Covid-19 Vaccine: Myths vs. Evidence

Dr. Cooper

Welcome to the latest episode of the Catalyst Health, Wellness, and Performance Coaching Podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Bradford Cooper of the Catalyst Coaching Institute. And as we’re recording this, the COVID vaccine is being distributed worldwide. And the questions about the various forms of the vaccine and all the potential issues around that, well, they’re making their way around the world too. Our regular listeners know that one of our primary goals here on the podcast is to provide the catalyst community with engaging evidenced based insights that cut through the headlines. So today we’re very fortunate to have Dr. Michelle Barron, a senior medical director and professor of medicine specializing in infectious diseases at the university of Colorado school of medicine. She’ll be joining us to answer all of the questions you, your friends, your clients, your coworkers have been asking over the last several weeks and months. On the coaching front, the next NBHWC approved coaching certification training is just around the corner, March 20th and 21st. You’ll be participating virtually and at last check, there were still a few spots left. The next opportunity isn’t till June. So if this is a priority for you, don’t wait too long, details at CatalystCoachingInstitute.com or we’re always happy to discuss details about your career and how it fits. And anything else you might be wondering about, just email us, Results@CatalystCoachingInstitute.com. We’ll set up a call. Now, it’s time to be a catalyst with senior medical director and professor Dr. Michelle Barron on the latest episode of the Catalyst Health, Wellness, and Performance Coaching Podcast. All right, well, Dr. Barron, it is a huge privilege to have you join us today on short notice, thank you for jumping in. A lot of questions about the COVID vaccine and, and concerns, but I just wanted to say, thank you for joining us today.

Dr. Barron

Oh, it’s my pleasure. I’m very excited to be here.

Dr. Cooper

Now, right out of the gate. I think at least what I’m hearing, the biggest concern is people are saying, Oh my gosh, this thing was rushed out. We don’t have enough data. We don’t have any history on it. Uh, we, we, we, we don’t know what the long-term consequences are. What do you say to folks that, that that’s one of their biggest concerns?

Dr. Barron

It’s a legitimate concern. I certainly can tell you that the onset of this, I was a little skeptical as well, and just wanted to truly understand what processes have been done. And I wanted to see the data when they first started putting all these press releases out. Everybody’s like, so? I’m like, I haven’t seen the data. I’m not going to answer you. I, I don’t know. I, I legitimately came at it from that standpoint. One thing that I do would like to reassure people is that the study design was consistent with what we would normally do. Um, the timeframe was currently shorter and people ask, well, how did they do this? They must have cut corners. Actually, it’s the opposite. They had so much money that they could actually not have to cut corners because a lot of the things that we do are funded with the idea that you can get maybe four or five people a month into your study. And so they don’t give you all the money and resources upfront. It’s like, well, we know you’re going to go slow. So we’re not going to actually give you a mobile clinic on wheels to go to people and have them come in. And, but we had the money to do that. And that was like, really, if you asked me what’s different, this was funded appropriately, like to the nth degree where anything anybody could think of and said, well, you know, it’d be really nice. If we had a nurse that came with the mobile clinic done, like those things have actually happened where you’re not like I have to hire someone who’s now is going to have to be part of the clinic van. And it was all accounted for. And that is why people were able to enroll rapidly. Why visits actually happened consistently, but there was no short changing of what was supposed to happen. It’s just, again, resources make all the difference.

Dr. Cooper

Interesting. So, so there’s more put into this. It’s like you said, it’s the opposite. It’s not that we cut corners. We, we created, we added, let’s retest this and let’s add this resource and let’s make sure this is what we’re seeing.

Dr. Barron

Yeah, it’s unbelievable. I mean, again, to just, if you just look at enrollment, forget about all the science that was actually going in the background, just the fact they were able to enroll people that quickly. Again, that’s a resource function because they had the ability to have, you know, they could go to them if they couldn’t come to us. And most of the time, that’s not how it works. Right? Most of the time, if you’ve never been involved in a study, like you have to show up to an appointment like you would anything else, and there’s timeframes that you have to do it in. And this really was made to facilitate, like, I’m going to park my clinic in a parking lot. That’s in your neighborhood, both, you know, every week that you need to come. So on your way to school work, whatever, like it was as convenient as it could possibly be. Which again, it’s not the norm because of that costs, a lot of money.

