YouSaid · the spoken record

Vincent Racaniello

lines on the record: 239
first: 2021-09-01
most recent: 2021-09-01
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Is a weird thing, not just in us, but they make half of the oxygen on the planet. 20% of the oxygen comes from bacteria. And they made in the beginning of verse, they made enough oxygen to start. Oxygenation going, life going. I mean, they have an incredible role. It's all an accident. It just happened.”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bacteria are just little bags of chemicals that split. So they have no stake in the matter at all. It doesn't bother. I think you have to go a long ways before you get into some. Of consciousness”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think so. There's got to be a first. I don't think so. I think that biologically you just can't, you know, the ends of our chromosomes keep getting shorter and shorter. And that's eventually what kills us. So you just can't keep going on. But that's fine. I don't need to. I understand from the vampires that it's not good to live forever.”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I never thought COVID would kill me. No, I never was afraid of that. Not at all. I mostly feared for other people getting sick, especially people who could die of it. I didn't want that to happen to them. But I always thought that it's obviously not a realistic viewpoint not to be worried. Because many people are, but I've been relatively healthy. They should sequence my genome because it works really well and have a good immune system.”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think many other animals can probably. We're sentient, right? We can influence what happens to us. We can take medicines, right? We can alter what would normally happen to us so we can remove some of the selection pressure. But I think everything else on the planet just goes, you know, looks for food and give a lot of offspring so you can perpetuate. It's just a natural biological function.”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, there's no meaning. It just happened. It's an accident. I think there's no life elsewhere because this was just a rare accident that happened in the bright conditions. I mean, people all think I'm wrong because there are billions and billions of stars out there, right? So there's Lot of opportunity. There's no meaning. It's just an. What do they call it? A perfect storm of events that led to molecules being formed and eventually... I mean, it took a long time for life to evolve, right? But it's just driven by conditions. And if something emerged that worked, it would then go on to the next step. There's no meaning other than that. The only difference is that we”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love viruses. They're amazing, and people think I'm morbid because obviously they kill people and I shouldn't love something. But that's not the point. That's not what I mean. I love them in the way they have emerged and how they work and so forth and all that we don't know about them. So you need to be curious and passionate and don't plan too much and just find something that you don't call a job. Because someone said on the live stream last week. I wish I had a job. I liked as much as you. I said it's not a job. I never looked at it as a job. It's my vocation. It's my passion. If it's a job, then you're not going to like it.”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have to be curious about everything. And if you are, you're never going to be bored. So, people who say they're bored, I say you are not curious. You should just think about things and say, look at something and say, how does that work or what is it doing and how do they get there? And you'll never be bored. And the other thing is when you find something which may take time, it's fine. You have to be passionate about it. You have to put everything into it. And that's what I did with viruses. So I think they're amazing. I tell my classes.”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What I like to do is tell people don't plan it because I didn't plan anything. Everything I did was one step at a time. You don't have to plan. I just. Found things that were interesting to me. And so my father was a doctor and he wanted me to be a doctor, but I was not interested in taking care of people. I learned that. But I couldn't say no to him. So, you know, I was a biology major in college and I graduated and I didn't have anything to do. So I liked science. So I got a job in the lab. It was very exciting, and that led to everything else that I have done one step at a time. And I think the most important thing you can do, well, there are two important things. You could be really curious all the time. You mentioned curiosity. I think curiosity is essential.”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We had so many opportunities Look at all the wars in history, so many Just my son was Telling me about the Ottoman Empire, right? It's just, you know, war after war. And then other countries splitting up countries with no regard to who's living where, right? Just how can these people do this?”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, so humans can make weapons and do harm, and you can see that, but this you can't even see. Can look what it has done, and it'll do it again. There'll be more. I just I wish we would be more prepared because we know what to do. We know we should be making antivirals vaccines, masks, testing masks, making test modalities that we can really quickly redesign. But after SARS 1, well, that went out the door. People didn't do anything. And that's why we're in this situation. So, you know, people ask me this all the time, are we going to be ready for the next one? And I always say, we should be. We have all the information we need to know what to do. But somehow I think people forget.”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think at every level, people who are contributing really wanted to help other people and feel proud that they're able to do that. So I view it as, you know, we're never going to be 100% good. Because animals are not. Evolution made us, I mean, we're lucky we somehow rose above by having incredible brain and so forth. But a lot of our base instincts are animals. They chase each other. Have alpha males and all that stuff. And we always have a little bit of that in us. But we do have some humanity that this really ripped up. It really did. I think for me, someone who studied For over 40 years, it's just amazing that invisible thing can do that, right?”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Most people are willing to, if something happens to someone, to reach out and help them. There are always exceptions where people are mean, and that's just the way animals are. We're not the only ones that can be mean to our own species. But I think most of the motivation for everything that was done is to help other people. I mean, I do think that the vaccine manufacturers, maybe not the leaders, but the people working in the labs really wanted to get this out. Quickly and help people.”