Vaccine safety and the new COVID-19 vaccines

Gina DiPietro 0:00

After months of waiting, there is finally light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel with the emergence of three new vaccines. Welcome to Novant Health Healthy Headlines. I'm Gina DiPietro. In this episode, Roland Wilkinson speaks to Dr. Charles Bregier, Novant Health medical director of corporate health, about the safety and necessity of these promising new vaccines.

Roland Wilkerson 0:00

So first, let's just talk a little bit overall about the incredible success story behind vaccines. I think there's been a lot of attention around people who question their safety. But the reality is, the vast majority of Americans get vaccines and trust them for themselves and their children, is that your experience as a physician, it's

Dr. Charles Bregier 0:24

absolutely the truth that vaccines are very safe, and very helpful. And if you look over the history of vaccine development through the last hundred 150 years, it's really come a long way, with a tremendous emphasis on safety, and extensive studies that are usually done to make sure that they're safe. And you also have to think about the fact that we've learned a lot about vaccine development and learned a lot about do's and don'ts about what's safe, and what's not so safe. So know, based on you know, what we've learned for so long, it helps influence the approach to new vaccine development to make them much safer. And then you think about the the approval process with you know, stage one, stage two and stage three trials to get through you larger and larger and larger in terms of number of participants. And if there's any significant adverse effects among anyone, they often stop and look hard to see if there's anything that really could clearly link, a bad side effect or bad outcome with the vaccine, as opposed to what happens in the world at large. You know, like, you know, for example, people get in car crashes all the time, or fall off a ladder, or have things happen. And so there is a certain incidence of infections and illnesses and injuries that happen all the time. And so when you're looking at adverse effects, or possible adverse effects of the vaccine, you need to look and see what are the statistical risk of having that adverse outcome in the general population, and compare that with incidents maybe happening in the trial population that's received the vaccine to see if there's a difference, because if there's not a difference, then it's very difficult to make any assumption or assertion that there's relationship between the two.

Roland Wilkerson 2:27

And we know that health care workers are going to be among the first who get the vaccine. So they are putting themselves out there on this, which I guess is the, you know, obviously, a vote for their competence as a safety of the vaccine.

Dr. Charles Bregier 2:44

Yes. And I think that, from what I have heard, and just doing some polling of co workers and people that I've talked to, within Novartis and across healthcare, that the vast majority people are very interested and receptive to getting the vaccine, especially because COVID not only does it have a one to 2% mortality rate, but it also has a significant no morbidity rate in terms of long term feeling misses and recovery, recuperation periods, and possibly, you know, prolonged, you know, lung disease, other problems that could go on for a long time. And so we want to avoid all of that as much as we can. I think it's also good to think back to the fact that there's been a lot of hysteria that's demesne developed about vaccines, and, you know, possible adverse effects. And for almost all of them, especially ones that have been developed in the last 50 to 70 years, it's really not borne out to have any real validity. So, you know, you hear some things used to hear some things back in the 70s and 80s and 90s. About does the MMR shot cause autism? And the answer is No, it doesn't. There's never been a well, well done study that showed any relationship between them, that scenes save lives many more time at a much greater scale than any illness they may cause which is extremely rare.

Roland Wilkerson 4:09

Are you getting a lot of questions from friends and family about the coming vaccine? A lot?

Dr. Charles Bregier 4:16

Yes. People are asking me what do I think about it? And I said, I think it's very safe. I think there was over 40,000 people in both the Pfizer trial and the mudrunner trial, and no significant adverse effects noted in any of them several months after the trials have been concluded. And that's when you would expect to see adverse effect to be within the first month or two. So there's no bad effects have been seen. And people say to me, would you take the vaccine, and I'll say absolutely. The first day the vaccine is offered to me, I will stand in line to get it because I don't want to get COVID I know that the likelihood of me getting severely ill or even dying is a million times greater, perhaps literally a million if not 100,000 times greater from the from the COVID virus than it is from a very safely manufactured vaccine that's made from no inactivated. Genetic reproductions of

Roland Wilkerson 5:22

different parts of the virus. So much has become politicized around this. What do you say to people who wonder how can we trust the government to get this, right?

Dr. Charles Bregier 5:37

So, basically, I think CDC and FDA and wh O, so both national and international, widely respected and reputable organizations, take a good hard look at this. And they are the ones who really hold the drug manufacturing companies who are developing these accountable for the results. And for accuracy. I know that Pfizer a week or two ago, basically asked for their emergency use authorization from CDC and FDA and during a has similarly done so a couple of days ago, they will look very hard at all the data, and all the reports and all the information from all the people in these studies to make sure that they truly are safe. I truly believe that our government and CDC and FDA really have what's best for me and what's best for us in mind. I don't think that they want to do anything to cause anything bad to happen to me or anyone in this country. Conversely, they want to save lives and protect lives and improve health. That's what everything has become. And the proof is in looking to see what has happened in in medicine. Over the last couple of generations. You look at life expectancy, and you look at quality of life, both have increased and improved dramatically. But majority of people are born today are expected to have, you know, lifespans of up to 100 years now. Well, that, you know, was very rare a couple of decades ago. And it's because of all the initiatives and things we've done to make us healthier. And a lot of that has to do with preventing diseases like measles, mumps, rubella, influenza, COVID, all kinds of things that that vaccines are made to prevent.

Roland Wilkerson 7:31

And to your point, the experts making these recommendations. They're scientists and doctors. So they're not the they're not the political side of government. They are, they are doctors and scientists.

Dr. Charles Bregier 7:44

Yes, that's exactly right. So it's doctors and scientists for the working for the drug companies who are developing these, it's doctors and scientists for you know, FDA and CDC and who and others who have tremendous knowledge and experience in vaccine developm...