The Pandemic Podcast with Dr Daniel Janies (One Year Later)

Down the Wormhole

Episode 80

One year ago, way back in episode 30, Dr Daniel Janies spoke with us about the emerging SARS-CoV-2 virus and the resultant COVID-19 infections which were quickly spreading around the world. Now, as multiple vaccines are rolling out across the world and dangerous variants are nipping at their heels, we wanted to invite Dr Janies back to the show to talk about about the state of the pandemic, what to expect next, and what we can do to get back to normal. Should we be worried about the new variants? Are there other similar viruses waiting in the wings? What's so special about these vaccines? Will we ever beat COVID or is this just the new normal? Let's talk about it.

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Dr Daniel Janies is an American scientist who has made significant contributions in the field of evolutionary biology and on the development of tools for the study of evolution and spread of pathogens. He is The Carol Grotnes Belk Distinguished Professor of Bioinformatics and Genomics at University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He is involved with research for the United States Department of Defense, and has advised multiple instances of the government on methods for disease surveillance.

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produced by Zack Jackson
music by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis

Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated by www.otter.ai, and as such contains errors (especially when multiple people are talking). As the AI learns our voices, the transcripts will improve. We hope it is helpful even with the errors.

Zack Jackson 00:04

You are listening to the down the wormhole podcast exploring the strange and fascinating relationship between science and religion. This week our hosts are

Kendra Holt-Moore 00:15

Kendra Holt-Moore, PhD candidate at Boston University. And if I could be a scientist, I would be a quantum scientist

Rachael Jackson 00:25

Rachael Jackson, Rabbi at Agoudas, Israel congregation Hendersonville, North Carolina. And if I were a scientist, I would choose to be a geneticist.

Zack Jackson 00:39

Zack Jackson UCC pastor in Reading, Pennsylvania, and for most of my life, I wanted to be an astrophysicist. So, we're gonna go with that one.

Ian Binns 00:49

Ian Binns Associate Professor of elementary science education at UNC Charlotte. And I could pick any science professional I probably would have been a paleontologist. Yeah, like dinosaurs. Okay, so today. In 2012, today's guest joined the University of North Carolina at Charlotte as the Carol gruffness. Belk distinguished professor of bioinformatics and genomics. He originated the field of mapping pathogen genetic data, in concert with geography and host animals. He was a tenured faculty member in the College of Medicine at The Ohio State University, where he served as national principal investigator in the Tree of Life program of NSF. He's advised the Obama White House depending on and testified to both houses of Congress. I'm very pleased to welcome back to our show, Dr. Dan Janis. So welcome back.

Dan Janies 01:42

Thanks very much.

Zack Jackson 01:44

Welcome back, Dan.

Ian Binns 01:45

I'm really proud of that.

Zack Jackson 01:49

Wherever very proud of you to be and Thanks, guys. Well, thanks for coming back, Dan.

Dan Janies 01:56

Oh, my pleasure.

Zack Jackson 01:57

The last time you were on, for those who are not longtime listeners was March 18 2020. Way back in Episode 30. Back at the beginning of this newfangled pandemic, where I don't even know if we were using that word quite yet. No one really knew in the public really what was going on. I feel like that was at the time when we were just talking about like two weeks of lockdown, to contain this to flatten the curve so that we can get back to normal. President Trump was talking about going back to church on Easter, which have, I am a pastor who just went back to in person church on Easter, he just got the wrong year. It took a couple extra months to get there. And a lot of what you said in that episode of sounded extraordinary at the time, but now seems commonplace. I remember asking you if What if this virus becomes airborne, and you said, Oh, it is airborne. I'm like, wait, what it is. And then sure enough, now, everyone basically agrees that it is airborne. We were debating back then about where it came from. And you said all those other things, those are just red herrings, it came from bats. And there we go. Now we know, you would predict that it was gonna we were still going to be talking about this in a year. And here we are a year later talking about it. So we're really happy to have you back on to help untangle a lot of where we are today. The state of things and what's coming up next. Well, great,

Dan Janies 03:38

great. Yeah, there's certainly been a number of chapters.

Zack Jackson 03:44

No kidding. This probably isn't how you imagined your 2020 was going to go when it started?

Dan Janies 03:51

Well, it there's something about it. I I've been through a few of these. And this one from the beginning felt very different. Just a matter of getting that through our heads. And it came through our heads at different periods of time, I think.

Ian Binns 04:05

Can we expand on that what you saw like this one?

Dan Janies 04:08

Look at 2009 h one n one, we all still traveled when I wasn't allowed to say stay home from work, communications people were worked with when they thought the business community wouldn't like it. And so we had to say, cover your call. That's about all we could say. And I went to China in 2009, you know? Oh, yeah.

Ian Binns 04:32

I think you also said in the last time we had you on the use of the word quarantine, that people were very careful in the use of that word as well.

Dan Janies 04:42

Yeah, we couldn't say that and they weren't going to close the schools. So we couldn't say social distance either. That was so euphemism if we were gonna say something, but yeah,

Ian Binns 04:53

yeah. So and now like the cats out of the bag. I mean, we use those phrases all the time. Now.

Dan Janies 05:00

Yes, yes, this one turned out very different. Do you

Rachael Jackson 05:02

feel a little bit like a prophet?

Dan Janies 05:05

No, um, it's easy to be wrong here too. I mean, some of us even talked about being guilty about not being noisier. You know what I mean? So I did testify to Congress. So I don't know how.

Zack Jackson 05:25

In many ways you do sound a lot like the Hebrew prophets.