Dr. Cooper

Okay. Um, that’s super helpful. Now I’m also hearing the risk reward equation, folks that are not in the high risk category. I don’t think a lot of people have doubts about if you’re 75, 85, 90 years old, they’re like, yeah, go get it done. But the folks in the middle range, the folks that are saying, you know what, I’m, I’m 37, I’m 42. I’m healthy. I, you know, I don’t know that there’s a value to doing it. Like why not just get the sniffles and feel like I have the flu for a few days and get this over with, why should I get the vaccine? What, any feedback for those folks, or are they right?

Dr. Barron

So there’s two things to that that I think are interesting. So you could get the sniffles, but you could die. We have people that are young and do have terrible consequences. So you can’t assume because you’re young and healthy that you’re not going to be on the right side of this virus in term of the virus does what it wants to do. Obviously, there are probably some immunological reasons for that, that we still don’t fully appreciate. And we see this with the flu where most people that are young and healthy, don’t get sick from the flu and then some people die from it. So it’s not an absolute that because you’re young and healthy that you’re going to be spareD. The other piece of this that’s been really interesting is that if you look at there’s, these people that we call the long haulers. And, um, a lot of them are pretty young and pretty healthy, and they are completely debilitated by this. So they didn’t end up in the hospital. They weren’t on a ventilator. They didn’t have any of these like major things that we worry about that we talk about when we discuss, you know, why you should get vaccinated, but they are not back to normal. I have several people that I’ve talked to that, you know, used to be athletes, you know, again, fit and walking a block, taxes, them, um, memory issues. So there’s still a lot of stuff we don’t know about the long-term complications and so fine, right. Maybe you have a couple of days where you don’t feel well, but maybe that extends into months of not being able to function at your full capacity. And so even though the risk of you dying, it’s probably low. We don’t know the other pieces of this while we know preventing it with the vaccine, sort of potentially puts you take that out of the equation.

Dr. Cooper

And so with the long haulers, and we just had a guest that is going through that, um, that some folks might be familiar with Matt Fitzgerald, who is a great athlete. He just ran a 1:14, 1:15 half marathon, and he’s going through exactly what you described. Are we finding, or do we know yet, does the vaccine, are there people getting the vaccine that are struggling with the long haul or is that pretty much take that off the table for those folks?

Dr. Barron

That’s a great question. I think we don’t have enough information yet. Right? Cause we haven’t actually vaccinated outside of the study. Right. We haven’t really vaccinated, um, a lot of those younger people that fit into that category, there’s certainly a bulk of the studies. And all I can tell you from the studies is that the number of people that got infected the difference was dramatic, right? Like it wasn’t even a subtle, like, uh, let’s do some fancy statistics. I mean, it was very obvious, like zero and like, you know, X or 10 and like a hundred, like the differences are, are very, very notable. Now what all this means long term, I think is the question that we’re still trying to define since the studies were closed to enrollment, you know, in the fall, people are still being followed out. There’s a lot of things that have changed since it closed. Right. We had one of the highest rates of COVID in the country in the last several months finally coming down. But how did that impact, how did that affect the vaccine efficacy and what happened to these people? Did they have any, are they still doing as well as they were at the beginning? And hopefully that data will be forthcoming soon, but we don’t have that yet.

Dr. Cooper

So essentially you’re saying, look, it’s, well, take the other side of that. If we’re talking risk and reward, we’ve got to talk about the risk. What risk do I have by taking the vaccine? Is there any, like you said, at the beginning stages, you, you said, you know, I need to learn some more. What, what puts you over the top? What made you say the risk is so minuscule? Or is it not, do we just not know the risk at this point?

