakened form of
the virus. All in all, vaccines that is their job
to alert your immune system, but the way that vaccines
do that are different depending on the platform. So with
the currently available vaccines, there's the Madonna and fias or
(15:41):
vaccines that are using messenger RNA to just deliver one
spike protein from the virus, not the whole virus. There's
also Johnson and Johnson vaccine that is using ad no virus,
which is a common cold virus. They're taking out all
of the mess that would make you sick from that
common cold virus, and they're then delivering the same spike
(16:05):
protein from the coronavirus via that platform, using that as
a way to alert your immune system. We know that
the technology used to create the messenger RNA vaccines is safe. Fundamentally,
your cells are built for this. They read messages from
(16:26):
RNA day in and day out, and they know exactly
what to do with it. They read the message and
then almost like a Snapchat message, you read it, you
can't read it again. It's done, it's discarded. Twenty four hours.
Capuche basically, aside from just the fundamental biology, the history
of using messenger RNA to deliver therapeutic proteins is not new.
(16:52):
This technology has been developed for over ten years, has
been in people and other clinical trials, and the safety
profiles have been studied, and that is actually why there
was confidence in the safety. Now to those who think
they can, you know, to skip the vaccine because they've
already had COVID nineteen, Dr Corbett says, think again. There
(17:17):
are a lot of people who are saying, well, I've
already been infected, so now I'm safe, and that is
just largely untrue. There are a number of reinfections and
much of the data points in the direction of the
vaccines giving you more robust So that's more high level
immune responses following the vaccine as opposed to following the virus.
(17:42):
And so if you're going to train your immune system
to be protective against these viruses, the best and the
safest and the most effective way is to do that
via vaccine. Dr Barney Graham is a medical doctor with
(18:04):
a PhD in microbiology and immunology. He is the chief
of the Viral Pathogenesis Laboratory at the National Institutes of Health,
who led the first human trial to find an AIDS
vaccine and was a finalist for the Promising Innovation's Medal
for his work creating a vaccine for the Zekea virus.
(18:25):
Dr Graham outline how extensive planning, organization, and funding made
it possible for these vaccines to be authorized so quickly.
But we also wanted him to explain how we know
that the mr NA technology in the Fiser and Moderner
vaccines is indeed safe well. As it turns out, it
(18:46):
all comes down to the groundwork he and many other
researchers laid down in the years leading up to the outbreak.
Here's Dr Graham. I feel like almost every thread of
my life seems to have come together in this one
big event. The Vaccine Research Center was established in two
(19:09):
thousand and was devoted to developing an HIV vaccine, and
even though we haven't been successful, the technologies that have
been generated by trying to make an HIV vaccine are
really what's been used to do the work that we've
done on coronaviruses. The other part of my history is
(19:29):
respiratories and Sitia virus, which is another respiratory virus that
has a protein like coronavirus spike, and I've spent thirty
five years working on RSV, and that work on rs
V really set us up for the work we've done
on coronaviruses. So after responding to outbreaks this whole last decade,
(19:50):
we made a deal with Madarin in two thousand seventeen
to specifically focus on pandemic preparedness. By the time this
outbreak occurred, we had already shown that m R and
A delivery of the spike was a very effective vaccine,
so we felt like we knew what to do and
had been preparing for that moment when the coronavirus outbreaks
(20:12):
started at the beginning of two thousand and twenty, as
infections accumulated and started spreading around the globe by March,
we realized this was not just a drill. This was
the real thing, and so bringing together the infrastructure and
cross agency capacities of the U. S Government to create
(20:35):
networks consortia of work groups to advance these studies in
combination with the different companies, not just Maderna but several
other companies in the US, and infrastructure was put in
place so that we could rapidly enroll and develop and
do the advanced development part of this vaccine, and the
(20:56):
speed at which this was developed in the ability to
press the clinical trial progression and do a lot of
things in parallel was largely based on the organization that
took place and the money that was available to take
some of the risk out. And so what wasn't done
was to skip any steps of safety or to skip
(21:17):
any steps of information we needed about the immunity response
things like that and efficacy of the vaccine. So in reality,
after doing this for thirty five years, I think the
data package that we put together over this nine or
ten months before the vaccine was found to work was
probably one of the most complete packages that I've ever seen.
