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How mRNA Vaccines Work · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's Charles W Chuck Bryan over there. Jerry is
0:17
Speaker 1: persona non grata and that's that's stuff you should know,
0:22
Speaker 1: of course, just the usual. Yeah, that's so stuff you
0:27
Speaker 1: should know, stuff you should know regular mhm uh. So
0:32
Speaker 1: can I say a couple of things here? Oh preamble
0:35
Speaker 1: from Charles, let's hear it. So we're gonna be talking
0:40
Speaker 1: today about the COVID vaccines, uh, specifically M in our
0:47
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, oh boy episode m r NA vaccines a
0:52
Speaker 1: k A Mr Nah. How I like to call him
0:57
Speaker 1: head and picked up on that before. Now I can't
0:59
Speaker 1: unsee it. Well that's because the M is little. Yeah yeah,
1:03
Speaker 1: but still now I see it very clearly, the mr
1:06
Speaker 1: NO vaccine. Uh. And just quickly, I wanted to say
1:10
Speaker 1: that Josh put this together from whole cloth, from about
1:13
Speaker 1: eight sources, and you did a great job. This is
1:17
Speaker 1: a complicated thing that you did work your wonders on
1:20
Speaker 1: and you're really good at this. Is that what you
1:22
Speaker 1: wanted to say? Man, I wanted to say that, And
1:25
Speaker 1: also our hopes here are that you can understand this.
1:29
Speaker 1: I know we're kind of preaching to the choir a
1:31
Speaker 1: bit with our our listenership, not not fully, there's plenty
1:34
Speaker 1: of people. There's a lot of varying opinions among the
1:36
Speaker 1: stuff you should know listeners, absolutely, but I think when
1:39
Speaker 1: it comes to vaccine hesitancy, I think most of our
1:42
Speaker 1: listeners are on board. And and our hope is that
1:44
Speaker 1: you can understand this a little bit before Thanksgiving with
1:48
Speaker 1: your weird uncle, so maybe you can say, hey, you know,
1:52
Speaker 1: I know how these things work, and it's not something
1:55
Speaker 1: to be feared. It's something to be like to stand
1:58
Speaker 1: up from this turkey and a table and like applaud
2:02
Speaker 1: with full no reservation and full like, what in the
2:07
Speaker 1: world has science done? It's amazing? Yeah, it really is,
2:10
Speaker 1: because it is. It's unbelievable that science has figured this
2:13
Speaker 1: stuff out and they did it that quickly and that accurately.
2:17
Speaker 1: I know it is. It's a triumph of modern science
2:20
Speaker 1: for sure, um, one of the one of the biggest.
2:22
Speaker 1: And we're gonna well, you know you it's an It's
2:25
Speaker 1: impossible to talk about the M R and A vaccines
2:27
Speaker 1: without talking about how it differs from traditional vaccines, and
2:30
Speaker 1: it is a huge step forward in vaccine research and
2:34
Speaker 1: vaccine production. Like, it's the future of vaccines. It's amazing
2:37
Speaker 1: what what's just happened. But that's not to throw any
2:41
Speaker 1: shade whatsoever on traditional vaccines, which we still need, which
2:45
Speaker 1: we still use vaccines, yes, without which there would probably
2:50
Speaker 1: be a great many of us who would not be
2:52
Speaker 1: here because we hadn't survived, our parents hadn't survived, our
2:56
Speaker 1: grandparents hadn't survived some disease that a vaccine was developed
2:59
Speaker 1: to combat. So hats off to traditional vaccines. But m
3:04
Speaker 1: RNA vaccines are are pretty astounding and what what science
3:08
Speaker 1: has managed to come up with. Yeah, So we hope
3:10
Speaker 1: to clear up some myths about what the COVID vaccines
3:15
Speaker 1: are and are not. And hopefully by the end of
3:18
Speaker 1: this you will agree that it's it's literally when I like,
3:21
Speaker 1: there's some serious Nobel prizes coming in the future towards
3:24
Speaker 1: these people, for sure. At the very least, we hope
3:27
Speaker 1: that you hear this episode and are able to go,
3:29
Speaker 1: huh so that's what's in me? Yeah, exactly, Well it's
3:34
Speaker 1: not any anymore. We'll learn that too, that's true. Chuck
3:36
Speaker 1: Nice Nice foreshadowing, So it is really it's it's really
3:41
Speaker 1: hard to kind of overstate just how big of a
3:43
Speaker 1: breakthrough it was for for m RNA vaccines and that
3:47
Speaker 1: they do kind of read represent like this new path forward.
3:51
Speaker 1: But to kind of understand how the whole thing works
3:54
Speaker 1: and what makes it so magnificent as far as medical
3:58
Speaker 1: breakthroughs go, you kind and I have to first understand
4:01
Speaker 1: what m RNA actually is in what it does, don't
4:04
Speaker 1: you agree? Yeah, I mean all this stuff is really new.
4:09
Speaker 1: I mean, the quickest version of the history is that, uh,
4:13
Speaker 1: this stuff was identified man a messenger RNA is what
4:16
Speaker 1: we're talking about, identified in the nineteen sixties, and then
4:19
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty four the very first strand of m
4:23
Speaker 1: r NA. I'm gonna say m n r A so
4:25
Speaker 1: many times. You know that that m stuff and mr NAH,
4:31
Speaker 1: the first strand of mr NAH was artificially produced in
4:34
Speaker 1: a lab in nineteen eighty four, which in terms of
4:37
Speaker 1: science is not that long ago. And since then they
4:40
Speaker 1: have made leaps and bounds to the point where they
4:44
Speaker 1: now can and did produce a COVID vaccine on a computer. Yeah,
4:51
Speaker 1: I mean, that's basically what they're doing. These days is
4:53
Speaker 1: is they're saying, Oh, I want I want a vaccine
4:56
Speaker 1: that produces this little viral protein. I know that nomic
5:00
Speaker 1: code of this little viral protein. It's something to taped
5:03
Speaker 1: and tap tap tap, tap, tap tap, and then press
5:05
Speaker 1: enter basically and the computer sets off some desktop machines
5:09
Speaker 1: that produced that. That's that exact version of m RNA.
5:13
Speaker 1: That is really really simplified version of what's going on.
5:18
Speaker 1: But in a nutshell, it's basically where we've arrived now.
5:22
Speaker 1: And like you were saying, that's that's in the last
5:25
Speaker 1: thirty five years that we first very first time we
5:28
Speaker 1: ever synthesized m RNA. And as easy as it sounds now, Chuck,
5:32
Speaker 1: there were a lot of obstacles between and when the
5:39
Speaker 1: very first m RNA vaccines ever in the history of
5:41
Speaker 1: humanity came out just in time for the COVID pandemic. Yeah,
5:46
Speaker 1: I mean there were a couple of big hurdles to
5:48
Speaker 1: actually turn that like original miracle into boys about to
5:54
Speaker 1: get so religious into fish to feed the masses. I
5:59
Speaker 1: would have gone with water into wine. Okay, Hey, that
6:03
Speaker 1: was a good one too. A couple of them being
6:05
Speaker 1: in we're gonna get more into this you know, as
6:07
Speaker 1: we go along. But uh, they learned how to that.
6:10
Speaker 1: You know, m RNA is really fragile, so they learned
6:12
Speaker 1: how to protect it by putting it in these little
6:15
Speaker 1: tiny fat capsules called lipid nano particles. And so now
6:20
Speaker 1: they've got a little sort of a little vehicle to
6:22
Speaker 1: travel in that helps them get into a cell. Uh.
6:26
Speaker 1: And then and I know we've talked about cytokine storms before,
6:29
Speaker 1: when the when the human body has a really overblown
6:32
Speaker 1: reaction uh and overblown immune response to the point where
6:36
Speaker 1: it can actually kill somebody. Yeah, and those cytokine storms
6:40
Speaker 1: just kept smacking down MR and A research over and
6:43
Speaker 1: over again, because even when they finally did manage to
6:46
Speaker 1: come up with a way to keep the fragile mr
6:48
Speaker 1: and A from falling apart in the body, the body
6:50
Speaker 1: would be like, what is this? Get this out of here.