Dr. Barron

Right. So I think with like all things there’s, you have to sort of there’s, it’s never one thing it’s multi-layered so first you look at your individual risk and say, okay, what is my risk of a complication? What is my risk of being hospitalized? All these things. I think if you’re young and healthy, aren’t 80, don’t have those kinds of things going on. Um, then you really want to be more critical about like, okay, what if I have a reaction? So what are the reactions potentially going to be? So there’s obviously like an allergic reaction that you can have and those occur and sometimes to things we didn’t know. And certainly with something new that you’re introducing into your body, there’s that risk. We have data now that suggests that’s pretty low. Um, actually extraordinarily low, but it’s not zero. So that’s legitimate. I think something to consider. And certainly if you have a history of having allergic reactions, this is worth having a conversation with someone to say, okay, like I know it’s new, but I always react and should I do this? Should I not? So I think that’s a legitimate consideration to sort of think through then beyond your individual risk, is who are you around and who, what is your risk to them? So let’s say you don’t get vaccinated, but you have an elderly person in your household. So we know that they hopefully will get vaccinated if they haven’t already, but at some point you’re protecting yourself as to also protect them, because then you don’t, the vaccine is, not a hundred percent. So even if they get vaccinated, there’s still a chance they could get sick. Now they’re not going to get as sick, but they’re still going to get sick. And so is certainly as a healthcare provider, I put that burden on myself and say, okay, if I could do something to prevent myself from infecting the patient hands down, I would do it because that’s my job right? Now, what if you’re not a healthcare provider again, think about it in context of like, okay, I have family members that have underlying illnesses that put them at risk age or otherwise, or I just can’t afford to be off work. Like if I got sick and I had to take five days off, could I really financially do that? What are the third order effects of that? Right? Pretty big.

Dr. Cooper

Okay. So you’ve kind of walked us into the question of, are you less likely to pass it on after you’ve been vaccinated? Do, do we know that yet? Because what you just said, yes. It makes sense. If the vaccination keeps you from passing it onto someone, but have we clarified that yet?

Dr. Barron

Yeah. So there’s some data. So both the Moderna trial and AstraZeneca trial looked at this and, um, it’s in various stages of publication. Um, the Moderna trial was not as consistent in that. They didn’t necessarily do it the whole time they had people swab themselves after they got their first dose, which means maybe they were already partially protected. And so comparing that to the unvaccinated group, isn’t quite right, but so keep that in mind. But both the AstraZeneca did have everybody swab all the time, regardless of whether they had symptoms or not. And when you look at that, the sample sizes are still pretty small. We’re not talking like thousands of people we’re talking like hundreds, which diminishes sometimes the effect of being able to say, well, is this truly due to like legitimacy versus random chance? But that being said, if you look at the trajectory of people that were asymptomatic and after with vaccine versus not vaccine, it was really low, like less than 1% that were still. So one of the things I think this brings up is like, so then I don’t have to wear a mask. Right. And the answer is not yet because most people aren’t quite at that same degree of immunity or they’re in their different phases where you could still get infected.

Dr. Cooper

So I heard a couple of things in there. One, they were not symptomatic, but that doesn’t tell us if they’re passing it on right? Or, so if we’re trying, if we’re, if our reasoning for, okay, I’ll go ahead and do this to protect a family member, a coworker, a friend, do we know that it actually is doing that?

Dr. Barron

Well when they ended up getting sick, so of the majority of those people only you know a small proportion got sick at all. Number one, and of those that were sick, um, or sorry, that tested positive, very few were asymptomatic.

Dr. Cooper

I see. So we’re not even testing positive except in that 5% ish number. Uh, if I’ve had the vaccine, I won’t test positive, which means I have nothing to pass on. I see. Okay. I was mishearing you. I was just, I was hearing is you’re not getting the symptoms and I’m thinking well, but could I not be still carrying it? And you’re saying no, 95% of the time, depending on which one of the vaccines, 95% of the time, you don’t have anything to pass on now because you are vaccinated.

Dr. Barron

Correct. Exactly. That’s what, again, not perfect data, but that is what that suggests for now.

Dr. Cooper

Okay. That’s, that’s very helpful that that clarifies a lot. All right. Let’s, let’s hit three specific groups and how important or not so important it is for these three groups or concerns that you might have with the lack of research at this point. First of all, pregnant women, risk for the baby. Our kids are pretty close to that point where maybe they’re going to start thinking about having kids. Would you recommend that potential mom or current mom, she’s carrying her baby vaccinated, or what’s the data telling us on that at this point? Any risks with that?