(21:40):
So there wasn't any skimping on the safety or the
efficacy or the immunity response patterns for this product. Dr
Graham makes it very clear that we're not for the
decades of research and work he and a colleagues had
(22:00):
already done long before COVID nineteen surface. There is no
way these effective vaccines could have been produced so quickly,
and for that same reason, he knows that we can
trust the technology behind them. I think there's a big
lesson in what's happened during this last year, and to me,
(22:20):
one of the biggest lessons is the importance of basic research.
If we had not done the technology development through our
work on HIV vaccines, if we had not made the
discovery of the rs V protein confirmation and its effect
on vaccine efficacy. Without those kinds of background information, what
(22:41):
happened this year so rapidly would not have been possible.
The other lesson is this year has been a year
of a lot of different groups pulling together, and so
the people that work with me, even the small group
that had worked on coronavirus over the last few years
in my lab led by Dr kiss Makia Corbett. These
(23:01):
individual efforts, these small efforts, and then the efforts of
large groups coming together pivoting from their ordinary work and
studies has been something that I hope people can recognize
was extraordinary in the way that so many people, so
many scientists, so many groups banded together to really make
(23:22):
this vaccine development process happen. Banding together is the key
in this fight against COVID nineteen. And like the other
experts we've spoken to, Dr Graham urges those who may
be reluctant to get vaccinated, to think of others than
The fight against this deadly virus. Immunity is a group effort.
(23:46):
The great problem with allowing yourself to be infected is
that it's not just about you. It's about all of
us in this together. And each time a new infection occurs,
each time the virus has a new chance is to
grow in another person and divide in their cells. It
can select new variants. The virus can select viruses that
(24:09):
grow better, or transmit better, or infect better. And so
if you are the person who creates the new variant
that escapes our vaccines and some of our antibody drugs
that are working, that would not be a good thing
to have to live with. Jay Green, Dr Corbett, and
(24:34):
Dr Graham all stressed how important it is for us
to listen to the experts and look at the science
behind the COVID nineteen vaccines for answers to our questions.
That's the same advice you'll hear from scientific leaders across
the nation, including people like Dr Anthony Fauci and Dr
Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health. Vaccinations
(24:57):
are now rolling out throughout the United States, and we
have already surpassed President Biden's pledge to provide one hundred
million doses of the vaccine within his first one hundred
days in office. So when it's your turn, please take
your cue from Jay Green and joined him and millions
(25:20):
of your fellow Americans, and schedule your vaccination appointment as
soon as you can. The CDC has recommendations for who
should be vaccinated first at Every state has their own
vaccine rollout plan. It's based on your age, health conditions,
and risk of exposure. To get vaccinated, go to c
(25:40):
DC dot gov forward slash coronavirus and scroll down to
the middle of the page to click on the word vaccines.
From there, click on vaccine Finder, and the site will
help you determine where you can get the vaccine and
how to make an appointment. You don't have to worry
about paying for your vaccine. Your taxpayer dollars are funding
(26:02):
the rollout, so there's no individual cost to you. So
if someone asks you to provide your insurance information, that's
only so your vaccination provider can build your insurance for
the administrative costs, but you will not be personally responsible
for any expenses I'd like to thank our guest Jay Green,
(26:23):
Dr Corbett, and Dr Graham for sharing their thoughts and
their expertise with us today. I hope you can tune
in for episode three and which will explore the facts
behind the vaccine rollout and debunk the misinformation you may
be hearing. Plus, I'm going to talk to Dr Anthony Fauci, who,
as you probably know, is the director of the National
(26:44):
Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Dr Faucci has been
on the front lines of the pandemic since day one,
and he's going to speak to us about the solid
science behind the vaccines development and rollout. Looking forward to
that COVID nineteen immunity in our community was developed and
(27:11):
paid for by the U. S Department of Health and
Human Services, part of a public education campaign to increase
public confidence in COVID nineteen vaccines while reinforcing basic prevention measures.