6:53
Speaker 1: I'm I'm going to just overblow so hard against this
6:56
Speaker 1: this uh weird foreign invader that I'm gonna threaten to
6:59
Speaker 1: kill my human which is not at all what you want.
7:02
Speaker 1: And they finally figured out that if you use some
7:05
Speaker 1: different nucleotides in place of other nucleotides, which are the
7:09
Speaker 1: building blocks of life. Um, when you're building this mr
7:13
Speaker 1: and A and then you really purify it, you get
7:16
Speaker 1: like no slop whatsoever. You have a chance of um
7:20
Speaker 1: making something that is that appears natural enough to full nature.
7:25
Speaker 1: That's right, And we're able to really clean that stuff
7:28
Speaker 1: up because it's not a live virus. Yes not, it's
7:31
Speaker 1: not a living thing. And we'll get more into that,
7:33
Speaker 1: and that's another big way how it differs from other vaccines.
7:37
Speaker 1: But it's not a live virus, so you can you
7:39
Speaker 1: can just dump a bunch of bleach on it basically essentially,
7:43
Speaker 1: we'll say in a nutshell, but yes, it cuts down
7:46
Speaker 1: on any type of contamination that you might get. Yeah,
7:50
Speaker 1: and we have to thank for all of this, really
7:54
Speaker 1: the Human Genome Project, because if not for that, which
7:58
Speaker 1: started in the nineteen on these thanks to the U. S.
8:01
Speaker 1: Government's um funding of that, we wouldn't have had any
8:05
Speaker 1: of these breakthroughs to begin with. As far as reading
8:08
Speaker 1: the genetic code, yes, it was a huge investment and
8:10
Speaker 1: it really is paid off in multiple ways, and just
8:13
Speaker 1: one of them is m RNA vaccines. Um. The the
8:18
Speaker 1: whole thing that is just to me just amazing and
8:21
Speaker 1: astounding and just confirms that we are living in some
8:24
Speaker 1: sort of simulation that the breakthroughs that pushed this this
8:29
Speaker 1: research for m RNA vaccines from basically a pipe dream
8:33
Speaker 1: that we had no idea how we were ever going
8:35
Speaker 1: to to get there. Two. Okay, we're ready to actually
8:39
Speaker 1: create mRNA vaccines just in time for this pandemic that's
8:43
Speaker 1: coming along. Um. They they all just kind of came
8:47
Speaker 1: together in part because people were already working on coronavirus vaccines.
8:53
Speaker 1: And what's really cool about mRNA vaccines is you can
8:56
Speaker 1: plug and play different stuff. Thanks to the Human Genome ject,
9:00
Speaker 1: we've learned to kind of read the genetic codes of
9:03
Speaker 1: stuff and to write it and produce it. And because
9:07
Speaker 1: of that, because we can do that on computers, now
9:09
Speaker 1: you can say, I've got a template for a coronavirus,
9:12
Speaker 1: let me get specific with it and make it as
9:14
Speaker 1: stars COVID two coronavirus. Now that we've got the genetic code,
9:18
Speaker 1: we can deploy a vaccine against it. And that's how
9:22
Speaker 1: they were able to do it so quickly, that's right,
9:24
Speaker 1: And they estimate that as of July this year, that
9:29
Speaker 1: vaccine is saved almost two d and eighty thousand lives
9:33
Speaker 1: UH and prevented about one point five million hospitalizations when
9:37
Speaker 1: hospitals are overrun, and that's a really important thing. Um,
9:42
Speaker 1: I'm gonna lobby for an early ad break here so
9:45
Speaker 1: we can just get cooking and go uninterrupted and unmolested
9:50
Speaker 1: until the second had break. That sound good? Yeah, a
9:54
Speaker 1: lobbying approved. Okay, we'll be right back everyone and tell
9:58
Speaker 1: you how all this stuff works right after this learning's
10:26
Speaker 1: stuff with Joshua John. Okay, so, um, we should talk
10:37
Speaker 1: about like I was saying, what mrn A does. Thank
10:40
Speaker 1: you for swooping in and reminding me that, oh yeah,
10:43
Speaker 1: this article that you wrote. You got the history part first,
10:45
Speaker 1: let's start there. That makes it like he's skipping that. No,
10:48
Speaker 1: he's not skipping. I was. My vision is blurry. I'm
10:52
Speaker 1: so interested in this. Okay, So we're talking about m
10:55
Speaker 1: r n A and m RNA is short for messenger
10:58
Speaker 1: RNA and messenger RNA basically, UH is a. It's it's
11:05
Speaker 1: a blueprint, right. It translates, it copies a little strip
11:10
Speaker 1: of the blueprint that's encoded in your entire genome, in
11:13
Speaker 1: your DNA, and it takes that little bit usually which
11:17
Speaker 1: codes for like a protein or peptide which are really
11:20
Speaker 1: important things. That are our body uses to do everything
11:23
Speaker 1: from um contracting your muscles to making you feel hungry.
11:27
Speaker 1: Like basically everything comes down to a protein or peptide,
11:30
Speaker 1: and the instructions for building each of those proteins and
11:33
Speaker 1: peptides are encoded in our DNA. And it's messenger RNA
11:37
Speaker 1: that goes to the DNA says, Okay, we need some
11:40
Speaker 1: more of this protein. I'm here to make a copy.
11:42
Speaker 1: May I please make a copy? Here are some flowers.
11:45
Speaker 1: They said, if I brought you some flowers, you'd be
11:46
Speaker 1: cooler with this, And the DNA says proceed, And the
11:50
Speaker 1: m RNA goes and produces itself as a copy and
11:54
Speaker 1: leaves the nucleus. This is really important. M RNA goes
11:59
Speaker 1: to the DNA, makes a copy and then leads to
12:01
Speaker 1: nucleus and from that point on, the m RNA is
12:04
Speaker 1: all about the cytoplasm. Right. Uh So, I kind of
12:08
Speaker 1: like the and I've expanded upon the wonderful metaphor you
12:12
Speaker 1: have of like a building site. Uh And I guess
12:17
Speaker 1: I think we failed to mention that um, the amino
12:21
Speaker 1: acids in the body is what's really carrying out the work,
12:25
Speaker 1: like making your eyes blue. Let's say, yeah, Well, the
12:27
Speaker 1: amino acids, they're the building blocks of proteins, of peptides.
12:30
Speaker 1: If you arrange a certain set of amino acids in
12:32
Speaker 1: a certain way, you've got a polypeptide and you've got
12:35
Speaker 1: a protein. Right. So m n r A in this case,
12:38
Speaker 1: if we're talking about this is like a job site.
12:41
Speaker 1: Did I say n r A again? You said m
12:43
Speaker 1: r A, mem ra, Well, that's the n r A
12:48
Speaker 1: is just so like embedded in our that's just so sad.
12:51
Speaker 1: I haven't said an r A once. I know it
12:54
Speaker 1: sounds like it's so m r n A just like
13:00
Speaker 1: black angus. Yeah, that one got a good reaction to.
13:04
Speaker 1: That was good. So M and r chez m RNA
13:07
Speaker 1: in this case would be like the architect showing up
13:10
Speaker 1: with the blueprint wearing some like sensible like chinos, but
13:15
Speaker 1: work boots. But they're really expensive work boots. You can
13:17
Speaker 1: tell them there's not a scuff on them, okay, And
13:20
Speaker 1: so it heads over to the work site, which is
13:22
Speaker 1: the cytoplasm of the cell outside the nucleus, right. And
13:26
Speaker 1: then I think in this case the ribosomes would be
13:30
Speaker 1: the contractor sort of because the contractor maybe translates these
13:35
Speaker 1: blueprints into I guess marching orders for the little workers
13:41
Speaker 1: that are the amino acids. Yeah, the ribosome clears the
13:45
Speaker 1: sandwich off of like the drafting table and spreads out
13:49
Speaker 1: the mRNA blueprint is okay, let me see what we
13:51
Speaker 1: got here, wipes his mouth, some crumbs away from his mouth,
13:54
Speaker 1: and um gets to work taking that blueprint, taking that
13:58
Speaker 1: messenger RNA and trans eating it into those amino acids
14:02
Speaker 1: that get constructed in just a certain way to produce
14:04
Speaker 1: a protein. And the m R and A says, do
14:07
Speaker 1: it again, do it again, do it again. Let's keep going.