Dr. Barron

I think the risks are unknown at this time only because the studies that are looking at this are ongoing. I think that again becomes kind of a question of how we know that pregnant women that get COVID have worse outcomes. And so then it becomes a question of what in your, how much can you control in your life in terms of preventing exposure. And depending if you’re a healthcare worker that’s really hard. And so that might be a different sort of discussion then if you were someone who works within your home and remote access, and isn’t going to have lots of people constantly with potential COVID during the pregnancy. So I think it goes kind of, it’s a very tough decision. I think anything that you do in the setting of pregnancy, I think is challenging because I think there always is this sort of, well, I can take care of me, but I also have something else or someone else I have to take care of in addition to me, and they kind of go together. And so I think this is one that certainly the animal data suggests that it’s safe. Animals are not humans. I understand that the first trimester is always that tricky timeframe where I think people are very worried about the things that can happen, because obviously again, that’s why we don’t tell people when you’re pregnant because so many things can go wrong. Right. Um, so I think it’s one of these things that it’s obviously going to end up being a personal decision, but I think a lot of it, it becomes just sort of, again, this sort of risk benefit analysis. Should I just wait until the first trimester, not an unreasonable thing. Should I get it now? Because I am in a high risk situation where I know I’m going to get exposed probably, but again, I don’t know that I have equal answers on this. I think those are things that a lot of times I just said, let’s just talk about it. Let’s, let’s what makes sense to you. And it won’t be a one size fits all.

Dr. Cooper

It seems I saw something when I was preparing for this interview that a pregnant mother can pass COVID onto her baby. Uh, but the vaccine, there’s nothing in the vaccine that will be passed onto the baby. Did I read that correctly?

Dr. Barron

That’s true. Correct.

Dr. Cooper

So that might roll into the conversation as well. Um, okay. How about kids under 16? We’re seeing some things about, eh, you know what we need to wait on this. We don’t know yet. Has that been updated? Is my knowledge, you know, three months old to where now they’re saying no, as long as they’re over eight or 12 or six, what’s the latest on the kids?

Dr. Barron

Studies are still ongoing, so we don’t still have data to be able to tell you, I imagine that it will be safe. I don’t think that actually is going to be problematic. Um, we do know children do get sick, um, again, varying degrees and, you know, there’s these inflammatory symptoms that may be associated with, uh, COVID and children. That’s somewhat of what we saw a couple of years ago, like polio, like illness, where they get a lot of muscle inflammation, sometimes have issues with walking or paralysis kind of symptoms. So I think there’s probably to be some value in vaccinating children, but there’s just the data for that population that they need to do, just like they did for the adults it’s not done yet. It’s ongoing. So I think probably by early summer, we should have some of that data on the safety and how well it worked. And then I would imagine it’ll go through a similar process as it has for adults.

Dr. Cooper

Okay. So at this point, under 16, under 18, under 14, what’s the general consensus?

Dr. Barron

Pfizer studied, um, up to 16, 16, and up and over Moderna was 18 and over. And even then there was some debates about this because the number of 16 to 18 was not a huge proportion. It was enough, I think to where again, I think these are going to be safe. I don’t think that’s the issue. It’s really, again, making sure that the immunogenicity is what it needs to be. And that can actually an immunogenicity being the response to the vaccine can certainly vary depending on how old you are, younger children, their immune systems, aren’t, aren’t as mature as when you’re in your teens. And that’s just a function of the way the body works.

Dr. Cooper

Okay. I obviously come from the world of health and wellness in this world where you’ve got the whole span, but we have a lot of folks that are like, no, everything has to be natural. And the mRNA stuff that they’re doing with that, that changes your DNA. And that’s horrible. And that could, can you talk us through, what is the mRNA? What does that mean? Is it a new thing? Does it affect your DNA? What, what is this? So people that are seeing that on websites or, or Facebook posts or whatever that they can filter through what’s reality and what’s just psychosis.