We Can Do This presented by I Heart Radio and
ABC News. This podcast is hosted by me that'd be
(27:32):
Robin Roberts. The episode was executive produced by Ethan Fixal,
written by Stephanie Thurrout, and engineered, edited and mixed. He
Can Do It all Matt Stillo with original theme music
by Brad Kemp. Now, if you haven't already subscribed, rated,
or reviewed COVID nineteen Immunity in our Community, please do
(27:56):
so on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or
wherever you get your podcast. I am Robin Roberts and
this is COVID nineteen Immunity in our Community. Be sure do.
Thank you for listening. H
Well, hello there, I'm Robin Roberts of ABC's Good Morning America,
and welcome to COVID nineteen Immunity in Our Community. It's
an innovative new podcast series brought to you by the U.
S Department of Health and Human Services. COVID nineteen Immunity
(00:27):
in Our Community has been created to provide you with
the groundbreaking science, honest facts, and unvarnished truth about the
deadly coronavirus and the revolutionary vaccines that could put this
pandemic behind us and bring a bit of normalcy back
for all of us. And in the second episode, we're
talking about how safety was prioritized throughout the ambitious development
(00:51):
and roll out of the vaccines that were produced so quickly. First,
we are going to hear from Jay Green, a healthcare
reporter for Crane's Detroit. Initially a vaccine skeptic, Jay had
(01:12):
said he would turn down the vaccine if it were
offered to him. But you know what, after hearing from
leading experts and digging into the latest research, he became
convinced that the vaccine was not only effective, but safe.
Will uncover what exactly Jay learned about the vaccine that
changed his mind. And convinced him to get vaccinated. After that,
(01:33):
we went to the stay tuned as we get answers
from two leading vaccine scientists. Dr Kizmikia Corbett, a research
fellow at the National Institutes of Health in the Vaccine
Research Center and the scientific lead for the coronavirus Research Team,
and Dr Barney Graham, Deputy director of the Vaccine Research
Center and chief of the Viral Pathogenesis Laboratory. They're gonna
(01:57):
help us understand how these new vaccines were, how we
know they are safe, and how they could have been
rolled out so quickly without cutting corners. The vaccines that
can protect us from COVID nineteen and prevent severe illness
(02:20):
and death were deployed in less than a year. And
it's that rapid turnaround, along with phrases like unprecedented timeline
that have some people rightfully asking questions about what allowed
both the private sector and government to move so quickly
from development to authorization to now administering vaccines in our neighborhoods.
(02:43):
So in this episode, we talk through it all to
assure people that the vaccines are safe and they help
prevent COVID nineteen infections, hospitalizations, and deaths. Journalist Jay Green
knows how to examine the science behind health claims. As
an experience reporter for Crane's Detroit, He's been covering healthcare
(03:05):
for nearly forty years. He has seen his share about
breaks before, having reported on a bola and swine flew,
and while an expert at separating truth from myths, for
most of Jay was uncertain the FDA could authorize a safe,
effective vaccine against a coronavirus, so quickly telling people that
(03:26):
he had no plans to get vaccinated. The first to
authorize vaccines in the pipeline from Fiser and Maderna use
something called m r n A technology, and Jay wanted
to see the evidence behind how it works. So he
did what any good journalists would do. He took a
close look at the research. He read dozens of articles
(03:48):
about the vaccine approval process, interviewed top infectious disease doctors
and scientists, really dug into the vaccines clinical trials, and
talked to some just everyday people who got vaccinated. After
the deep dive, Jay would come to change his mind,
determining that the evidence was clear, the vaccine was safe
(04:11):
and effective and it would protect him against getting infected
with COVID nineteen. By late December, he decided he would
get vaccinated when he could. At sixty six years old,
Jay's turn to get vaccinated came up relatively quickly, and
on January eleven, he called his doctor to schedule an appointment.