14:09
Speaker 1: I'm feeling good. Let's keep this going for a little while.
14:12
Speaker 1: That's right, For a little while, and it just happens,
14:15
Speaker 1: you know, a certain number of times. It's not specific,
14:17
Speaker 1: it varies, but it's limited. And then that m RNA
14:21
Speaker 1: starts to break down. Nice going, you said, m R
14:25
Speaker 1: n A. I know, and I'm really concentrated. Uh. And
14:29
Speaker 1: then it's carried away from the cell and eventually out
14:31
Speaker 1: of the body through the lymph nodes and it's disposed of. So,
14:35
Speaker 1: like all jobs, eventually the contractor will disappear on you, right, well, no,
14:39
Speaker 1: that was the architect out. Well, the architect disappears earlier.
14:46
Speaker 1: I guess sure, I guess so. But you always want
14:49
Speaker 1: the architect to come back sort of, Yes, well, the
14:51
Speaker 1: architect is gonna come back. You'll you'll get another architect.
14:54
Speaker 1: There's always more MR and A. The body is always
14:56
Speaker 1: happy to produce more m R and A with sending
14:58
Speaker 1: out blueprints in and instructions and go make this protein
15:01
Speaker 1: right now, Man, I really screwed up. I thought the
15:03
Speaker 1: contractor disappeared. How perfect would that have been. It would
15:06
Speaker 1: have been pretty great, and you still got the joke in.
15:08
Speaker 1: It was just wrong. And that's just wrong Jo scientifically.
15:12
Speaker 1: But the thing about M R and A vaccines is
15:15
Speaker 1: that researchers have figured out how to use this natural
15:20
Speaker 1: process to help us vaccinate ourselves against diseases. And they
15:25
Speaker 1: do that because we've reached a point where we can
15:28
Speaker 1: Rather than having the the M R and A produced
15:31
Speaker 1: in the nucleus of the celling going out into the cytoplasm,
15:34
Speaker 1: vaccine researchers produced the MR and A outside of the
15:38
Speaker 1: body and then injected into the body, and then it
15:40
Speaker 1: goes into the cytoplasm from outside of the cell, and
15:44
Speaker 1: then from that point on everything else follows the exact
15:48
Speaker 1: same process. That is where we're at right now, and
15:50
Speaker 1: that is where you're you can start to feel your
15:53
Speaker 1: head opening up like a bloomin onion and out back. Yeah.
15:57
Speaker 1: And I mean that in and of itself is remarkable.
16:00
Speaker 1: It is that they said, you know what, this stuff
16:02
Speaker 1: can actually go into a cell, even though and we'll
16:05
Speaker 1: get a little bit more into this, even though it's
16:06
Speaker 1: like can be up to ten thousand times too big
16:10
Speaker 1: to permeate that cell, We'll figure that part out. And
16:14
Speaker 1: they did. That's that's you know, courtesy of the of
16:16
Speaker 1: the little fatty lipids. That's the vehicle that allows that
16:19
Speaker 1: to happen. But just the notion that they thought, like,
16:22
Speaker 1: I wonder if we can get the stuff to go
16:24
Speaker 1: from the outside in, Yeah, was remarkable. It really is.
16:27
Speaker 1: And it was just this contribution from hundreds of researchers
16:30
Speaker 1: just building on one another's work, and um, that finally
16:34
Speaker 1: led to the point where it's like it went from wow,
16:36
Speaker 1: this is a really cool idea, to Okay, we're actually
16:39
Speaker 1: preventing deaths in the pandemic things, to these things now right, uh,
16:44
Speaker 1: and you know there are a couple of ways to
16:46
Speaker 1: a few ways that you can immunize a person, like
16:49
Speaker 1: literal techniques using m r N A. And it turns
16:53
Speaker 1: out that we got I don't know if it's lucky
16:55
Speaker 1: or just uh, you know, divine intervention smulation type stuff.
17:00
Speaker 1: It turns out that the one that we that works
17:03
Speaker 1: really well and that we're using for the COVID vaccine
17:06
Speaker 1: turned out to be sort of the cheapest and the
17:08
Speaker 1: easiest one, which means in vivo within the living So
17:13
Speaker 1: in other words, you just get injected into your arm,
17:16
Speaker 1: as opposed to like in vitro that's the other way,
17:18
Speaker 1: which is it takes a lot longer, it's really complicated,
17:21
Speaker 1: a lot more expensive. And they figured out, hey, we
17:24
Speaker 1: can just do this with a shot in the arm. Uh,
17:28
Speaker 1: And then it's a conventional m RNA as opposed to
17:31
Speaker 1: something called self amplifying that we're not gonna sort of
17:34
Speaker 1: get into now. But it's a conventional in vivo shot
17:38
Speaker 1: that goes into your arm. Yeah, it's the most straightforward
17:41
Speaker 1: it could possibly be at this point in our m
17:43
Speaker 1: RNA vaccine technology, which like you said, is rather lucky. Yeah,
17:47
Speaker 1: it didn't have to be that way. It could have.
17:48
Speaker 1: It could have been the most expensive and the most
17:51
Speaker 1: difficult in time consuming, and we'd be in a much
17:54
Speaker 1: different spot right now, Yes, for sure. So um to
17:58
Speaker 1: kind of explain how m RNA seems do their thing,
18:01
Speaker 1: it helps to kind of view it as like a
18:03
Speaker 1: metaphor for like a training session, like when you are
18:06
Speaker 1: vaccinated against something. Your your immune system is being trained
18:10
Speaker 1: to fight an invader. But it's like a training session
18:13
Speaker 1: that uses like blank rounds, So it's much safer than
18:17
Speaker 1: than say, like you know, capturing one of those enemies,
18:21
Speaker 1: pushing them onto the field and giving everybody live ammunition.
18:25
Speaker 1: Things can get messy in that sense. It's it's like
18:27
Speaker 1: a military training session, I guess. So sure, yeah, all right,
18:30
Speaker 1: I was thinking more SWAT team, but sure. So you know,
18:34
Speaker 1: we mentioned a couple of times those lipid nanoparticles that
18:37
Speaker 1: encase the m r N a uh, and that these
18:40
Speaker 1: things are anywhere from a thousand to ten thousand times
18:43
Speaker 1: too large for what normally could pass through the cell's membrane.
18:46
Speaker 1: But the lipid coding basically opens that gate and says,
18:50
Speaker 1: you know what, there with me, you love me. I'm
18:53
Speaker 1: a little slippery fat cell and just just coming along
18:57
Speaker 1: inside the cell with me and I'll shut the door
18:59
Speaker 1: behind us. Yeah, which is really something because you know,
19:02
Speaker 1: if the if any of the what are called toll
19:04
Speaker 1: like receptors in the cell, which are always looking out
19:07
Speaker 1: for something out of the norm, notice, like m rna,
19:10
Speaker 1: what are you doing out here? You should be in there?
19:12
Speaker 1: What's going on? Everybody? Hey, come quick, You've got a
19:15
Speaker 1: big problem. And you would not be able to actually
19:17
Speaker 1: successfully vaccinate somebody because you'd set off the alarm too early. Um,
19:22
Speaker 1: there's something called interfere on that uh, it actually does
19:25
Speaker 1: interfere with m rna from being transcribed. And so if
19:29
Speaker 1: it's perfect name, so if it caught m rna out,
19:32
Speaker 1: that interfere on would would come and and um prevent
19:37
Speaker 1: the m rna from ever being transcribed into the viral protein.
19:40
Speaker 1: That's a big one that that lipid coding helps protect.
19:43
Speaker 1: So say, now we've got the m RNA showing up
19:46
Speaker 1: in the cytoplasm again coming from outside the cell, but
19:49
Speaker 1: now it's in the cytoplasm. Everything's cool, everything is normal,
19:52
Speaker 1: and things can kind of proceed from there. That's right.
