girl getting vaccinated
madeleineshort

What’s the plain English translation of this scientist’s description of long-term vaccine safety?

Question: Would you translate into plain English this scientist’s response about long-term vaccine safety? 

Answer: The question you’re referring to is from an interview with Moderna CEO, Stephane Bancel, that Emily Oster shared yesterday in her newsletter, Parent Data.   Emily Oster says, “I want to ask a question I get asked a lot: What if there is some long term bad effect that might happen in 10 years?  What do you say when people ask you this?”  For ease of reference, I’ve copied below Stephane Bancel’s full response.   And here’s the plain English version:

  • It’s much easier to prove that something did happen than to prove that it did not happen. [think: innocent until proven guilty]  
  • The possibility of any long-term negative vaccination effects is extremely unlikely.
    • Nothing of the vaccine stays in your body after 48 hours– the mRNA, the lipids surrounding the mRNA– all of it’s disintegrated and expelled from your body.
    • The mRNA vaccine does NOT get anywhere near your DNA  and cannot influence your DNA. (for more see our Q&A of 12/5)
  • Since the vaccine does not stay in your body and does not interfere with your DNA, the possibility of long-term negative effects is extremely unlikely and there is no data to support it– the risk is only theoretical.
  • Stephane Bancel would want his kids vaccinated, even if they were younger.  [they are teenagers now, so presumably are already vaccinated]
    • Variants of concern affect children and children can transmit the virus.  
    • If children remain unvaccinated, they are more likely to be exposed to variants of concern.  This is risky not only for children, who could have unknown risk factors (comorbidities) that could make infection far more serious, but it is also risky for adults.
    • If vaccine-induced immunity wanes over time and/or the effectiveness of vaccines wanes in response to new variants, it is possible that with the passage of time, currently vaccinated adults will again be at risk.  Vaccinating children will reduce the potential risk because it will mean less opportunity for variants of concern to circulate in the population.   

Stephane Bancel’s response: 
Proving a negative in science is impossible. But it’s highly, highly unlikely is what I believe. And why do I say that?

First, the mRNA molecule we inject has been proven by outside academic labs to be gone from your body in 48 hours, it’s totally cut in pieces. mRNA is letters — the four letters of life — and those letters are cut in pieces. It starts at hour six, by 48 hours there is nothing left in your body. This is proven scientifically by outside labs, published, peer reviewed.

The second piece for safety is that it is proven, again by an outside lab from Georgia Tech, that the mRNA does not go into the nucleus, which is the envelope in the cell protecting your DNA. So the risk of the mRNA from the vaccine getting into your DNA and creating, let’s say, cancer or genetic disease down the road…we believe that risk doesn’t exist, because we have proven the mRNA doesn’t get close to the nucleus.

The third piece is around the lipid.  The lipid is a ball of fat that is put around the mRNA to protect it from your blood until it gets inside your cells. That is a biodegradable piece of fat, and its half life is two hours. So basically it gets into your cell and it falls apart in pieces; by the time you get to five or six hours, it’s all gone.

So is there a theoretical long term safety risk? There’s always risk with anything we do. Including, you know, the lipstick you use or a cream you use.

My kid are teenagers. But if I had young children, I would definitely want them vaccinated.

The reason for this vaccination…there are a number of things to look at.  The first is the variants. The variant of the virus we’re seeing right now in India are also affecting children. So we should not be naïve that the old strain we saw in the US in 2020 is the same as the strain coming next year. You see what happened with the UK strain (B.1.1.7); it’s more contagious and is now the dominant strain in the US. We see the B.351 strain, or the P.1 in Brazil also have cases of teenagers and children being sick. You’re seeing the same thing in India right now. Those are the next trends of we’re going to get next winter. That’s just how viruses work.

The second thing to look at is the protection of a parents, the teachers in school and the elderly. Let’s say, children get infected in the winter by the B.351 variant from South Africa, they might get no disease, because of the immune system. Or they might just be tired for a day, but you will not notice as a parent that they had.

But they might give it to the teacher and our parents and our grandparents. And that’s what the risk happens, because those people would have been vaccinated a long time ago, possibly with waning immunity. And if you have a variant, the efficacy of a vaccine will be lower.

Third: vaccination for me is really about protecting the individual because you never know how somebody might react to a virus. They might have another comorbidity factor that you don’t know.  Sometimes kids have comorbidities that parents don’t know. So we should not assume that the kids because they look healthier from outside that they’re healthy inside.