(04:31):
He was lucky enough to get his first vaccination that
same day and a second a few weeks later. Here
now is Jay with his story about how the research
changed his mind and why he thinks people should listen
to the experts to When COVID started hitting in Seattle
(04:58):
and January, the hospitals I covered were prepared, of course,
but I didn't really start writing about it until the
end of February, when some of the nursing homes that
I cover started preparing a little bit. My wife's healthcare
worker she got COVID at the hospital. Her diagnosis actually
(05:22):
was not too surprising. She was in an elevator where
there was a patient on a stretcher and he was
coughing and he didn't have a mask. On four or
five days later, middle of the night, she started getting fevers.
The next day she lost her taste, all the classic symptoms.
Fast forward to October, I think when I when I
(05:44):
wrote in my blog that I was skeptical, part of
it was because the speed the researching developing the vaccine
usually took two or three years. I was skeptical for
for that reason. But I also got my flu shot.
But as I've been writing about the COVID pandemic and
(06:08):
also the vaccine research, I wondered if I was going
to get a call and they were going to ask
me if I would get a vaccine or not. And
I wasn't sold on it at the time. I told
my wife, I said I'm gonna say no. And I
remember telling some of my doctor friends and some other
researchers that and they were shocked. You know, Jay, you're
(06:29):
a healthcare reporter. You've read the research and everything. I said, yeah,
but I want to read the final research. I want
to hear some doctors and nurses get it. And so
probably mid December, when the doctors and nurses started getting inoculated,
I interviewed them and they told me that it was
a very mild reaction that they had. It varied. Some
(06:54):
people just had sore arms, some people felt a little
bit sick. There wasn't any serious reaction. But side effects aside,
Jay's main concerns were with the m r n A
technology and the speed at which the vaccines using it
produced by maderna adviser were released. That is, until one
(07:15):
doctor changed his perspective. I had spoken with Dr Phil Levy.
He's an e er doctor and infectious disease doctor that
I've been really talking with all year on this journey.
We started talking about the vaccines and he was explaining
in great detail about how elegant they were. He used
(07:37):
a lot of very positive type words, and he was
totally sold on it. He pretty much broke it down
for me. I think for most people, they hear things
word of mouth, Hey get this chicken sandwich at Popeye's,
it's really great. They don't read the ingredients, They just
get these testimonials for people. And I happen to have
(07:58):
a great sourceless of doctors and researchers, and they really
sold me on the idea. In addition to Dr Levy's recommendation,
there was one other personal factor that convinced Jay of
vaccination was well worth it, his wife's experience with COVID
nineteen at the start of the outbreak. My wife Olga,
(08:20):
when she got COVID that heavily influenced my decision to
get a vaccine later on, because I did not want
to get her sickness, and so that was a h
a motivating factor that eventually overtook my skepticism. I decided
to make an appointment for the vaccine because I felt
(08:45):
that I had heard enough from people that it would work.
To my surprise, a couple of weeks ago, I got
an email back, You've got an appointment on Tuesday afternoon,
and I out like I got I got the lottery,
so I had to go cash it in. I got
(09:05):
down there at the clinic at the henry Ford Hospital,
put on my mask, went inside, went up to the
fifth floor. The nurses were extremely nice. One of them
led me into a room where I read a five
page document explaining the vaccine, explaining the possible side effects.
(09:26):
Then she asked me about ten questions, if if I
had COVID, if I'd been exposed to anybody with COVID,
if I had any other vaccine like a flu vaccine
in the previous fourteen days. I just answered the questions,
and I sat back and gave gave me the shot,
just like any other shot. Then she said, go out
(09:48):
and wait for fifteen minutes, see if there's any side effects.
I didn't have any side effects at all. I was
actually feeling quite hyper because I was excited. So at
fifteen minut it's nothing, no side effects. I walked up.
On the way home, my left shoulders started to be
a little bit sore. But then that afternoon I actually
(10:11):
felt very hyper because I felt really good, And the
next couple of days I was back to normal, so
that that was it. Ultimately, Jay has some parting advice
for those who are still on the fence about the vaccines.