19:55
Speaker 1: And it shows up with those blueprints rolled up under
19:57
Speaker 1: their arm. It's got the little work order from from
20:00
Speaker 1: the big boss, and it says, all right, ribosomes, you're
20:04
Speaker 1: about to get a lot of work thrown your way.
20:06
Speaker 1: Are you gonna be okay with that? You've got to
20:08
Speaker 1: create all these different proteins that were coded for and
20:11
Speaker 1: in this case where we want to stop a pandemic,
20:13
Speaker 1: so it's coded uh for this virus. And we've got
20:16
Speaker 1: just a tiny little bit of this virus's body. And
20:20
Speaker 1: don't worry, you're not gonna get this person sick or
20:22
Speaker 1: anything because, uh, my friend Josh Clark taught me, you
20:28
Speaker 1: made another metaphor of like a piano player. Traditionally, if
20:32
Speaker 1: you want to play the piano, you're gonna use at
20:35
Speaker 1: least an arm and probably one of your ears traditionally, Uh,
20:40
Speaker 1: but you really want both those arms in both those ears, yes,
20:44
Speaker 1: and and like and the in a body to go
20:46
Speaker 1: along with it. Like just an ear and an arm
20:48
Speaker 1: can't play the piano. So just a little bit of
20:51
Speaker 1: this virus isn't gonna make you sick, no, exactly, so
20:55
Speaker 1: or let you spread it to someone else. That's a
20:57
Speaker 1: big one. And that's what and that's what the m
20:59
Speaker 1: R and A shows up coded for it's a little
21:01
Speaker 1: piece of the virus that you're you want to immunize
21:04
Speaker 1: the person against. And it says, hey, everybody, let's start
21:06
Speaker 1: making this. Huh Hey everyone, Hey, we're here. Come make
21:09
Speaker 1: this viral protein, which is called the anti antigen. And
21:13
Speaker 1: so the body starts doing that because it has it
21:15
Speaker 1: didn't know the m RNA was outside of the cell
21:17
Speaker 1: or was ever created in a lab um and so
21:21
Speaker 1: it starts transcribing the m rna and the viral proteins
21:25
Speaker 1: start getting made. And the whole point to all of this,
21:28
Speaker 1: if you want like a really good immune response, Chuck,
21:32
Speaker 1: you want to trigger both of the two immune systems
21:36
Speaker 1: that humans have. You've got the innate system and you
21:39
Speaker 1: have the adapted system. Adapted systems, yes, you've got to
21:43
Speaker 1: because you're a vertebrate. And um, if you can trigger
21:47
Speaker 1: them both to to a large degree but not so
21:50
Speaker 1: big a degree that you end up with a site
21:52
Speaker 1: to a keen storm that can accidentally kill you, you've
21:55
Speaker 1: got a good immunization going. That's right. Uh. And we
21:59
Speaker 1: talked about out with Great Wonder and Marvel about the
22:02
Speaker 1: human bodies immune system before, but as a refresher, we
22:06
Speaker 1: do have two of them. We have the innate which
22:09
Speaker 1: is the first line of defense. This is like, uh,
22:12
Speaker 1: Sergeant Slaughter, you know, if foreign invaders come in and
22:16
Speaker 1: and Sergeant Slaughter just wants to kill, kill, kill, kill
22:19
Speaker 1: everything that comes in his in his little scope, and
22:22
Speaker 1: that's the innate system. Just neutralize everything the second it
22:26
Speaker 1: sees it. Be on the lookout for everything, and if
22:27
Speaker 1: it looks weird, kill it. And that's like if you
22:29
Speaker 1: get a skin on your knee or a cut on
22:31
Speaker 1: your arm or something and it's mild, that inflammation around
22:35
Speaker 1: the cut is that innate system. And if it's mild
22:37
Speaker 1: enough and it doesn't get complicated or anything, that maybe
22:41
Speaker 1: all you need for something like that, Sergeant slaughters an
22:44
Speaker 1: that's all you need. But in this case, and with
22:47
Speaker 1: anything a little more sophisticated, you're gonna want to engage
22:50
Speaker 1: that adaptive system as well. Yeah, which if the innate
22:54
Speaker 1: system is is activated on high enough alert, it's going
22:57
Speaker 1: to basically go tell the adaptive system like, hey, there's
23:01
Speaker 1: this is this is something more than just to cut
23:04
Speaker 1: on the knee, like we we really need to pay
23:06
Speaker 1: attention to this. And the adaptive system is made up
23:09
Speaker 1: of specialized white blood cells and they basically are trained
23:13
Speaker 1: to take a look at this weird new foreign invader,
23:17
Speaker 1: which are called non self materials. Basically, anything that isn't
23:20
Speaker 1: part of you, that comes from outside of your body,
23:22
Speaker 1: it's called non self And so they look, I think
23:25
Speaker 1: so too, Um, I see maybe Phil Collins final album
23:30
Speaker 1: non self material. Yeah, but then it just be the
23:33
Speaker 1: cover album, which is good. It's it's a great name
23:36
Speaker 1: for standards, you know. Um. So they look at this
23:39
Speaker 1: non self material and they say, okay, we got to
23:42
Speaker 1: remember this. So they basically learn it, learn to recognize it,
23:46
Speaker 1: catalog it, and then figure out how to produce antibodies
23:50
Speaker 1: that specifically attack this virus or this antigen um, the
23:55
Speaker 1: little bit of the virus that that can be infectious.
23:58
Speaker 1: And then it remembers it and of the next time
24:01
Speaker 1: that antigen or that virus comes into your body, your
24:04
Speaker 1: body is ready because the innate system triggered the adapted system,
24:08
Speaker 1: which memorized and cataloged antibodies to fight who used to
24:12
Speaker 1: fight that virus? Yes, and it's it works great and
24:16
Speaker 1: it works fast. Uh. There was a study that found
24:19
Speaker 1: that the antibody producing cells can produce ten thousand antibodies
24:25
Speaker 1: per hour, no, no, no per minute, no, no, ten
24:30
Speaker 1: thousand anybody's per second. So like it literally just wants
24:34
Speaker 1: to flood that site with with reinforcements, basically to kill
24:40
Speaker 1: all this stuff in a very smart, strategic and pinpointed way. Yeah,
24:44
Speaker 1: so you've got your innate system your adaptive system. You
24:46
Speaker 1: want to set them both off. And so we're going
24:49
Speaker 1: back into the cell. And by now, in this whole
24:51
Speaker 1: time that we've been talking, the cell that took up
24:55
Speaker 1: the m R and A that was injected into you
24:57
Speaker 1: in the vaccine um has been making that viral protein,
25:01
Speaker 1: the antigen, over and over again. It's like, I like this,
25:04
Speaker 1: I don't know what to do with it. I'm gonna
25:05
Speaker 1: just gonna start wearing it on the surface of my cell.
25:09
Speaker 1: And the cell doesn't know any different. It thinks that,
25:12
Speaker 1: you know, everything's going hunky dory, but it looks good
25:15
Speaker 1: on me. Lucky exactly, but luckily. Um. We have some
25:19
Speaker 1: kinds of immune cells, as innate immune cells, who are
25:22
Speaker 1: on the lookout for anything weird. They're total fascists. They
25:25
Speaker 1: don't truck any kind of a nonconformity or anything out
25:30
Speaker 1: of the norm. And they look at this this new
25:34
Speaker 1: same muscle cell, because that's what you get your your
25:37
Speaker 1: vaccine injected into wearing all these weird viral proteins and
25:40
Speaker 1: to say, come with me. And they overwhelmed that poor cell.
25:43
Speaker 1: They take them out back and basically disassemble them. I
25:47
Speaker 1: love that. I wonder it makes you wonder, like all
25:51
Speaker 1: these cells are just doing the same thing, but like
25:53
Speaker 1: some of them go, wait a minute, like you you
25:57
Speaker 1: are very suspicious and you're coming with me. I'm going
26:00
Speaker 1: to introduce you to my friend, the adaptive system. Like
26:03
Speaker 1: do they know which cells or is it just a
26:06
Speaker 1: random thing? What do you mean they know what cells?
26:09
Speaker 1: You know? The cells that go that are more suspicious.