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. And so I think when the real story is what it does to society for sure, which has ramifications way beyond the number of people dying and the vaccines and the tests and all of that. And this one has really made a big rupture. And you could tell not now so much, I think being out and about now, things look pretty normal, except for some people wearing masks. You would now never know. I mean, the airport this morning was completely jammed. People going and they're all on vacation. They're all wearing shorts, right? So they're back to normal. It's August. But last year was really different in New York where you're used to lots of people on the street. It was eerie. It was just quiet. But under it all, people are still, most people help each other when they have to, right?”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's what a pandemic does, it really cuts that, right? Because small outbreaks are local. They don't have global effects. But when you have something this big where pretty much nobody escapes, and not just making people sick, it changes your life, right? People lose jobs. They change jobs. They move somewhere else. They have all kinds of disruptions. Kids can't go to school. It really shows you. I mean, I always like to say a tiny virus can bring To its knees. A tiny virus that you can't even see, and that most people don't even think about most of the time. And the real effect is not just sickness, it's what it does to people In the end, we are animals, and most animals like each other, and they interact, they have great social structures, and that makes them do well. And I guess the exception is people in AI, right?”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So he could search for my name, which is Vincent Rack and Yellow. It'll turn up, or my handle on YouTube is prof V-R-R-R-R-R, P-R-O-F-V-R-R-R-R.”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Huge honor. I appreciate that. No, no, it's fine I think a couple of other people were going to be away anyway I do a lot of different pods, they're all on YouTube. I also do a live stream on Wednesday nights on YouTube, which you can find. And that's where people can come and ask questions. We don't have an agenda. We just start and by 30 minutes in there, 700 people with questions that I can't even get through because there's so many of them. And I'm actually astounded that so many people are have really good questions. Most of them are reasonable and they come back every week. So it's a great, it's turning into a great forum to have a nice discussion.”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Used to do other viruses before COVID. It was quite interesting. And I'm trying to slip other viruses in because I think they're informative in many ways. And we're going to do more and more of that. But I have to say, I canceled, usually I record on Tuesday and Friday, and I canceled today so I could be with you.”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think you tell people what you did and present both sides calmly. And I think digging in a debate, I don't think that's terribly useful. So that's my view. I mean, people come to me all the time and ask me. I'm worried. What should I do? And I said, What are you worried about? Let's talk about it and go through it calmly. And if they want to still take Ivermectin, I said, it's fine. It's your choice. I have a problem with that”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Doing this because you tell me too, right? I think the middle ground is to say take a bit of both and say here are the potential issues and here are the benefits. And this is what I would do. And you have to just decide on your own. I'd leave it to them. I say, you decide. And if you don't want to, you know, it's up to you. You don't have to get vaccinated. And you'll probably get infected at some point. And maybe you'll be okay.”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You should make a decision based on long term effects. There is no evidence, right? So how can you make a decision when you don't have evidence, whereas we do have evidence that there are long-term effects of getting COVID? So I don't think that's a fair argument. And it just makes people scared to say that. On the other hand, for someone to say it's a no brainer and to denigrate people for not being vaccinated, that's not the approach either because they're going to dig in and say,”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, a conversation is always healthy, but to make definitive statements is not because it suggests you have information that you don't have. We talked about long term effects. I think you need to balance those versus long term effects of the disease and you can make your decision. I don't think you need to tell everybody to get vaccinated. I think you need to present the case. You say here we made good vaccines. Here are the safety profile. Here's the risk-benefit balance. And you should decide. You're a smart person, you should decide. Companies are going to do differently, right? Companies may say you have to be vaccinated to work here. My employer, Columbia, said we have to be vaccinated to work in the fall. And if you want to be a student, you have to be vaccinated. So you decide whether you want to go or not. The idea that”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think you should have both. I think have vaccines and good testing, and that covers you. Really well because you're always going to have people who don't get vaccinated.”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Little bit heartbreaking. You can find in the literature studies mostly of healthcare workers and influenza where you can actually, because you see the people every day, they can sample them, you can actually see what masking does. And some of them show an effect and others do not. And that's the problem. Like any trials, sometimes if it's not big enough and then people latch on to that, see, it doesn't really work. But I think the main issue is that in January, both CDC and WHO said masks don't work, don't use them. That was the kiss of death for masks because when they then changed their mind. Didn't say we screwed up. They just said wear masks. If they had said we made a mistake, we were wrong. I think more people would have worn masks, but they didn't. And like you said, Admitting you're wrong is like a real big part”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely And many of them are made based on models, right? We make this model, and let's say the mask cuts down this much. What will be the effect on it? I mean, yeah, their models, and it's for the same reason. I don't believe the transmission of the variants because it's all based on statistical models as well, not biological experiments done in the lab.”