He recommends listening only to bona fide experts and those
who have firsthand experience with the vaccines. You need to
(10:34):
speak with experts. If you want to get information from
a friend. The only thing I would rely on is
if that friend or family member took the vaccine, I
would rely on their explanation of how they felt about it.
I would not listen to any friend who said, well,
(10:55):
I don't trust vaccines because I don't trust the government.
That sort of thing. There there's too much of that
going on. I mean, people really need to listen uh
to experts. Dr Fauci, I know that he was a
big promoter of the vaccine research. At a certain point
he started reading the early literature about the results and
(11:17):
the clinical trials, and he felt optimistic. Dr Sanjay Gupta
is especially good to listen to. So I would just
caution against any lay person giving their analysis about the
efficacy of the vaccines and go to the experts. If
(11:40):
methodical medical research is what encouraged Jay Green to go
ahead with his vaccination, we wanted to dig a little
deeper and talk to two of the experts who developed
that research. Dr Kazmikia Corbett and Dr Barney Graham are
responsible for coming up with safe, effective vaccines at the
Vaccine Research Center at the National Institutes of Health. An
(12:03):
African American scientists who was featured in Time magazines one
Next Innovator's list as an up and coming leader, Dr
Corbett was cited by Dr Anthony Fauci as producing work
that quote will have a substantial impact on ending the
worst respiratory disease pandemic in more than a hundred years
(12:24):
end of quote. As a scientific lead for the coronavirus
research team at the National Institutes of Health, she's been
working on coronavirus vaccine development for the last six years.
Dr Corbett explained to us how the systems that were
already in place made it possible to develop the COVID
nineteen vaccine so rapidly, pointing out the many safety checkpoints
(12:47):
that the vaccines had to clear as a move through
each phase of clinical trials. She's gonna help us understand
how the vaccines could have been distributed so quickly after
they were given the green light by the f d A.
I lead a team of scientists who study and have
(13:10):
studied coronavirus vaccine development for the last six years. We
have been instrumental in the design and development of coronavirus
vaccine in collaboration with Madonna, and so our work really
is around the orchestration of the vaccine design. The clinical
(13:31):
trials for the COVID nineteen vaccines have been so rapid
because of a large body of work that happened prior
to the onset of this pandemic. But also there was
already established collaboration in our instance with Madonna, So when
we understood that this was a coronavirus that was circulating
(13:54):
in the beginning of two thousand and twenty it was
very clear exactly what we could do by way of
vaccine development, and not only just very clear from a
data perspective, but also how to make that vaccine and
collaboration with Madonna, and so we really had this system
running and it was well oiled, tried and true because
(14:15):
we've been to this rodeo before. As I like to say,
really these companies and also all of the people who
funded the manufacturing, whether it be the federal government or otherwise,
took the risk on each of these products in the
portfolio to say that if it is approved, we already
want x amount of doses to be able to be delivered.
(14:36):
So in that way, as things are moving along the
clinical trials, the companies are able to manufacture vaccine product
and stockpilot in a way so that FDA vetted vaccine
product is ready to go. Dr Corbett speaks to the
concerns that Jay Green had had about m r n
(14:57):
A technology. So vaccines are not a monolith. They're all
made very differently. So for example, the standard seasonal flu
shot is an activated virus, so you're actually getting whole
virus that is just weakened to the point that while
it alerts your immune system and does cause immunity to
(15:20):
the real virus, it is still a weakened form of
the virus. All in all, vaccines that is their job
to alert your immune system, but the way that vaccines
do that are different depending on the platform. So with
the currently available vaccines, there's the Madonna and fias or
(15:41):
vaccines that are using messenger RNA to just deliver one
spike protein from the virus, not the whole virus. There's
also Johnson and Johnson vaccine that is using ad no virus,
which is a common cold virus. They're taking out all
of the mess that would make you sick from that
common cold virus, and they're then delivering the same spike
(16:05):
protein from the coronavirus via that platform, using that as
a way to alert your immune system. We know that
the technology used to create the messenger RNA vaccines is safe. Fundamentally,
your cells are built for this. They read messages from
(16:26):
RNA day in and day out, and they know exactly
what to do with it. They read the message and
then almost like a Snapchat message, you read it, you
can't read it again. It's done, it's discarded. Twenty four hours.