Dr. Barron

Sure. So messenger RNA is basically the way to think about this is it’s the code. So it’s the computer code that tells you, okay, I am going to make this protein. So it’s almost like a recipe in terms of what you’re trying to make. And then once it’s made, the recipe is out of the equation, like the reason the mRNA vaccines have to be kept up and they’re very delicate. So they don’t last very long. That’s why they have to be kept at these extreme cold temperatures, because they’ll just fall apart very quickly. The way I think of it as like, think about using your grandmother’s old cookbook, like if you open it right, you can see what you need to do, and you can make what you need to make. But if you sort of handle it, it’s going to fall apart on you very rapidly. Like I have an old cookbook that I have to always use very gently with because I love the recipe, but I find, but it’s so tattered and all of that it’ll fall apart. If I, if I’m not careful with it. And so once that goes into your body, though, your, it immediately does what it’s supposed to do and makes the proteins that are supposed to help stimulate your immune system. And basically they’re sending out the signal, your immune system that say, Hey, look here, this is an intruder. It does not go into your DNA. Does not go into your system. It just signs that beacon of light that says we have an intruder and then your immune system’s like, yeah, I don’t want you here. And its response to it is what we call antibodies. Um, and the idea of having the antibodies is that then now it’s like, again, this ages me when they had,

Dr. Cooper

I’m older than you are so you’ve got this made.

Dr. Barron

Pictures of like people missing on milk cartons or on the FBI’s most wanted list in the post office. There’s pictures of things that people then say, yeah, that looks, that person looks familiar to me. And then you’re like, Oh yeah, I seen him before. And that’s basically what the vaccine is doing, allowing your immune system to have that recognition of like, Oh yeah, I know who you are and you don’t belong.

Dr. Cooper

Gotcha. So it’s a trigger and then it basically gets absorbed into your system at that point?

Dr. Barron

It just dissipates. So right. It basically mRNA just translates, makes the protein and it’s done. It’s like all the individual ingredients of a recipe. Once they’re together, they’re no longer separate. It’s just done. You have the end product and you don’t say, Oh, but there was salt over here. And there was something over here it’s all mixed and done. And then it either gets eaten by your immune system. Or if we’re keeping with the analogy of a recipe or, and that’s pretty much it, or it goes away dissipates.

Dr. Cooper

So no concerns about influence on DNA. This doesn’t affect epigenetics. There’s nothing along those lines that people need to be worried about?

Dr. Barron

Nothing along those lines. And this is something we all have within us. Our body has mRNA that produces our hair color, lets our nails grow, how our skin regenerates. All of this is a natural process within our own human body and that’s how we function. Um, but it doesn’t, again, it’s not something that lasts, it makes what it’s supposed to do and then it’s done. It’s gone.

Dr. Cooper

Okay, good. Um, how about folks that have active or maybe dormant autoimmune diseases, PMR polymyalgia rheumatica? Uh, there seem to be reports with the flu vaccine that may be at least on a case study basis. The flu vaccine has, has spurred that has, has re-triggered that. Can you speak of that either with the flu vaccine, because we probably don’t know with, with COVID vaccine at this point. We had Dr. William Shafter from, from Vanderbilt here to talk about the flu vaccine. And he talked a little bit about that, but I don’t believe I asked him that specific question. If you have any familiarity with that, can you address that question or that concern that people may have about any type of vaccine?