26:13
Speaker 1: But I guess what they're saying is like, stop expressing yourself,
26:18
Speaker 1: all right? Is that? Is that what you meant? Sort of? No, well,
26:22
Speaker 1: I've got I just find it interesting that some of
26:24
Speaker 1: them are just doing their thing and then some of them.
26:27
Speaker 1: I mean they're the same kinds of cells. No, no, no,
26:29
Speaker 1: they're different kinds of cells, so they are different. The
26:32
Speaker 1: cells that are are suspicious, those are your innate immune cells.
26:36
Speaker 1: They're constantly on lookout for something weird, and when they
26:38
Speaker 1: find something weird, they just kill it. All right, and
26:41
Speaker 1: the other cells are just they're yeah, they're just sitting
26:44
Speaker 1: there like, not me. You don't look at me. I'm normal.
26:46
Speaker 1: I'm normal. I've got I've got no weird proteins on
26:48
Speaker 1: my surface. Okay, that makes sense now, Okay. So then
26:51
Speaker 1: those cells that take the poor muscle cell that's been
26:54
Speaker 1: creating this viral protein and thinks it looks pretty snazzy
26:57
Speaker 1: and is now being disassembled, take some of those viral
27:00
Speaker 1: proteins to the adaptive immune system, and that's where they say, hey, guys,
27:05
Speaker 1: look at this. We don't know what this is, but
27:06
Speaker 1: we think it's a problem. So you might want to
27:09
Speaker 1: remember it and create some antibodies that you can deploy
27:12
Speaker 1: against it if we ever see it again later. And
27:14
Speaker 1: at that point, after all of that happens, you are
27:18
Speaker 1: vaccinated against that. Yeah. And you know, here's the thing
27:23
Speaker 1: that some other myths that people think that, uh, this
27:26
Speaker 1: thing will live inside your body and who knows what's
27:28
Speaker 1: going to happen in ten years. In ten years, we'll
27:30
Speaker 1: all have horns growing out of our heads because of this.
27:33
Speaker 1: That's not what happens. M r A. M r NA
27:36
Speaker 1: leaves you. It's very fragile, like we mentioned, and different
27:40
Speaker 1: studies have shown different results, but somewhere in the neighborhood
27:44
Speaker 1: of a few days to a couple of weeks is
27:46
Speaker 1: basically as long as that m r NA is going
27:49
Speaker 1: to survive before it degrades and then leave your body
27:52
Speaker 1: through the limp system. Yeah, and under normal circumstances, it's
27:56
Speaker 1: just a few days, but they figured out how to
27:57
Speaker 1: make it a little stronger because you wanted in a
28:00
Speaker 1: little longer, because the more that your muscle cells are
28:03
Speaker 1: producing this viral protein, the more of an innate response,
28:08
Speaker 1: and then hence the more of an adaptive response you're
28:10
Speaker 1: going to get. But no matter what they do, the
28:13
Speaker 1: m r and A is going to go away. It's
28:14
Speaker 1: going to follow all the normal processes for exiting the body.
28:18
Speaker 1: Those cells that produced that viral protein are going to
28:20
Speaker 1: be destroyed, and then those viral proteins are gonna be
28:23
Speaker 1: taken up and taken to the lymph nodes where they're
28:26
Speaker 1: shown to those um T and B cells that produce
28:29
Speaker 1: the antibodies against them. All of that is a totally
28:31
Speaker 1: normal process, and that is the point of vaccination because
28:35
Speaker 1: during this process, maybe you're innate immune response makes you
28:38
Speaker 1: feel like you get the flu for a few like
28:40
Speaker 1: hours or half of a day, or maybe your arm
28:44
Speaker 1: hurts really bad. That's that innate response. But you're not
28:47
Speaker 1: going to get sick. You're not actually going to have
28:51
Speaker 1: COVID because it's that live training with blanks to to
28:57
Speaker 1: to to train your immune system how to recognize it,
29:00
Speaker 1: so that when stars COVID two virus comes along and says,
29:04
Speaker 1: I'll see what's going on here, he goes, Oh my god,
29:06
Speaker 1: Oh no, somehow this thing, this this body has already
29:09
Speaker 1: been trained to attack me. Now I'm dead and gone
29:11
Speaker 1: and I can't possibly infect this person. That is the point,
29:15
Speaker 1: and that's what's been done with MR and A vaccines. Yeah,
29:19
Speaker 1: and I was about to describe this last part as
29:21
Speaker 1: another miracle in this, but I think we're degrading the
29:24
Speaker 1: hard work and research to describe it as a miracle.
29:27
Speaker 1: It is hard work in research is what led to
29:29
Speaker 1: this stuff. So I guess we'll call it a breakthrough.
29:33
Speaker 1: One of the other biggest breakthroughs is that they had
29:36
Speaker 1: to find the what you called the goldilocks zone, that
29:39
Speaker 1: that perfect, perfect amount so this thing would work perfectly.
29:44
Speaker 1: So we talked about the cytokine storms. You don't want that.
29:47
Speaker 1: You don't want to overblow it and do too much,
29:50
Speaker 1: so you had to dial it back a little bit.
29:52
Speaker 1: But it can't be so weak that it doesn't even
29:55
Speaker 1: notice the antigen to begin with. It's got a notice,
29:58
Speaker 1: so it designs, says Annabi ease, so you have to
30:01
Speaker 1: find the goldilocks zone in there. And then there's this
30:04
Speaker 1: last bit of the fact that there's a basically an
30:07
Speaker 1: early warning system in the body that prevents m RNA
30:11
Speaker 1: from being translated. If it thinks like it's not built well,
30:15
Speaker 1: if it's miss if it's misfolded or something, it can
30:18
Speaker 1: really wreck the body system. So it's on the lookout
30:21
Speaker 1: for that stuff, and it has to get past that
30:24
Speaker 1: early warning system in order to make all this work anyway,
30:28
Speaker 1: and they did it. They did all of those things.
30:32
Speaker 1: It's pretty amazing. They made something that's natural enough to
30:36
Speaker 1: full nature for for for all intents and purposes. Your
30:39
Speaker 1: body is like, oh, I've made this mrn a cool,
30:42
Speaker 1: let's listen to let's let's start translating it, which is astounding,
30:45
Speaker 1: and then everything just kind of follows that process just perfectly,
30:49
Speaker 1: and it really is like, hats off to those people.
30:51
Speaker 1: Who made this stuff? You know, hats off, and I
30:55
Speaker 1: think let's take a break. I think we did a
30:58
Speaker 1: pretty good job there. Yeah, so too, and we're gonna
31:01
Speaker 1: talk about how they make this stuff right after this
31:31
Speaker 1: learn it's stop with Joshua Jos al Right, I love
31:41
Speaker 1: how you put this so much in this uh in
31:44
Speaker 1: this article, I'm gonna read it verbatim. Okay, to put
31:48
Speaker 1: in a nutshell that's so oversimplified, it's basically wrong. Engineers
31:53
Speaker 1: spell out the genetic code they want the m RNA
31:57
Speaker 1: to carry, They add the ingredients, they press enter, and
32:00
Speaker 1: the computer tells the lab equipment what chemical reactions to
32:03
Speaker 1: carry out and for how long. I mean, that's kind
32:06
Speaker 1: of it in a nutshell in the simplest like if this,
32:11
Speaker 1: if you really need to tell your weird uncle at
32:13
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving how it works, you may just want to start there,
32:17
Speaker 1: right and see what his reaction is he goes they
32:20
Speaker 1: press enter. That's my greatest fear, right, haven't you ever
32:25
Speaker 1: seen war games? Right? But to start nice, to start
32:29
Speaker 1: at the beginning, though, you have to understand what the
32:32
Speaker 1: genetic code of this virus you're trying to fight. And again,
32:35
Speaker 1: thank you Human Genome Project for pushing that along um.
32:39
Speaker 1: And once you have the genetic code and you studied
32:42
Speaker 1: the virus, you can figure out what it's achilles heel is.
32:45
Speaker 1: And in the case of the covid vaccines, the to
32:47
Speaker 1: um one from Maderna, uh and then one from bio
32:51
Speaker 1: in Tech, and Visor can't forget to mention bio in Tech.