Capuche basically, aside from just the fundamental biology, the history
of using messenger RNA to deliver therapeutic proteins is not new.
(16:52):
This technology has been developed for over ten years, has
been in people and other clinical trials, and the safety
profiles have been studied, and that is actually why there
was confidence in the safety. Now to those who think
they can, you know, to skip the vaccine because they've
already had COVID nineteen, Dr Corbett says, think again. There
(17:17):
are a lot of people who are saying, well, I've
already been infected, so now I'm safe, and that is
just largely untrue. There are a number of reinfections and
much of the data points in the direction of the
vaccines giving you more robust So that's more high level
immune responses following the vaccine as opposed to following the virus.
(17:42):
And so if you're going to train your immune system
to be protective against these viruses, the best and the
safest and the most effective way is to do that
via vaccine. Dr Barney Graham is a medical doctor with
(18:04):
a PhD in microbiology and immunology. He is the chief
of the Viral Pathogenesis Laboratory at the National Institutes of Health,
who led the first human trial to find an AIDS
vaccine and was a finalist for the Promising Innovation's Medal
for his work creating a vaccine for the Zekea virus.
(18:25):
Dr Graham outline how extensive planning, organization, and funding made
it possible for these vaccines to be authorized so quickly.
But we also wanted him to explain how we know
that the mr NA technology in the Fiser and Moderner
vaccines is indeed safe well. As it turns out, it
(18:46):
all comes down to the groundwork he and many other
researchers laid down in the years leading up to the outbreak.
Here's Dr Graham. I feel like almost every thread of
my life seems to have come together in this one
big event. The Vaccine Research Center was established in two
(19:09):
thousand and was devoted to developing an HIV vaccine, and
even though we haven't been successful, the technologies that have
been generated by trying to make an HIV vaccine are
really what's been used to do the work that we've
done on coronaviruses. The other part of my history is
(19:29):
respiratories and Sitia virus, which is another respiratory virus that
has a protein like coronavirus spike, and I've spent thirty
five years working on RSV, and that work on rs
V really set us up for the work we've done
on coronaviruses. So after responding to outbreaks this whole last decade,
(19:50):
we made a deal with Madarin in two thousand seventeen
to specifically focus on pandemic preparedness. By the time this
outbreak occurred, we had already shown that m R and
A delivery of the spike was a very effective vaccine,
so we felt like we knew what to do and
had been preparing for that moment when the coronavirus outbreaks
(20:12):
started at the beginning of two thousand and twenty, as
infections accumulated and started spreading around the globe by March,
we realized this was not just a drill. This was
the real thing, and so bringing together the infrastructure and
cross agency capacities of the U. S Government to create
(20:35):
networks consortia of work groups to advance these studies in
combination with the different companies, not just Maderna but several
other companies in the US, and infrastructure was put in
place so that we could rapidly enroll and develop and
do the advanced development part of this vaccine, and the
(20:56):
speed at which this was developed in the ability to
press the clinical trial progression and do a lot of
things in parallel was largely based on the organization that
took place and the money that was available to take
some of the risk out. And so what wasn't done
was to skip any steps of safety or to skip
(21:17):
any steps of information we needed about the immunity response
things like that and efficacy of the vaccine. So in reality,
after doing this for thirty five years, I think the
data package that we put together over this nine or
ten months before the vaccine was found to work was
probably one of the most complete packages that I've ever seen.
(21:40):
So there wasn't any skimping on the safety or the
efficacy or the immunity response patterns for this product. Dr
Graham makes it very clear that we're not for the
decades of research and work he and a colleagues had
(22:00):
already done long before COVID nineteen surface. There is no
way these effective vaccines could have been produced so quickly,
and for that same reason, he knows that we can
trust the technology behind them. I think there's a big
lesson in what's happened during this last year, and to me,
(22:20):
one of the biggest lessons is the importance of basic research.