Dr. Barron

Sure. I think, I mean, obviously you’re ramping up your immune system when you get a vaccine, that’s if the vaccine is going to be effective, that’s the intent is that you need to ramp up the immune and in doing so there is always that question of whether or not, when you rev up the immune system, do you over rev it up to the point where, and for those that are not familiar with autoimmune diseases, it’s really a function of the body, not recognizing you as you and it attacks it. And so you have hyper inflammation and you have all sorts of issues. So I think those are questions that for all vaccines, I think it’s complicated. And I don’t know that there’s, there’s all sorts of data out there on like, well it helps, but no it doesn’t. And maybe it could, and maybe it doesn’t, but this really becomes really a function of individuals because not all you could say five people have lupus or have PMR or rheumatoid arthritis and each one of those individuals will be different in terms of their immune system is very specific to there’s. Yes, their immune system is attacking that particular cell line or tissue or otherwise. But the degree of that attack varies what medications they might be on to control that often vary. And it’s not often just a one size fits all. I have a very good friend who has lupus and she asked me about, I mean, she gets her flu shot and has never had issues with that. But asked me about the COVID. And I said, I honestly don’t know the answer to that. It’s really a question to talk to rheumatologists about like, is it safe? Is there a timing in which it’s ideal to do this, to where we know you’re not having a flare so we can, you know, you’re doing great. So this is probably the time to do it versus you’re not doing so great right now. We don’t want to add in one more thing that can sort of keep you from getting back to your normal state. So again, I think there will hopefully be more data, but these are, it’s almost along the lines of the pregnancy question. You the thing that you need to talk about and say, okay, again, what’s your risk? What’s the benefit. We have no guarantees on anything and it could be coincidence. It could be associated, but we just don’t know.

Dr. Cooper

And does it matter if it’s there, but it really is not exacerbated at this point? Does that change your answer? Or if you’ve had this diagnosis of lupus and fibromyalgia of PMR, et cetera, that’s really the unknown at this point.

Dr. Barron

I think there were patients that had these diagnoses that were in the clinical trials, um, that had some level of immunocompromised state because of medications to control these types of diseases or had cancer or HIV. They want the preponderance. So, you know, it’s a chunk of them and they all seem to do fine and not have issues, but again, we just don’t have the numbers. And I think we’ll obviously be finding that because there are quite a number of people with these conditions that are electing to get vaccinated. And, uh, there’s a lot of what we call. Post-marketing not marketing, but data that’s been collected. And I think this is important. And this my plug for people who do decide to get the vaccine, the CDC has an app called V like Victor safe that you can sign up for so that you can track all your symptoms. And you can say, you know, I had a headache. I felt funny. I mean, even if you don’t think it’s related all this, and there’s also a phone number on the website, it’s V A E R S on the, if you Google that on CDC, you can report all your side effects and say, you know, and so that they’re actively collecting, you know, the millions of doses that have been given, hopefully people are following through and not just the severe stuff. So I get it every week. I get a reminder, it’s been a month since I’ve got my vaccine and they asked me the same question, how you feeling anything strange happened to you? Have you had any issues at all? And you say, yes, I say no or whatever. And then they collect that information. And because, you know, the studies were huge numbers, but not a million. Right. And when you give a million, if it’s a rare event it’s going to pop up eventually. And so I think, again, we’re learning as we go along, hopefully some of these answers will be forthcoming.

Dr. Cooper

Yeah. Yeah. It could be one of the biggest studies we’ve ever done. Side effects to expect. What, what, what does that mean is happening in the body? One of the interesting things I’m finding, our son is in healthcare so he got it. He’s 21, he’s a runner. He got just crushed by it. And then my parents who in their early eighties, my mother-in-law who was late seventies, they’re like no big deal. Is that common? Are the younger fitter folks getting flattened a lot more often than the folks that you know, in their late seventies, early eighties type thing? Or is that just random?

Dr. Barron

Oh no, no. If you look at the clinical trials, they broke down side effects by age group. And they looked at the severity of them and they have different sort of scales to say, you know, this was like super, super bad versus different and feel great. And there was definitely a distinct difference between individuals under the age of 40 versus over 40. And I’m not calling people over 40 old, I’m included in this group, but, um, but that was, you could see a statistical difference. The rates were much higher in younger people. And why is that? If you think about, again, going back to what I said about the maturity of the immune system, there’s the very young that have their immature immune systems and the older people, their maturity is what, where you start to see some of the immune system sort of scaling back and not being as robust. And so sometimes when we have young, healthy people who end up in the hospital who are really sick, it’s not what bug, cause somebody next door could have the same bacteria or virus, but it’s their immune system saying, Oh man, I’m sending out the nuclear bomb. I’m not going to mess with this. Versus I really just sent out the police force to take care of it, very different reactions, but can have that overwhelming effect. So I think that’s probably what happened with your son. It’s just, you know, he’s young and healthy and his immune system was like, I got this, I’m going for it.