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of course, of course. No, the data, there are some data. They're mostly epidemiological and they show some effect in some countries, right? But they could be way better. But the fact that they're not perfect, then people take advantage of and say, well, look, they don't work that well, so I'm not going to wear it. I think, as you said, people can use it as an excuse. But even if it works. So Daniel always says a mask will cut down transmission by 50 to 60 percent and then distance will do another 30 percent”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some experiments have been done with masks and just droplets with no virus in them. And you can measure the efficiency of different mask materials at keeping those in.”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“15 to 20 percent of the people The rest had really low, and that's probably why they don't transmit so. Those are the ones that might get enough virus in the tiny droplets to be able to infect someone at a distance. And I think that's entirely possible. Why is it hard to study? You can't do it in real life because you don't know who's infected. And if you do, there's not a controlled environment to measure droplets and so forth. You'd have to do it in a laboratory situation. If you use an animal, you just don't know what the relevance of that is to people. You'd have to use human and do challenge experiments and we don't do that at this point, at least not for this virus. So that's why it's hard to know what's going on. So we have to make inferences from epidemiological associations where you're studying, say, transmission in a household, where people are stuck in the same rooms together. And you can get an idea of what kind of droplets were involved.”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The big drops fall to the ground The little ones can go a hundred feet or more, right? But the little ones also have less virus in them. So I'm not sure. We certainly do not know how much virus you need to be infected. It's probably at least several thousand particles, if not more. And it could be that for most people Tiny droplets don't have enough virus to infect someone else. But there's one observation about this virus that's really interesting, and that is that 80% of transmissions are done by 20% of the people of the infected people. Not every infected person transmits that's been borne out in multiple studies. And in fact, there was a study at University of Colorado where they quantified the viral RNA loads and all the swabs that had been done of students for like a six-month period. Most of the infectious RNA copies were found in.”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's clear that it's transmitted through the air mostly. It's not touching. We thought initially it would be a lot of touch, but very little of that. It's through the air. And when you talk mainly when you talk, you expel a lot of droplets, right? Even the plosives that your foam thing here are meant to pee, right? That you send that little sprays and those have viruses in them.”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, for the future, I think what we have learned is we need to have a rapid antigen test right off the bat that's doable. You can't do it in a day like you can for PCR because Need to make antibodies to the protein that you're looking for, and you need to do those in animals. But you can do it in weeks. We should be ready for that.”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that Minna had the idea, and it would have changed the whole situation for sure if it could have been made when we talked to him last spring, I think, or summer. We would have gotten around a lot of the issues that we're in today because I think people would have stayed home and not transmitted. And I think it's still valuable to this day. In the fall, if we don't have vaccine uptake, we could just test kids every day And keep them home when they're infected. It cuts. And we don't have it. But I think, and I'm not privy to what was going on, but I don't think a lot of emphasis was put on testing early on. You know, the CDC developed the first one. It was flawed. They had to recall the kits. I mean, there's a fiasco. They should have had 100 companies making the tests initially, right?”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I agree. I think if someone, so the question is if someone tested positive, would they stay home? That's the question. What if their job depends on them going in? I mean, that's.”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The antigen tests will pick up the variance. That's not a question. The PCR may be influenced by changes, but you can quickly adapt the primers that you use. But that's like”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then the kids going to school, he's positive, or she's positive. Well, if it's cheap enough, you just take another test because they have a certain error frequency. If it's positive twice, you stay home and the next day you try again. And I think this would have revolutionized because the PCR tests are more expensive at the time and they take longer to do and so forth. But it never happened. But now we do have $20 BINAX now and others that you can buy and people buy them.”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Get 15 minute versions of them in a walk in or whatever. Then there are antigen tests which look for the proteins that the virus is making. So as it's reproducing in your nose, it's not only making genomes, it's making proteins. And so these you can buy in the drugstore. These would have been great if they had, you know, Michael Minna last year had the idea that if we could make a little stick, a little piece of paper that you would suck on and it would tell you if you're infected or not, if this could cost less than a buck, everybody could test themselves.”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You shed for a couple of days before symptom onset, and then within three days, four days, the viral RNA crashes, and you're no longer shedding, you're no longer transmitting. So that's the one kind of test we have. It can tell you if you're infected at the moment, but it won't tell you if you're going to be infected tomorrow, right? Because if you're negative today, you could be positive tomorrow. You just might be in a different part of the incubation period, right? That's one test been used the most. You can now”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which is now we know is too long because you don't shed for that long. A normal infection. Now it's 10 days should be fine. So what happens is you get infected, you don't know it, of course. The virus starts to grow very quickly. And within four or five days, you reach a peak of shedding. You're making a lot of RNA and you may be asymptomatic. You're shedding. You can infect others. And then you may or may not have your symptom onset.”