I am so grateful to have heard your podcast with Dr. Hyman and have such a balanced and objective point of view shared. I have spent weeks researching this and your information is the best source I have found from a layperson point of view who really does try to look at all sides. Can you share further info on two items please?
1. More info on preventing the virus from jumping to the bloodstream and how this works-The vaccines DO offer "disease immunity" in which the virus will be prevented from jumping to the bloodstream due to the production of neutralizing antibodies. This reduces the chance the disease will have severe effects on the vascular system and major internal organs.
2. From the podcast - more info on the 4 pillars you mentioned on herd immunity. Everything I see online mention only 1-2 pillars of the 4 that you said need to be in place. If I understand herd immunity correctly, you stated on Dr. Hyman's podcast there are 4 factors to achieve it. 1. A vaccine that confers sterilizing immunity (these covid vaccines are all non-sterilizing) 2. In the case of covid's infectious rate - 90% of population vaccinated with a sterilizing vaccine (based on the more infectious the disease, the higher that percentage is. The actual formula is one minus one over R-nought) 3. Durable lifetime immune protection. 4. the virus needs to not have an animal reservoir. Could you provide more study material on the difference between 1 and 3 and more info on 4? I am so appreciative to your work and perspective. Many thanks
Basically, to get to herd immunity the virus needs to run out of hosts to live in.
This is why smallpox was able to be eradicated, but Ebola can never be eradicated. Ebola can survive in multiple species and is able to re-jump back into the human population.
Ebola also lacks an effective vaccine...so even vaccinated, there are people that can still act as hosts for the virus to back from the animal reservoirs to the human population.
Vaccines with sterilizing immunity is needed to help stop the infection/re-transmission chain.
Even with highly effective vaccines like the polio vaccine...there are still silent outbreaks occurring in the US and the EU because the polio vaccine doesn't confer effective sterilizing immunity (specifically in the gut, which leads to fecal shedding of the virus into the environment).
But because the polio vaccine is extraordinarily effective at preventing symptomatic disease, and we have almost universal vaccination rates for polio, most of these silent clusters never result in a single case of symptomatic polio and are discovered by epidemiologists during antibody screens.
Between the lack of vaccine-induced sterilizing immunity and the unwillingness of large parts of the population to get vaccinated, coupled with vaccines that will probably only be about 70% effective at preventing symptomatic disease (based on recent data out of Israel), then herd immunity is effectively out of reach.
Couple that with the mutational variants that seem to be outrunning the vaccines and the problem of reaching herd immunity becomes even more challenging.
Thanks for the quick and great reply! Can you also share with me if the statistic Dr Hyman shared was correct on the podcast that 1 out 100 are dying from covid? I was wondering if that was meant to be infected with covid. It's around the part of the discussion where you're discussing reaction stats to the vaccine.
"So, just personally looking at the literature and looking at the data I think that any really significant reaction is probably going to be on the order of one in a million to one in 10 million. We’ve seen a single interesting reaction that’s been in the news, a doctor in Miami who recently died, and he they understand that what happened is an extraordinarily rare type of immune response that basically caused his platelet count to go to zero and it couldn’t be reversed. But again, just looking at the numbers that looks like about a one in 10 million or less reaction.
Dr. Mark Hyman: To put it in perspective, if you get COVID your risk of dying is one in 100.
Dale Harrison: Right. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman: Like one in a million, right?
Dale Harrison: Right. But or one in 10 million but we’re definitely embarking on an experiment here where we’re going to be vaccinating an unprecedented number of people.
I can't seem to correlate that death number of 1 in 100 infections. Thanks for clarifying! So appreciate your work.
This is the so-called "case fatality rate" or CFR. It's not based on the number of people infected because we don't know what that number is since up to half of cases are asymptomatic or mild enough to not require medical help.
So CFR to date in the US is actually at 1.7% meaning that out of every 1,000 people who see a doctor and gets medically diagnosed with Coivd, about 17 of them will die, generally in about 21-days or less.