Dr. Cooper

And are there things that people should be aware of? Uh, you mentioned some of them that are being tracked on that app, is it generally fatigue, headaches?

Dr. Barron

Yeah. So everybody has some level of soreness in their arms. That’s kind of a given. Um, and that can last a couple of days could last just for a couple hours. Um, headache, fatigue, fevers, body aches, muscle aches. So people can get rashes and some of the rashes have been bizarro. And that it’s not, when you think like, you know, people expect to like get a rash immediately and some people do, but some people like a week out, all of a sudden on the arm that they got, the injection will get a rash and they usually take some Benadryl. It goes away. So yeah, I think there’s a good variety of reactions. The second dose is worse. I can tell you personally, the second dose was worse for me than the first and it wasn’t horrible, but it was definitely more, I noticed it more and I don’t think I noticed it more because I was just psychosomatic thinking like the data says the second is worse. I’m going to feel worse, which there’s an element to that.

Dr. Cooper

Placebo is strong. Okay. I think it’s just good for folks to know what they potentially could get. So we have that on the table. Do we know, are we going to need to get this vaccine annually? Or is that a to be determined type thing?

Dr. Barron

So to be determined, I would highly anticipate that we will probably end up getting a booster in the fall. And the reason I say that is only because of the variance that we’re seeing and people ask me, they’re like, what does that mean? What is a variant and how does this happen? So when it makes copies of itself, this is the best analogy I have for you is that if you were handwriting everything over and over, you’re going to make a mistake. And at the end of it, you aren’t quite where you started. And the ability for your immune system, sometimes it’s meaningless. It doesn’t really change the meaning of what you wrote. Sometimes it totally changes the meaning and your immune system picks up on that or doesn’t pick up on it. So it’s like, if I dyed my hair purple, people would still know it’s me. But what if I completely redid my whole appearance? Then people say, well, it looks like her, but it’s not right. Yeah, exactly. And so your immune system doesn’t necessarily react. So with those variants, there’s an, you know, it could be as simple as like, Oh, she’s got blue hair now, but it’s still her where the immune system will recognize you. Or they’re like, well, she’s got glasses on and her nose looks different and her hair looks different then I don’t know that I’m going to attack. And when those variants come into play, we might need a booster or a different variant variation of the vaccine to be able to recognize that.

Dr. Cooper

But from what I understand, the good news is the current vaccines are having similar effect on these new strains that are being discovered.

Dr. Barron

That’s correct. So right now we’re good. But so there’s two pieces to that. So, correct, right now, we’re good. In terms of the variance, the other piece we don’t know is how long this lasts, how long does the protection last? And that’s why we might need a booster. Not only because of changes of the virus, but because your immune system just, there’s some things that will remember forever and some things it’s sort of like, man, I saw you last week, you moved away. Never going to see you again. I am not going to waste my energy on trying to remember who you were.

Dr. Cooper

Okay. Okay, good. Um, just a couple more if you’ve already had COVID should you get the vaccine again? Like I’m trying to understand this one. Yeah.

Dr. Barron

Yeah. So there’s two pieces to this one. Again, like we said, how long you have immunity has not been determined, but based on other respiratory viruses, you’re probably only protected for three months. So once you get it, so you might not be able to rush out and get the vaccine, but you may not be out of that window. The other thing that was interesting, and this is just a, it’s not fully published. It was just impartial. Um, in South Africa, they were looking at, um, people that were enrolled in their study for the vaccine trial. And they didn’t test everybody in terms of, well, you had it, you didn’t have it. They did the testing in the background, but it didn’t matter. You didn’t get assigned one way or the other. So they looked at the placebo group in terms of how many people got COVID after the vaccine. And then they went back to see, Hey, how many of those people had antibody? And did that help them? Like maybe there, maybe there was a benefit, like when the vaccine group, like, if you already had COVID before, that was why you didn’t get COVID and in the placebo group, it didn’t seem to matter. Like, you couldn’t see a difference. People that had had COVID before, if you got placebo arm, you still got COVID again. So, yeah. And so whether, it was done in South Africa, so I don’t know if that has to do with strain type and this particular vaccine or that it’s just not robust enough. And that’s another piece, right? What I was sort of saying how everybody’s a little different with their immune response. So you could have had a cold as your manifestation of COVID and have huge antibody titers that are protective. I also might’ve had a cold, but my immune system wasn’t as robust responding to it. And so it attacked it, but not to the full extent you did. And so the memory for that it’s in this long, long standing. So we still don’t know. We don’t know that well enough yet to be able to say like, Oh yeah, this is how it works, there’s still a lot of stuff we’re learning. But another reason why you potentially would want to get the vaccine is that even if you had COVID, how sick were you and were you sick enough to have this longing effect? Or maybe you weren’t and we don’t know.