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a number called CT, your cycle threshold. The test, the way the machine works, it goes through cycles in every cycle, it amplifies what you put in. And the more cycles you need to see something, that means there's not a lot of RNA there. So if you see a test and you have a cycle threshold of 35, you have very little RNA in you. Contrary, if you have a cycle threshold of 10, you have a ton of RNA. It only took 10 cycles to detect it. And you can extrapolate from that number the number of copies you have per sample, say per swap. And if you don't have a million, you're not infectious. Not going to infect anyone. So, in the early days, no matter what PCR result you had, they would quarantine you, and that was wrong because you're not shedding. You don't need to be quarantined, but wasn't thought through properly, right?”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And a common mistake that many people who should know better, you know, physicians and scientists of all kinds, they think that indicates how much virus you have. It's a diagnostic of whether you have bits of RNA in you and it probably means you're infected, but you can't use it to shed light on what's going on. And I'll tell you why in a bit, but first we have to explain some other things. So until you get to about a million copies of RNA, so you can measure the copy number in this test, this PCR test.”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the first tests that were developed. PCR polymerase chain reaction. They're basically nucleic acid amplification tests. And they were the very first ones. They stuck the swab all the way up into your brain almost. I had that done a couple of weeks ago. Oh my gosh, it's really nasty. But now they do an anterior nares swab. They get a little cells and some mucus which has virus and parts of virus stick it in a test tube. And then they run a reaction, which by the way, involves reverse transcriptase because it converts the viral RNA to DNA and then you amplify it. And you can specify what part of the viral RNA you want to amplify. And then a machine will detect it and it can be done in 15 minutes. But you're detecting pieces of RNA, not infectious virus. So we're measuring viral RNA loads.”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And if you make antibodies to the stem, they can also prevent infection. It's just that when people are infected or with the current vaccines, they don't make many antibodies to that STEM part. But we're trying to figure out how to make those, and we think they would be broadly protective and you'd never be able to or more rarely be able to have a variant emerge that escaped it. And I think we can do the same thing with coronavirus too, for sure.”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's worth exploring. Absolutely. And this is relevant. What we're doing with influenza, instead of having to vaccinate people every year, why can't we devise a vaccine which you'd get once in your lifetime or maybe once every 10 years? Okay. So the spike of influenza, it's a long protein, kind of like the spike of SARS-CoV-2. It's stuck in the virus membrane. And the very tip. That's the part that changes. Every year, this is where the antibodies bind. But the stem doesn't change.”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you give them one vaccine dose, they make an immune response that handles all the variants that are around right now. All of them, much better than people who've gotten two doses of vaccine. For some reason their immune response is suddenly broadened after the infection vaccination. And they can handle all the variants that we know of so far. So that tells me we can devise a strategy to do the same thing with a vaccine that makes a really broad vaccine that'll handle all the variants.”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you cut down the number of infections, then you reduce the diversity, sure. The problem is, let's say you're a cynic and you say, well, vaccination is just selecting for variants. So let's stop it. But then you're going to have infection and that's going to select for variants. And you're more likely to get very sick because we know the vaccines. Really good at preventing you from dying. So that's why it still makes sense to use vaccines because they prevent you from dying. The bottom line. But can we ever make a vaccine that deals with all variants? Absolutely. And the reason I say that is because People who get naturally infected with SARS-CoV-2, they develop COVID, they recover.”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With flu, we see year after year the virus changes, we change the vaccine, we deal with it, we change it again. There's an unending.”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mostly been infected, but also some vaccinated. Then we saw the alpha variant emerge in England probably because of immune selection. Now the virus that had the change that evaded the antibody had an advantage, and that virus drove through the population. So that's what we're seeing. We're seeing all these variants are simply antigenic selection.”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that drives the emergence of a new variance of the next year we need to change the vaccine. So I would say both natural infection and vaccination sure select for variants. Absolutely. There's no question because they're inducing immunity. Now what happened last year was at the beginning of 2020, very few people in the world were immune as the virus first started spreading. You can see in the sequences of those isolates from the beginning of 2020, you can see all of the changes that are now present in the variance of concern at very, very low frequencies. They were already there, but there was no selection for them to emerge. Until November, when we now had many millions of people who had”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What the immune response is putting pressure, selection pressure on the virus. And if there's a One particle with the right mutation that can escape the antibody that will emerge, right? So that's what happens with influenza virus, right? We vaccinate every year and there are not a lot of people that get infected, so they get natural immunity. And then the virus is incredibly. It mutates like crazy, and in some person somewhere there's one variant that escapes the antibody, which has been induced either by infection or vaccination. It can be both.”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's get the terminology right. So, as we talked about earlier, viruses are always mutating. So no vaccine or no drug makes a virus mutate”
2021-09-01 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #216 – Vincent Racaniello: Viruses and Vaccines · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source