32:55
Speaker 1: Basically they're the ones who actually came up with the
32:57
Speaker 1: template for this vaccine, and Visor was like, hey, let's partner.
33:01
Speaker 1: So it's it's wrong to just call it the Fiser vaccine.
33:04
Speaker 1: And by the way, just announced today that they approved
33:07
Speaker 1: mix and match. I heard that too, which is it's
33:10
Speaker 1: it's awesome. I mean, everybody loves variety. It's a spice
33:13
Speaker 1: of life. Well, I'm still gonna I got the Maderna
33:16
Speaker 1: to begin with. I'm gonna get the Maderna booster. I'm
33:18
Speaker 1: gonna I like variety, but I'm just gonna keep it,
33:20
Speaker 1: keep it in the family. Now, that's my plan too.
33:22
Speaker 1: I like the Maderna as well. And by the way,
33:24
Speaker 1: this is so new and Maderna is such a new company.
33:26
Speaker 1: I think they were organized in two thou the covid
33:29
Speaker 1: vaccine that they make is the only product that they sell.
33:33
Speaker 1: That's how new all of this stuff is. It's crazy.
33:35
Speaker 1: But for the coronavirus vaccines, the covid vaccines, chuck um.
33:39
Speaker 1: They figured out that the spike protein s protein is
33:43
Speaker 1: what it's called. That that is the virus is Achilles heel.
33:46
Speaker 1: It's the thing that gives the coronavirus that spiky appearance,
33:51
Speaker 1: that crown. Yeah, and that is the thing that it
33:54
Speaker 1: uses to fuse two a cell's membrane and then basically
33:58
Speaker 1: coax it to open up so that it can bill
34:00
Speaker 1: it's viral contents in there and make more and more viruses.
34:03
Speaker 1: So it's the weakest point of the virus and that's
34:05
Speaker 1: what they figured out how to target. But to understand that,
34:08
Speaker 1: you have to know what the genome is so that
34:10
Speaker 1: you can go in and say, here's the part of
34:13
Speaker 1: the genetic code of the stars cove two virus that
34:16
Speaker 1: makes that spike protein. Let's take this plug it into
34:21
Speaker 1: a different um like a string of m rna, and
34:25
Speaker 1: then we'll have that m rna that produces that spike
34:28
Speaker 1: protein and we can use that in a vaccine. And
34:30
Speaker 1: that's what they've done. It's it almost seems like a
34:34
Speaker 1: Greek myth or something with the with the crown, because
34:38
Speaker 1: I remember when we talked about the coronavirus and that
34:40
Speaker 1: fancy crown and like, look at my fancy crown. And
34:44
Speaker 1: it turns out is that that fancy crown is what's
34:46
Speaker 1: going to drag it down and vanity, vanity, that's what
34:50
Speaker 1: it is. We're playing a lot of human emotions. It's
34:54
Speaker 1: it flew too close to the sun, that's right. Uh
34:59
Speaker 1: So they identify I that little crown, like you said,
35:01
Speaker 1: is the Achilles heel, and they got that little bit
35:03
Speaker 1: of code and uh then the rest of this is
35:08
Speaker 1: and this is sort of another one of the big breakthroughs.
35:11
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna call it a miracle, is that they
35:13
Speaker 1: again they figured out how to do this all outside
35:16
Speaker 1: of the human body because they got ahold of plasmid
35:19
Speaker 1: plasmid not plasma p L A S M I D
35:23
Speaker 1: plasmid d na um usually from ecoli. But don't let
35:27
Speaker 1: let that freak you out. It turns out it's really
35:29
Speaker 1: helpful in this case. And this acts as like a template.
35:33
Speaker 1: It's just like the working the working DNA that they
35:36
Speaker 1: used to figure all this stuff out is standing in
35:39
Speaker 1: for the humans own DNA, and it's in the uh,
35:42
Speaker 1: it's in that it's on that work site, it's in
35:44
Speaker 1: that cytoplasm. It's like almost extra bonus DNA that's outside
35:49
Speaker 1: the nucleus, and so they're using that to stand in
35:52
Speaker 1: for our own DNA. So we could figure, you know,
35:55
Speaker 1: we could figure out how to make this stuff work together. Yeah,
35:57
Speaker 1: it's almost like if you're looking at a piano keyboard
36:01
Speaker 1: and the piano keyboard was plasmid DNA, and say it
36:05
Speaker 1: coded for luminescence or something like that. If you went
36:08
Speaker 1: along and took out some of the keys and put
36:11
Speaker 1: in different keys, then now that it's coded for an
36:15
Speaker 1: entirely different kind of protein. In this case, that the
36:18
Speaker 1: antigen that you want, that spike protein. But the point
36:21
Speaker 1: is it's like a structure. I keep using the piano
36:24
Speaker 1: metaphor in different of thrilling ways, and I'm pretty happy
36:27
Speaker 1: with that. But it's the backbone. It's the thing that
36:30
Speaker 1: you use to hold the original code. Because remember m
36:34
Speaker 1: R n A likes to go to DNA to make
36:38
Speaker 1: a copy of that little code, that string of of
36:41
Speaker 1: g's and teas and season as. That's how it's made,
36:44
Speaker 1: and that's how it happens in the body. That's how
36:47
Speaker 1: they do in the lab two. And to start that
36:48
Speaker 1: means you have to have d N A okay, right,
36:53
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. You can't just create that template
36:56
Speaker 1: and then that's it. No bing bang boom bon joe.
36:59
Speaker 1: You got transcribe that into the m RNA. And I
37:03
Speaker 1: think in the nineteen eighties at Bruckhaba National Lab is
37:07
Speaker 1: where they developed this really ingenious technique that use bacterial flages,
37:12
Speaker 1: which are these viral parasites that uh and this is
37:15
Speaker 1: where the E. Coli kind of comes back in that
37:17
Speaker 1: infect bacteria like E. Coal I. And they have a
37:20
Speaker 1: really really efficient RNA transcription engine, so they said, well,
37:24
Speaker 1: let's just use that because it's already really good at
37:26
Speaker 1: that yeah, which is pretty cool. And here's the other
37:29
Speaker 1: thing too. If you're like, oh my god, equal I plasma,
37:32
Speaker 1: d NA, bacterial flages that are viral parasites they're using
37:35
Speaker 1: this together's it's like frankent signed stuff. Keep in mind
37:40
Speaker 1: they're not harvesting like wild ecoli or wild bacteria floges,
37:45
Speaker 1: like they're building those things from scratch in the lab,
37:49
Speaker 1: and they're getting to the point. If they're not already there,
37:52
Speaker 1: whether like, oh, we only need this part of the
37:54
Speaker 1: plasma DNA, which again, by the way, does not create
37:57
Speaker 1: equal like it creates an extra bit of some thing,
38:00
Speaker 1: or we only need this part of the bacterial flage,
38:03
Speaker 1: and so they just make those parts that they need
38:06
Speaker 1: or increasingly just order them from from lab supply companies online.
38:11
Speaker 1: Like that's the point that we're at now, because again,
38:13
Speaker 1: these are all non living things that you can sterilize,
38:15
Speaker 1: and they're in some cases not just parts of non
38:19
Speaker 1: living things like plasmid DNA or bacteria flage. Yeah, I mean,
38:24
Speaker 1: it's it's amazing. So they put this, uh, the plasma
38:28
Speaker 1: DNA template. They take the bacteria flage and they put
38:31
Speaker 1: it in a big soup kettle on the stove. They
38:34
Speaker 1: add a little chemical go juice that says, all right,
38:37
Speaker 1: get started, and then the bacteria flage says, wait a minute,
38:40
Speaker 1: I know what I'm good at. I'm great at that transcription,
38:43
Speaker 1: and so I'm gonna just start transcribing right now, and
38:47
Speaker 1: I'm gonna transcribe that code in the plasma DNA and
38:50
Speaker 1: I'm gonna produce a ton of m RNA strands. And
38:55
Speaker 1: it doesn't it doesn't sound like a lot. But if
38:58
Speaker 1: you have a an average production run, you're gonna get
39:01
Speaker 1: about two grams of m RNA per leader. That's like
39:05
Speaker 1: seven to ten coffee beans averagise coffee beans. Yeah, and
39:09
Speaker 1: that's in a few days. And you might think, like
39:11
Speaker 1: I thought, he said a lot. A couple of grams
39:12
Speaker 1: is in a lot. These vaccines use, I think respectively,
39:16
Speaker 1: Maderna and Fiser use a hundred and thirty micrograms per dose,
39:22
Speaker 1: so that two grams ends up producing anywhere from two
39:25
Speaker 1: hundred thousand to six hundred thousand actual vaccine doses. Yeah.