Dr. Cooper

So that brings another question that somebody asked, um, somebody that’s tested twice as positive months apart, is that what you’re describing here? That initially they didn’t develop strong enough antibodies. And so three, four months down the road, boom, there, they get it again.

Dr. Barron

It’s a good question. So, you know, we do know that people can continue to shed the virus. And I don’t know that I’ve seen any studies that have correlated if you continue to shed, which has been shown to not be transmissible. So it’s still hanging out, but it’s not necessarily enough to give it to another person. I don’t know that I’ve seen anything that’s correlated that response. I’m sure it’ll be forthcoming. I’m somebody’s got to be looking at it because I think it’s a curiosity, but I think that’s the other question that we don’t know, like how much is enough? Like how much is enough to either stop it from shedding and how much is enough to like keep you protected for the longterm. And I don’t think anybody knows that answer yet.

Dr. Cooper

Interesting. Dr. Barron such a privilege to have you join us. Your background is unbelievable as people who heard the introduction know. Uh, so we’re very grateful for you to take the time. Is there anything that I haven’t asked that you’re getting asked a lot that we need to wrap up by making sure we cover those things?

Dr. Barron

Yeah. So the last thing I would say is that if you do decide to get your vaccine, which again, highly recommend, but obviously go through all the risks and benefits before making that decision. You are not fully protected until at least two weeks after the second dose. So make sure that you’re being conscious of that because you can get sick. Side effects, do not include cough, shortness of breath or any respiratory symptoms. So if you develop those symptoms, even if you had the vaccine, you probably want to get evaluated for COVID or other viruses. Cause there are potentially other strains. And then last but not least, and this is sort of the bigger point. We still got to be really good with our transmission control. So wearing masks, washing hands, limiting gatherings, those are still going to be really important until we get enough people that are covered with either immunity, from vaccine or natural disease to protect everybody else. So you’re doing it to prevent you from potentially exposing or getting exposed.

Dr. Cooper

Very good. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

Dr. Barron

My pleasure.

Dr. Cooper

Was that helpful? It definitely made me feel better to hear someone as credible as Dr. Barron separate reality from all the claims we’re hearing from seemingly all different directions. Another big thank you to Dr. Michelle Barron for taking the time out of her incredibly busy schedule, especially right now to join us and thanks to you for tuning into the number one podcast for health and wellness coaching. Next week’s episode will definitely spark your interest as we’ll be interviewing Dr. Friedrich Nietzsche. One of history’s great minds you’ll likely recognize the name, but you’ll definitely recognize many of the statements credited to him, including what doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger. And if you have a big enough why you can bear just about any how. Okay, we won’t actually be interviewing him, he died in the year 1900, but we are interviewing Dr. John Kay, who is one of the foremost experts in Nietzshe. He helps us dig into what would this genius say about health, wellness, and performance. As always feel free to reach out to us with any questions about your current or future health and wellness coaching career Results@CatalystCoachingInstitute.com or you can tap into additional health models, performance resources on the website, CatalystCoachingInstitute.com. Now it’s time to be a catalyst making a positive impact on the lives of our clients and our community without burning ourselves out in the process. This is Dr. Bradford Cooper of the Catalyst Coaching Institute. I’ll speak with you soon on another episode of the Catalyst Health, Wellness, and Performance Coaching Podcast, or maybe over on the YouTube Coaching Channel.