I know there are still a lot of unknowns, but I was wondering if you could expand a little more on whether or not those who had a prior covid infection with the virus still need to get vaccinated in order to achieve the full vaccine compliance (>80%)? If those who already had the infection and did not have serious illness, would it still be necessary to vaccinate since it's not going to change transmission rate and their immune system already cleared the virus once without issues? Thank you!
Hi Dale, - Why does the CDC have comments about achieving herd immunity, along with the press discussing this if herd immunity is not achievable with an animal reservoir? If I understood from the Doctor's Pharmacy podcast the 4 pillars you mentioned on herd immunity, covid can reach none of these. Everything I see online mentions only 1-2 pillars of the 4 that you said need to be in place. If I understand correctly, you stated on Dr. Hyman's podcast there are 4 factors to achieve it. 1. A vaccine that confers sterilizing immunity (these covid vaccines are all non-sterilizing) 2. In the case of covid's infectious rate - 90% of population vaccinated with a sterilizing vaccine (based on the more infectious the disease, the higher that percentage is. The actual formula is one minus one over R-nought) 3. Durable lifetime immune protection. 4. the virus needs to not have an animal reservoir.
Could you provide more study material on the difference between 1 and 3 and more info on 4?
Is the press and CDC using the term herd immunity to apply to pillar #2 independently (which I think is misleading, because it gives the impression that herd immunity can be achieved if we can just get enough people vaccinated). This too can wrongly influence people's behaviors after the vaccine. Here is the quote from the CDC's page answering the question. "Experts do not yet know what percentage of people would need to get vaccinated to achieve herd immunity to COVID-19. Herd immunity means that enough people in a community are protected from getting a disease because they’ve already had the disease or they’ve been vaccinated. Herd immunity makes it hard for the disease to spread from person to person, and it even protects those who cannot be vaccinated, like newborns. The percentage of people who need to have protection in order to achieve herd immunity varies by disease. CDC and other experts are studying herd immunity and will provide more information as it is available."
Can you provide a link to a resource that helps me understand the 4 pillars needed for herd immunity that you mention? Thank you for your time and invaluable information.
I am so grateful to have heard your podcast with Dr. Hyman and have such a balanced and objective point of view shared. I have spent weeks researching this and your information is the best source I have found from a layperson point of view who really does try to look at all sides. Can you share further info on two items please?
1. More info on preventing the virus from jumping to the bloodstream and how this works-The vaccines DO offer "disease immunity" in which the virus will be prevented from jumping to the bloodstream due to the production of neutralizing antibodies. This reduces the chance the disease will have severe effects on the vascular system and major internal organs.
2. From the podcast - more info on the 4 pillars you mentioned on herd immunity. Everything I see online mention only 1-2 pillars of the 4 that you said need to be in place. If I understand herd immunity correctly, you stated on Dr. Hyman's podcast there are 4 factors to achieve it. 1. A vaccine that confers sterilizing immunity (these covid vaccines are all non-sterilizing) 2. In the case of covid's infectious rate - 90% of population vaccinated with a sterilizing vaccine (based on the more infectious the disease, the higher that percentage is. The actual formula is one minus one over R-nought) 3. Durable lifetime immune protection. 4. the virus needs to not have an animal reservoir. Could you provide more study material on the difference between 1 and 3 and more info on 4? I am so appreciative to your work and perspective. Many thanks
Thank you for the kind words!
Basically, to get to herd immunity the virus needs to run out of hosts to live in.
This is why smallpox was able to be eradicated, but Ebola can never be eradicated. Ebola can survive in multiple species and is able to re-jump back into the human population.
Ebola also lacks an effective vaccine...so even vaccinated, there are people that can still act as hosts for the virus to back from the animal reservoirs to the human population.
Vaccines with sterilizing immunity is needed to help stop the infection/re-transmission chain.
Even with highly effective vaccines like the polio vaccine...there are still silent outbreaks occurring in the US and the EU because the polio vaccine doesn't confer effective sterilizing immunity (specifically in the gut, which leads to fecal shedding of the virus into the environment).
But because the polio vaccine is extraordinarily effective at preventing symptomatic disease, and we have almost universal vaccination rates for polio, most of these silent clusters never result in a single case of symptomatic polio and are discovered by epidemiologists during antibody screens.