If we had not done the technology development through our
work on HIV vaccines, if we had not made the
discovery of the rs V protein confirmation and its effect
on vaccine efficacy. Without those kinds of background information, what
(22:41):
happened this year so rapidly would not have been possible.
The other lesson is this year has been a year
of a lot of different groups pulling together, and so
the people that work with me, even the small group
that had worked on coronavirus over the last few years
in my lab led by Dr kiss Makia Corbett. These
(23:01):
individual efforts, these small efforts, and then the efforts of
large groups coming together pivoting from their ordinary work and
studies has been something that I hope people can recognize
was extraordinary in the way that so many people, so
many scientists, so many groups banded together to really make
(23:22):
this vaccine development process happen. Banding together is the key
in this fight against COVID nineteen. And like the other
experts we've spoken to, Dr Graham urges those who may
be reluctant to get vaccinated, to think of others than
The fight against this deadly virus. Immunity is a group effort.
(23:46):
The great problem with allowing yourself to be infected is
that it's not just about you. It's about all of
us in this together. And each time a new infection occurs,
each time the virus has a new chance is to
grow in another person and divide in their cells. It
can select new variants. The virus can select viruses that
(24:09):
grow better, or transmit better, or infect better. And so
if you are the person who creates the new variant
that escapes our vaccines and some of our antibody drugs
that are working, that would not be a good thing
to have to live with. Jay Green, Dr Corbett, and
(24:34):
Dr Graham all stressed how important it is for us
to listen to the experts and look at the science
behind the COVID nineteen vaccines for answers to our questions.
That's the same advice you'll hear from scientific leaders across
the nation, including people like Dr Anthony Fauci and Dr
Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health. Vaccinations
(24:57):
are now rolling out throughout the United States, and we
have already surpassed President Biden's pledge to provide one hundred
million doses of the vaccine within his first one hundred
days in office. So when it's your turn, please take
your cue from Jay Green and joined him and millions
(25:20):
of your fellow Americans, and schedule your vaccination appointment as
soon as you can. The CDC has recommendations for who
should be vaccinated first at Every state has their own
vaccine rollout plan. It's based on your age, health conditions,
and risk of exposure. To get vaccinated, go to c
(25:40):
DC dot gov forward slash coronavirus and scroll down to
the middle of the page to click on the word vaccines.
From there, click on vaccine Finder, and the site will
help you determine where you can get the vaccine and
how to make an appointment. You don't have to worry
about paying for your vaccine. Your taxpayer dollars are funding
(26:02):
the rollout, so there's no individual cost to you. So
if someone asks you to provide your insurance information, that's
only so your vaccination provider can build your insurance for
the administrative costs, but you will not be personally responsible
for any expenses I'd like to thank our guest Jay Green,
(26:23):
Dr Corbett, and Dr Graham for sharing their thoughts and
their expertise with us today. I hope you can tune
in for episode three and which will explore the facts
behind the vaccine rollout and debunk the misinformation you may
be hearing. Plus, I'm going to talk to Dr Anthony Fauci, who,
as you probably know, is the director of the National
(26:44):
Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Dr Faucci has been
on the front lines of the pandemic since day one,
and he's going to speak to us about the solid
science behind the vaccines development and rollout. Looking forward to
that COVID nineteen immunity in our community was developed and
(27:11):
paid for by the U. S Department of Health and
Human Services, part of a public education campaign to increase
public confidence in COVID nineteen vaccines while reinforcing basic prevention measures.
We Can Do This presented by I Heart Radio and
ABC News. This podcast is hosted by me that'd be
(27:32):
Robin Roberts. The episode was executive produced by Ethan Fixal,
written by Stephanie Thurrout, and engineered, edited and mixed. He
Can Do It all Matt Stillo with original theme music
by Brad Kemp. Now, if you haven't already subscribed, rated,
or reviewed COVID nineteen Immunity in our Community, please do
(27:56):
so on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or
wherever you get your podcast. I am Robin Roberts and
this is COVID nineteen Immunity in our Community. Be sure do.
Thank you for listening. H
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