39:29
Speaker 1: And also, don't forget we're talking about m rna, which
39:31
Speaker 1: exists on the nano scale, and you're producing ten coffee
39:34
Speaker 1: beans worth of that stuff in three days. They're talking small, yes,
39:39
Speaker 1: very small. So they've got tons of m rna each
39:43
Speaker 1: time they run one of these batches. And then they
39:46
Speaker 1: take that m RNA that comes out and they purify it.
39:49
Speaker 1: They get rid of any leftover nuclic materials from that
39:52
Speaker 1: transcription process, clean up the slop, like I was saying,
39:57
Speaker 1: and then they surround it with a lipid nanopartic goal
40:00
Speaker 1: that packet of fats. It's gonna help it get into
40:02
Speaker 1: the cell and protect it on its wild journey through
40:04
Speaker 1: the body. And then they mix it with a few
40:06
Speaker 1: other things, UM, usually a few kinds of um salts,
40:11
Speaker 1: often to um to mimic the pH of the body
40:15
Speaker 1: so that it's gets accepted a lot more easily. UM.
40:18
Speaker 1: They use sugar to stabilize the whole thing. And that's
40:22
Speaker 1: about it, and not even about it. That's it. Like
40:25
Speaker 1: there there's some fats, there's the m R and a
40:28
Speaker 1: salt and sugar, and then that's what you have in
40:30
Speaker 1: your vaccine, whether it's the bio in tech Fighter or
40:34
Speaker 1: the madernal one. That's right. And if weird uncle says, yeah,
40:38
Speaker 1: but what else is really in there? Say, that's it
40:41
Speaker 1: the salt and the sugar and what I just told
40:43
Speaker 1: you about, dumb, dumb, And he'll say hopefully, well that
40:47
Speaker 1: makes me hungry. Now sounds delicious from in my mouth.
40:52
Speaker 1: It's like there's no butter in that, all right, Yeah,
40:55
Speaker 1: there's lipidano particles. So we're gonna finish up talking little
41:00
Speaker 1: bit about what differentiates this from traditional vaccines. Uh. The
41:04
Speaker 1: biggest thing is that it's, like we've said before, it's
41:07
Speaker 1: built from scratching a lab outside the human body, and
41:12
Speaker 1: that's very different and it's non living, like we said,
41:15
Speaker 1: And other vaccines are called viral vector vaccines, and they
41:19
Speaker 1: either use like if you get a flu shot or something.
41:21
Speaker 1: You're talking about either dead virus or a live one
41:25
Speaker 1: that's been weakened, or proteins from a live virus. And
41:29
Speaker 1: it takes a long time to produce these. Uh, it's
41:32
Speaker 1: not like like this thing went at light speed, but
41:36
Speaker 1: not in an unsafe way, in a in a truly
41:39
Speaker 1: astounding applaudable way. Yeah. No, I was reading about the
41:43
Speaker 1: Emergency Use Authorization project process and like the FDA did
41:46
Speaker 1: not mess around like they they They definitely did double
41:50
Speaker 1: time to to try to get these things out of
41:53
Speaker 1: the door because they needed to, but they did not
41:54
Speaker 1: cut corners on safety from anything I saw. It was
41:57
Speaker 1: a really safe process and it but it was still
42:00
Speaker 1: really fast, not because the FDA cut corners, but because
42:05
Speaker 1: mRNA vaccines are able to be created really really fast,
42:09
Speaker 1: and so I think bio and tech fiser Um had
42:14
Speaker 1: emergency use approval within eleven months. Eleven months of developing
42:19
Speaker 1: the vaccine, the second fastest of vaccine had ever been
42:25
Speaker 1: developed before prior to m R and A vaccines is
42:28
Speaker 1: four years. Yeah, I want to say a little bit
42:32
Speaker 1: something else about that, because I think that's a big
42:34
Speaker 1: reason for vaccine hesitancy, is the speed at which it
42:38
Speaker 1: was approved and like there's no way they knew what
42:41
Speaker 1: was going on. I read a lot about this over
42:44
Speaker 1: not even for this, just like over the past year.
42:47
Speaker 1: And how that process usually works is it's it's related
42:50
Speaker 1: to funding. Like you're funded a certain amount of money
42:53
Speaker 1: as a company to get approval for studies and stuff
42:57
Speaker 1: like that, and you get funded that certain out and
43:00
Speaker 1: you can only work within that amount of money. So
43:03
Speaker 1: your study is and is only going to be of
43:05
Speaker 1: a certain sample size and they're pretty big. And then
43:08
Speaker 1: you also have to take a certain place in line.
43:11
Speaker 1: With this vaccine, they had a sample size out of
43:15
Speaker 1: the gate that was humongous because the entire world wasn't
43:20
Speaker 1: getting infected with this stuff or not getting infected, but
43:23
Speaker 1: you know, tons and tons of people were getting affected.
43:25
Speaker 1: The entire world was on watch and on guard, and
43:28
Speaker 1: so you had no problems with sample size, you had
43:30
Speaker 1: no problem with funding, and you had no problem with
43:33
Speaker 1: waiting in line, because they said, all right, you're immediately
43:36
Speaker 1: at the front of the line, so it didn't get
43:39
Speaker 1: approved because they just wanted to speed it through there
43:42
Speaker 1: really quickly. It got approved because it jumped the line,
43:44
Speaker 1: it had tons of money behind it, and it had
43:47
Speaker 1: a ton of people in the getting you know, thankfully
43:51
Speaker 1: volunteering to get jabbed early on for the tests, which
43:54
Speaker 1: produced a ton of data that yeah, yeah, because they
43:59
Speaker 1: have more participant as usual. That was everything I saw
44:01
Speaker 1: as well too. It's so frustrating though, because they actually
44:04
Speaker 1: got more data than they usually get. They just got
44:07
Speaker 1: it a lot faster, and there's people still think that,
44:11
Speaker 1: you know, there's just not enough information. It is because
44:14
Speaker 1: because it didn't take as long. Yeah, because it is
44:17
Speaker 1: very frustrating because people are like, I'm wary of that
44:19
Speaker 1: because it was so fast, and it was so fast
44:21
Speaker 1: because it was, uh, one of the biggest advances in
44:25
Speaker 1: the history of medicine that's happening before very eyes. But
44:28
Speaker 1: rather than just being like, oh my god, what an
44:30
Speaker 1: amazing time to be alive, what an amazing accomplishment humanity did,
44:35
Speaker 1: a significant portion of people are like, oh no, I
44:37
Speaker 1: don't trust that they're trying to kill me. Your catalog
44:39
Speaker 1: me or Bill Gates wants to keep tabs on on
44:42
Speaker 1: me because Bill Gates cares what I'm doing. Yeah, we've
44:46
Speaker 1: met Bill Gates, you guys a couple of times. He
44:48
Speaker 1: doesn't care what you're doing. It's I hate to break
44:51
Speaker 1: it to you, he does not care what you're doing. Uh.
44:54
Speaker 1: And you know we mentioned before that we uh it's
44:58
Speaker 1: almost like we were waiting of this, like we had
45:01
Speaker 1: uh the m RNA vaccine sort of technology figured out
45:05
Speaker 1: to a certain degree, and we were just waiting for
45:09
Speaker 1: the Chinese government and the researchers to release that genetic code.
