Coronavirus UPDATE #5 made simple (as your friendly neighborhood ER Doc)! It has been a while, but it seems like is a lot of confusion and fear about the new vaccine, so I am happy to try to answer some common concerns. Knowing most of us are not PhD’s in Virology, I am going to try to relate this stuff in English. What does the vaccine do? Does this vaccine change our DNA? How can it be out so fast without taking shortcuts?
1. Vaccines are used to make antibodies…great doc…that clears it all up! OK, Sorry. Antibodies are the mall cops of the human body (before I get hate mail that I am making fun of our officers in the malls, they are the heroes of my story!). Vaccines are the APB photo that the officers get at the beginning of a shift. Because of those photos, mall cops know EXACTLY what the bad guy looks like so that the moment the bad guy arrives, they can swarm and remove them before trouble starts. Vaccines give the body a chance to recognize and prepare for the virus before we actually get sick.
2. No. Messenger RNA vaccines don’t change our DNA. For those that don’t remember (and why would you?), DNA is the blueprint that we all carry in our cells. Not unlike the blueprint of a new house, it gives all of the important information needed to build everything we need to make everything work in the cell. When we are building a house, the plumber doesn’t need the electrical plan and the cabinet carpenter does not need the landscape elevations. So, we can make mini-blueprint copies for the tradesmen (or women) to use. Making copies that only have some of the information does not change the original blueprint. The mRNA used in these vaccines is just a copy of a small part of the blueprint to allow the body to make a protein found on the virus so it can make antibodies to that specific protein.
3. Vaccine production requires specific and rigid steps to be able to be used in humans. If you remember last February when everyone was asking about a vaccine, Dr. Fauci said it would be a year to 18 months to see a safe and effective vaccine distribution. So, what did we skip? Well, nothing…exactly. Because we have been using this mRNA technology for cancer research and treatment for years, the scientists already had an idea of how to make this type of vaccine work. That shaved off some time. The next step in developing a vaccine is to test it in a lab to see if the vaccine actually works. But cells divide a certain rate and that testing can’t really be done any faster. If the lab testing works, then the next step is to test it in human volunteers. Again, there aren’t any ways to really make this part go any faster. It takes time for humans to make antibodies and we have to watch the volunteers for at least 2 months to watch for side effects and to see if the vaccine actually works in people (they watch for 2 months based on past studies showing that the major complication of a vaccines show up within 2 months). If it is shown to be safe and effective in humans, it finally goes into mass production and eventual distribution 3-4 months after that. THIS is where things were different this time. Once the vaccine passed the lab tests part in August, the government told the drug companies to go ahead and start mass production! We took a big gamble so that if the vaccine passed the human trials, the vaccine would be ready for distribution immediately! Had the drug makers not started production after stage 2, we would be just now going into production and they would not be ready to distribute until February or March (the original estimated time by Dr. Fauci) So, you can see, they did take a short cut…but not on the science. It was a gamble in when to start production that allowed us to be ready to roll up our sleeves and be vaccinated 3-4 months early!
I am putting my money where my mouth is and getting my vaccination at 10:30am on Friday! Wear a mask, wash your hands, social distance and get a vaccination when you can! Be well!
Gavin H. Inglis, MD FACEP is an Emergency Medicine Physician. As a partner in St. Vincent Emergency Physicians, INC, he has been practicing in Indianapolis, IN at a Level 1 Trauma Center for more than 20 years.