Between the lack of vaccine-induced sterilizing immunity and the unwillingness of large parts of the population to get vaccinated, coupled with vaccines that will probably only be about 70% effective at preventing symptomatic disease (based on recent data out of Israel), then herd immunity is effectively out of reach.
Couple that with the mutational variants that seem to be outrunning the vaccines and the problem of reaching herd immunity becomes even more challenging.
Thanks for the quick and great reply! Can you also share with me if the statistic Dr Hyman shared was correct on the podcast that 1 out 100 are dying from covid? I was wondering if that was meant to be infected with covid. It's around the part of the discussion where you're discussing reaction stats to the vaccine.
"So, just personally looking at the literature and looking at the data I think that any really significant reaction is probably going to be on the order of one in a million to one in 10 million. We’ve seen a single interesting reaction that’s been in the news, a doctor in Miami who recently died, and he they understand that what happened is an extraordinarily rare type of immune response that basically caused his platelet count to go to zero and it couldn’t be reversed. But again, just looking at the numbers that looks like about a one in 10 million or less reaction.
Dr. Mark Hyman: To put it in perspective, if you get COVID your risk of dying is one in 100.
Dale Harrison: Right. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman: Like one in a million, right?
Dale Harrison: Right. But or one in 10 million but we’re definitely embarking on an experiment here where we’re going to be vaccinating an unprecedented number of people.
I can't seem to correlate that death number of 1 in 100 infections. Thanks for clarifying! So appreciate your work.
Kim
This is the so-called "case fatality rate" or CFR. It's not based on the number of people infected because we don't know what that number is since up to half of cases are asymptomatic or mild enough to not require medical help.
So CFR to date in the US is actually at 1.7% meaning that out of every 1,000 people who see a doctor and gets medically diagnosed with Coivd, about 17 of them will die, generally in about 21-days or less.
Hello Dale,
I know there are still a lot of unknowns, but I was wondering if you could expand a little more on whether or not those who had a prior covid infection with the virus still need to get vaccinated in order to achieve the full vaccine compliance (>80%)? If those who already had the infection and did not have serious illness, would it still be necessary to vaccinate since it's not going to change transmission rate and their immune system already cleared the virus once without issues? Thank you!
Hi Dale, - Why does the CDC have comments about achieving herd immunity, along with the press discussing this if herd immunity is not achievable with an animal reservoir? If I understood from the Doctor's Pharmacy podcast the 4 pillars you mentioned on herd immunity, covid can reach none of these. Everything I see online mentions only 1-2 pillars of the 4 that you said need to be in place. If I understand correctly, you stated on Dr. Hyman's podcast there are 4 factors to achieve it. 1. A vaccine that confers sterilizing immunity (these covid vaccines are all non-sterilizing) 2. In the case of covid's infectious rate - 90% of population vaccinated with a sterilizing vaccine (based on the more infectious the disease, the higher that percentage is. The actual formula is one minus one over R-nought) 3. Durable lifetime immune protection. 4. the virus needs to not have an animal reservoir.
Could you provide more study material on the difference between 1 and 3 and more info on 4?
Is the press and CDC using the term herd immunity to apply to pillar #2 independently (which I think is misleading, because it gives the impression that herd immunity can be achieved if we can just get enough people vaccinated). This too can wrongly influence people's behaviors after the vaccine. Here is the quote from the CDC's page answering the question. "Experts do not yet know what percentage of people would need to get vaccinated to achieve herd immunity to COVID-19. Herd immunity means that enough people in a community are protected from getting a disease because they’ve already had the disease or they’ve been vaccinated. Herd immunity makes it hard for the disease to spread from person to person, and it even protects those who cannot be vaccinated, like newborns. The percentage of people who need to have protection in order to achieve herd immunity varies by disease. CDC and other experts are studying herd immunity and will provide more information as it is available."
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/faq.html
Can you provide a link to a resource that helps me understand the 4 pillars needed for herd immunity that you mention? Thank you for your time and invaluable information.