45:13
Speaker 1: And once they did, they were like, all right, here
45:15
Speaker 1: it is. It's open source in January twenty and everyone's like, great,
45:19
Speaker 1: that's all we needed and we are ready to rock
45:21
Speaker 1: and roll. And I think you did you say? It
45:24
Speaker 1: was twenty five days later that they produced their first
45:26
Speaker 1: successful batch, and then thirty nine days after that the
45:30
Speaker 1: first phase of human trials were underway, which I mean,
45:34
Speaker 1: that's just so fast. But to kind of go back
45:36
Speaker 1: to that point to chuck, because I think a lot
45:38
Speaker 1: of people are also suspicious about that, like, why were
45:40
Speaker 1: they just waiting for this pandemic? It's pretty suspicious that
45:44
Speaker 1: there were people who well at bio in Tech and
45:47
Speaker 1: Maderna who already had like these templates ready. They were
45:51
Speaker 1: working on mRNA vaccines and for a number of different fields.
45:54
Speaker 1: And then there were other groups who were specifically working
45:57
Speaker 1: on coronavirus vaccines because we've dealt with coronavirus is before
46:01
Speaker 1: Mers Middle East Respiratory syndrome STARS, the original Stars, those
46:05
Speaker 1: are both coronaviruses. Both of them share their spike protein
46:09
Speaker 1: with Stars cove to the virus that that causes COVID
46:14
Speaker 1: that's a coronavirus as well. They all have the spike protein,
46:17
Speaker 1: so they had spike protein templates. So, like you said,
46:20
Speaker 1: when Chinese researchers posted the genome of the Stars Cove
46:23
Speaker 1: two virus, people were like, cool, let's take that, plug
46:27
Speaker 1: it in and see what happens. And it worked. That's
46:29
Speaker 1: why it was so fast. That can't say plug in
46:32
Speaker 1: play enough. Yeah, I mean that's literally the situation because
46:36
Speaker 1: in the future they might be able to solve things
46:39
Speaker 1: like HIV and raybes and maybe even certain kinds of cancer.
46:43
Speaker 1: Like it's it's a technology that can be applied to
46:46
Speaker 1: a bunch of things, and they were just ready to
46:49
Speaker 1: go for for this, Yeah, the cancer one. It's it's
46:51
Speaker 1: I mean, that's just amazing there. Yes, but they're getting
46:55
Speaker 1: to the point where they can say, Okay, you've got cancer.
46:58
Speaker 1: Come in, we're gonna take a sample of your tumor.
47:00
Speaker 1: We're gonna study it, we're going to figure out what
47:02
Speaker 1: it's genome is. We're going to create a tailor made
47:05
Speaker 1: vaccine to train your body to fight that cancer, and
47:08
Speaker 1: we're going to vaccinate you against your own personal cancer.
47:12
Speaker 1: Were a few years away from being able to do
47:15
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. And then when that happens, if it,
47:18
Speaker 1: if it, if we can do it, we will have
47:20
Speaker 1: beaten cancer. That's what that's the next thing that m
47:23
Speaker 1: RNA vaccines are about to do. It's amazing. It's a
47:27
Speaker 1: reason to applaud science. Uh I, now you have a
47:29
Speaker 1: little bit more that I didn't fully understand, and thankfully
47:32
Speaker 1: you're gonna tell people about it. Well. The other I mean,
47:37
Speaker 1: one of the other things, if I'm not mistaken that
47:39
Speaker 1: it seems like vaccine hesitant people are worried about, is
47:41
Speaker 1: that mRNA vaccines are going to embed themselves in your
47:44
Speaker 1: d n A and alter it. And that's actually the
47:48
Speaker 1: opposite of what mRNA vaccines do because, like we said, um,
47:52
Speaker 1: they come from outside of the cell and they do
47:54
Speaker 1: their work in the cytoplasm. They don't go anywhere near
47:57
Speaker 1: your nucleus or interact with your d n A. They
47:59
Speaker 1: don't need to. They've already got what they would have
48:02
Speaker 1: needed from the DNA. And that the mrn A sense
48:05
Speaker 1: shows up with the blueprints ready to be translated into
48:08
Speaker 1: the proteins, right like, they can't. They can't get into
48:11
Speaker 1: the nucleus, right No, I mean, as far as anybody knows,
48:14
Speaker 1: they can't or they don't, there's no reason for them to. Uh,
48:18
Speaker 1: there's no reason they should. And then even if they did,
48:21
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that they would be transcribed into your DNA.
48:25
Speaker 1: Right The actual wild stars Covie two virus doesn't even
48:29
Speaker 1: do that. A lot of viruses actually go in take
48:33
Speaker 1: their RNA, reverse transcribe it into your DNA, and then
48:37
Speaker 1: get your DNA to produce more viruses. That's how a
48:39
Speaker 1: lot of viruses infect you. But the stars Covi two
48:42
Speaker 1: virus is not like that. It's called a positive sense
48:45
Speaker 1: RNA virus where it shows up and in much the
48:48
Speaker 1: same way that the vaccine shows up with ready to
48:51
Speaker 1: go mr NA, the stars covie two virus shows up
48:54
Speaker 1: and says, here's some RNA, just start making more of myself.
48:58
Speaker 1: And it has nothing to do with the d n
49:00
Speaker 1: A in the nucleus. It just works in the cytoplasm
49:03
Speaker 1: as well. So there's no reason to think or believe.
49:05
Speaker 1: And there's no evidence, um that the stars Kvie two
49:09
Speaker 1: virus imbeds itself in your d n A. And I
49:12
Speaker 1: hate to say this, but even if it did, at
49:15
Speaker 1: least eight percent of your d n A human being
49:19
Speaker 1: is made up of ancient viruses DNA that has been
49:22
Speaker 1: injected into humanity over the eons, and as much as
49:27
Speaker 1: forty eight percent of your DNA is actually old viral DNA.
49:32
Speaker 1: That's just junk DNA now, So UM, it doesn't do that.
49:36
Speaker 1: It doesn't insert itself into your d NA. Even if
49:39
Speaker 1: it does, basically you would be good at making ears
49:43
Speaker 1: of coronavirus is for a while. Right. That's it. I
49:48
Speaker 1: love it. So there you go. That's m RNA vaccines.
49:52
Speaker 1: Nice work. Nice work to you too, man, Thank you
49:55
Speaker 1: for doing this one. This is a great one, of course. Uh.
49:57
Speaker 1: And if you want to know more about mr in
50:00
Speaker 1: A vaccines, then just start researching. There's plenty of stuff
50:03
Speaker 1: out there to explain this even further. And since I
50:06
Speaker 1: said just start researching, that means, of course it's time
50:08
Speaker 1: for listener mail. Uh. This is a quick one. I'm
50:13
Speaker 1: gonna call this about the Church of the SubGenius is
50:16
Speaker 1: a follow up. Good morning, fellas. I've been listening to
50:19
Speaker 1: your podcast for several years. Some of my favorites include
50:21
Speaker 1: how Soap Works and how sloths Work. I'm listening to
50:25
Speaker 1: the Tale of the Church of the SubGenius episode as
50:28
Speaker 1: I type, and I often google the topic you're enlightening
50:31
Speaker 1: us with, and when I searched for Bob Dobbs. A
50:34
Speaker 1: recent Twitter post from Bob Dobbs said this Earthlings of Earth,
50:40
Speaker 1: you will be punished for the nineteen seventies. That is all.
50:46
Speaker 1: Hashtag SubGenius, hashtag stark fists, hashtag Tuesday motivations. Uh. And
50:52
Speaker 1: Chris from Arlington, Texas has hysterical. I love your podcast.
50:56
Speaker 1: My wife and I have great conversations about your episodes
50:59
Speaker 1: all the time. Uh. And again that is Chris from Arlington, Texas.
51:03
Speaker 1: Very nice. Thanks a lot, Chris. That was a nice
51:06
Speaker 1: little pick me up, and we love the nineteen seventies,
51:10
Speaker 1: So screw you, sub genius. Agreed, Chuck, I'm glad somebody
51:14
Speaker 1: said it. Well, if you want to give us a
51:16
Speaker 1: pick me up like Chris, Chris right, Chris, like Chris did,
51:20
Speaker 1: then you can send us an email to Stuff Podcast
51:23
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51:29
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