 What's up everybody? Dr. Ali Hader and what I want to talk about in today's video is the two mRNA vaccines that have been getting a lot of buzz From Moderna and Pfizer now I'm sure there's plenty of smarter people out there no more about vaccines than I do but I'm a reasonably smart guy I did go to medical school and I understand the biology the mechanisms so I'm going to provide you a basic overview here and I want to hopefully put to ease some people's concerns and Hopefully abolish some of the myths out there and convince you why I will definitely be taking this vaccine If it were to get approval now first off I want to address some of the biggest concerns that a lot of folks talk about is that we are rushing this vaccine too quickly We're not going to have adequate safety and efficacy data before it's released now first off Let me point out that before this even gets to the FDA There's going to be an advisory committee that convenes and this is going to compose of Experts from doctors to statisticians epidemiologists even patients and it's a public hearing is going to have a Q&A As the data is presented and then they will come up with either a recommend do not recommend This is even before it gets to the FDA So there will be this transparent robust process that everybody's going to be able to evaluate for themselves Secondly people are concerned that we are moving too fast and this whole warp speed business that we've been talking about And they're concerned that this may not be safe Well a couple of things I want to talk about first of all this technology of mRNA vaccines is not brand new The concept has been dated back to the 90s this has been researched for a very long time and This technology has been looked at for everything from cancer treatments to again to vaccines and other therapies So people have been investigating this refining it and looking at this for a very long time What I'd like to do is put some people at ease by discussing the mechanism of the mRNA vaccine And why we're able to produce this so quickly and so much faster than other vaccines first of all Let's talk about some of the basics DNA DNA is our genetic code, right? It's sort of the textbook of our bodies and it's responsible for encoding all the proteins that are created When DNA needs to create a protein it does it via something called messenger RNA So DNA transcribes messenger RNA and then messenger RNA translate that code into a protein So messenger RNA is sort of the blueprint for each particular protein Once messenger RNA creates the protein its job is done and it vanishes Now how these vaccines work is they utilize messenger RNA We basically create a synthetic messenger RNA which carries a blueprint This particular messenger RNA is the blueprint of the spike protein The spike protein is the protein on the surface of SARS-CoV-2 that is involved in Fusing the virus with our cells to get into our bodies It's also important because we know that the spike protein is what is involved in creation of neutralizing antibodies We know this because of SARS-CoV-1 Remember there was SARS-CoV-1 and there was MERS. These are all different types of coronaviruses And even though the genetic code is different, they're similar structures So we've learned a lot and we knew a lot from those days. So it's not like we're starting from scratch So since we know the genetic code of this virus SARS-CoV-2 We're able to sequence the mRNA of the spike protein Now that synthetic messenger RNA is delivered as a vaccine That messenger RNA will get into our cells and it will translate the protein the spike protein, right? So we're not injecting virus We're simply injecting the blueprint for the code for that particular protein Once that's occurred the messenger RNA will eventually be degraded and all your left is with that protein That particular protein now is exposed to our body and what happens? Our immune system will recognize that protein and it will elicit immune response like it does with any foreign object It basically will create antibodies and memory T cells to recognize it Therefore if somebody gets infected in the future with SARS-CoV-2 that same spike protein will be recognized Immune response will be elicited and that patient hopefully will not get sick That's the whole way this vaccines work. So how did we get it done so fast? Again, like I talked about we don't have to grow anything in petri dishes We basically punch in the mRNA code into a computer and voila. We have our mRNA So that saves a ton of time and knowing what we know from the previous SARS viruses We're already ahead of the game and again the technology of this mRNA vaccines has been around for a long time So it's been well refined and it is ready for prime time Not to mention billions of dollars has been dumped into this by governments and private companies to Accelerate the production of this virus most vaccines don't have this much money coming in and therefore that's another way We're able to get this done so quickly And let's not forget this pandemic is running rampant across the world So there's a lot of infections going on So it's much easier to evaluate the efficacy of vaccine when there's a pandemic and everybody around you is getting infected So all these reasons allows us to be an accelerated path to create a vaccine And to evaluate its efficacy and safety now a lot of people are asking well, we don't only have data for a few months We don't even have data for a couple of years It's true Most vaccines have phase three trials between one and three years before they are approved But again for the reasons I mentioned before like this pandemic We're able to gather that data that would take a year or two in a much faster time frame Also safety of vaccines can generally be evaluated in the short term Most vaccines are going to have side effects or adverse events early on There is not really long-term side effects of vaccines Of course there's skeptics out there and anything can happen in the long run But we have thousands and thousands of patients with very good safety data and that's reassuring Not to mention we're in the middle of something called the covet 19 pandemic The deaths the socioeconomic turmoil the lockdowns and the ripple effects throughout the world are devastating So you can stay on this course and continue to deal with ups and downs of this pandemic Taking the socioeconomic hits or we can take the vaccine Both strategies clearly have a little bit of risk. You can decide which one is worse So again, I think the key points to remember is we're not changing your genetic code Nothing's being incorporated to your genome. We're not injecting live virus Toxoids or anything from the virus itself, okay? And we're basically tricking your body to create a protein on its own So the immune response that creates the immunity is from a protein created by your own cells And the messenger of that protein the messenger RNA is short lived and will eventually go away Now regarding the vaccines, they're both over 90 effective and the threshold for the vaccines was actually set at 59 The flu vaccines in the 60s compared to some other vaccines MMR vaccines 97 and the oral polio vaccine was 100 Hence the eradication now there are some catches with the vaccine The Pfizer vaccine, for example, has to be kept at negative 70 degrees celsius That's going to require some special industrial type freezers to keep this stable That's going to pose some sort of problems, I think Moderna vaccine can be kept not as cold and can be basically kept on regular style freezers So there's certainly going to be some distribution challenges that we're going to face They also both require two shots a couple of weeks apart Now, of course, there's some unanswered questions. Yes, we don't have very long-term data But if you look at historically compared to other vaccines, if you look at the mechanism And if you look at the early efficacy data and the safety data, I think with relative confidence We can say this is the way to go And living through this pandemic any further is definitely the wrong choice If it's up to me, these vaccines come out sign me up I'll be the first one online, especially if Dr. Fauci gives me a thumbs up So hopefully this puts some of your concerns at ease Hopefully it debunks some of these myths that are out there Some of the nonsense you're going to be hearing I'm sure are going to be a slew of crazy comments down here But look facts are facts conspiracy theories are only that and remember Presence of vaccinations will not end this pandemic vaccinations will end this pandemic