And I'd also like to add, there's been some sort of a false equivalence, if you
will, that is made in terms of what we know that overuse of antibiotics can cause
bacterial resistance to those antibiotics.
And there's no question about that.
That's a whole other topic of discussion, the overuse of antibiotics
in humans and in animals especially.
And that gives rise to these superbugs that emerge that are no longer
susceptible to the antibiotics that we have, but that's a different situation.
That's where the antibiotics that are being used are basically
selectively killing out all of these susceptible bacteria and only
leaving those that are resistant.
So in other words, the resistant bacteria already exist, but we're knocking out
the bacteria that are susceptible and allowing the resistant forms to produce.
That's very different than what we're talking about with vaccines because,
in the terms of vaccines and viruses, the resistant viruses don't exist.
What allows them to be created is the ability to replicate.
Okay.
And that's very different with bacteria.
In bacteria, very few resistant bacteria are occurring because
they're being allowed to replicate.
The only way that they can become resistant is if they acquire DNA that
gives them, they're called plasmids or vectors that allow antibiotic resistance
to then be incorporated in their DNA.
That's not the case with viruses.
Viruses and bacteria are very different.
[Kyle] : Dr.
Seheult, I think the most common reason I've heard for people choosing not to
get the vaccine is that they feel like the process may have been rushed, that
there isn't enough long-term data yet.
They may be willing to get the vaccine at some point, but they will, you know, look
at the historical timelines for vaccines and realize that it takes often 10 years,
you know, maybe the average for a vaccine to actually be manufactured and go through
the authorization and approval process.
What are your thoughts about this sentiment?
And, you know, do you feel like the vaccine was rushed?
Do you feel like we can trust the process in this case with
this particular technology?
[Dr.
Seheult] : That's a great question.
So there's no question in my mind and anyone else's that
this process was accelerated.
No question about it.
The question is, is was the quality of the product compromised by
the acceleration of the process?
And here you can see on the screen a typical vaccine timeline.
If this was done under normal situations, we would have started in 2020, and we
wouldn't have had a product until 2034.
And the reason for that is because there is risk in making these
vaccines, but there's also processes that they have to go through.
So there is the research that has to happen.
Then there's the pre-clinical trials, the bench top trials, and then phase
one, to figure out the right dose, phase two, to do the small randomized
controlled trials to see if there are problems, then finally, the big
phase three trials, leading up to building the factories to make these
vaccines, and then the manufacturing, and then the approval process, and
then finally, the distribution.
So what you can see in the lower portion of that screen
is everything got compressed.
Now, notice that nothing got skipped.
So we still had the phase one trials, and the phase two, and the phase three.
Some of these were being run concomitantly, which
means at the same time.
But notice something very interesting.
The factories were being built at the same time that the phase one
and two trials were being done.
Why is that?
Why were they able to do that?
Because what the government did by stepping in and providing them money and
resources and providing those barriers is they're saying, "Look, we'll give you the
money to build the factories," realizing that if these phase one, two, and three
trials are a bust, you're not going to be held liable for the amount of money that
you've spent in building these factories that aren't going to do anything.
And so that was one of the major barriers to getting this thing done was the risk
that the companies would not normally be willing to take on these vaccines.
But the government was saying, "We don't want you to take that risk.
We want you to get those things started."