The Real Story About COVID Vaccines: What We Know, What We Don’t with Dale Harrison

The Real Story About COVID Vaccines: What We Know, What We Don’t | This episode is brought to you by Bioptimizers, Thrive Market, and Athletic Greens.

There’s no way around it, we’re being bombarded by an insane amount of information when it comes to COVID-19, and not all of it makes sense. As vaccines make their way across the country, the questions are only increasing and it can feel overwhelming to find answers from expert sources. While we don’t have all the answers, we are learning more every day. We’ve seen that for people 15 and older, COVID-19 can double our risk of dying this year. And while we know chronic disease puts us at an increased risk for severity and death, we don’t know why some perfectly healthy people still can’t fight this virus off. We’re seeing that vaccines will be a dramatic help for this virus, helping to reduce the risk of severe symptoms and death, but that they won’t stop transmission.

I really wanted to talk to someone in-depth about where we are with COVID-19, what we can count on with the vaccines, and what we still don’t know. I knew Dale Harrison would be the perfect scientist to help me break down this topic. Dale is a senior executive with more than 20 years of experience in the biotech industry. He has held multiple VP and C-level positions with companies in the research tools and molecular diagnostics sectors. Dale currently works as a consultant with companies that are developing new clinical diagnostic platforms, including a company developing a CRISPR-based COVID test for the OTC market, and a metagenomics-based NGS platform for infectious disease testing in the human transplant market.

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Here are more of the details from our interview:

• How COVID-19 vaccines are different from traditional vaccines (9:07)

• COVID risk considerations for young and healthy individuals (17:22)

• Unique elements of the AstraZeneca vaccine study, what vaccine effectiveness means, and why you can still spread the virus even if you are vaccinated (32:17)

• How the COVID vaccine is different from the measles and polio vaccines (38:10)

• What we do and do not know about potential short-term and long-term reactions to the vaccine (45:39)

• What the COVID vaccine does and does not protect against (58:30)

• The four things needed to achieve herd immunity and why Dale does not think it is realistic to think we will reach it (1:02:23)

• Weighing the effectiveness of wearing masks and social distancing (1:10:32)

• Vaccine mandates (1:27:25)

• How regularly will vaccination be needed to maintain immune protection? (1:33:59)

• Vaccine supply concerns and considerations (1:37:07)

• Protecting yourself from COVID-19 through diet, sleep, stress reduction, and other therapies (1:50:33)

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