Dan Janies 05:28

Yeah. So.

Zack Jackson 05:31

So this the state of things, as you see them right now, where would you place us now compared to last year,

Dan Janies 05:38

I think vaccines and the rate at which we produce them and their efficacy is a is a, just a triumph. I mean, that, that it has been amazing. And anybody who doubts, our ability to, you know, work together and come up with solutions and multiple solutions, in case one didn't work, should, you know, not have much to argue about anymore? It's just been tremendous. And now the rollout is, is it's been a challenge. But in the United States, we're doing a pretty good job, you know, remains a challenge. But we're doing better than other parts of the world. And there are parts of the world like Israel, they're doing better than us. So all this is work.

Kendra Holt-Moore 06:25

I was reading something. Maybe yesterday or a couple days ago, that was just an article about was the phrase, something like hygiene, performed no hygiene theater, that's what it was. And that, like, what we know now about transmission being airborne, and that surfaces are not really that they don't play as much of a role as we thought they did a year ago, but that people continue to, like clean, like non stop surfaces, and that it, like, makes people feel good, but it's actually just this like hygiene theater like performativity. Um, it seems like, I don't know, it might just be where I am currently. But it seems like that's gonna be something kind of hard to let go of, because it is good to like, wash your hands and stuff like that. But yeah, how? I'm just curious. And this isn't just just have to be for Dan. But it is like mostly to that, Dan, I guess, like, how are we going to stop, like wasting money on cleaning protocols that we don't have to do? Is it a good idea to stop all of that? Is there something valuable in signaling? cleanliness is to me, it seems a little bit shallow, I guess. But I understand that there could be value in it. Like what what do you predict for the coming months? And like the next year?

Dan Janies 07:56

Yeah, well, you're doing you're doing a lot, you're just not stopping SARS, COVID to transmission with cleaning surfaces, scoby to the vast majority of it has been covered is airborne, transmission, respiratory droplets. But there are pathogens that are transferred on surfaces, bacterial pathogens, and so forth. So you know, like food hygiene is largely dependent on surface contamination, and so forth. So water contamination, so that's that you're gonna have better food hygiene, which is always a good thing. Yeah.

Kendra Holt-Moore 08:26

Yeah. No, that that, that makes sense. But like, all the extra stuff, you know, like wiping down the like, desks or whatever, like, I guess there's value in that, like, kids maybe won't get us sick with other things. But I guess, part of what was interesting to me about that was that there's been so much money, especially when you're looking at different, like, public schools, or just other organizations that could be putting all that money into, like, air filters and stuff like that. But they're spending so much money on cleaning supplies, and there is like, obviously, you know, like what you're saying it that does help for a lot of other things. But it's just like, where do we like, find the balance of actually, if the priority right now is COVID? It makes sense to do more of the airborne precautions, but what about like, five years from now?

Dan Janies 09:19

Because, yeah, well, I think that's a great question. And it's probably matter is going to, like mass will probably become a matter of personal preference going forward. And schools are regulated. So that won't be preferred personal preference, but, you know, probably be, you know, find some reasonable balance going forward. But once we, you know, we're humans once we started doing something, it's, it's hard to reverse course, right. So, right, that human nature thing.

Rachael Jackson 09:43

Is there such a thing do you think, as too much usage of these things?

Dan Janies 09:49

I have not heard of that. But, uh, you know, if it's like anything if it's preoccupying you so you don't do other things or you're burning yourself. You know, like there are people wash their hands too much and not wreck their skin. And I think those things are.

Rachael Jackson 10:02

Right. Right, this idea of antibacterial right, that we're using all bacterial wipes for everything. Oh, are we just making stronger bugs?

Dan Janies 10:11

Yeah, I don't know, of any particular expertise on that, that. I think these, you know, antibacterial products certainly do provide some of the selective force that that I think that's demonstrated at the look of the paper that is driving antimicrobial resistance, but I'm just using intuition here, as probably nothing compared to overuse of antibiotics, which, you know, we use in our own bodies, and we use wantedly in agriculture, and that's just the concentrations being used in those settings is tremendous. So I think we got whoops, we'll come back to that, so much caring about over cleaning, but hopefully caring about other problems. And to shift gears a little bit here. Think of, you know, antibiotic resistance was was the, you know, the crisis that we've forgotten about cancer screenings haven't been done, you know, people haven't gotten their teeth cleaned. And so there's all this neglected maintenance and and refocusing we're gonna have to do.

Ian Binns 11:14

So what do you think of like, you were being that we kind of talked a little about, like classroom spaces and things like that. You remember back last spring, so a year ago, in conversations about what could the fall look like at so at our university, Danny and see Charlotte and like, even in lab spaces, or classroom spaces, you know, many classrooms may have, you know, access to like a, you know, a staplers or whatever that students could pass around or anything like that, that could be communal supplies. there was all this talk of well, we couldn't have that, you know, the concerns around we can't have communal supplies in your classrooms and stuff like that. Do you think, is that still a concern? I mean, because you know, our university is going to be back primarily face to face in the fall, most universities probably will be most schools are going that route as well. I mean, is that something that you think that teachers will have to clean the desk spaces and stuff like that in between classes and things like that? Yeah.

Dan Janies 12:08

I'll have some thoughts around. But, you know, bear in mind, like, I'm not authorized to speak about University operations by any means, right? I'm just these are just generic thoughts. I think we can be reasonable about it. I think people are gonna like, you know, more personal space, and having their own things. And I'd like to work in a clean environment. You know, I don't I bet the cases of SARS covi transcript Trent transfers based on shared staplers are almost non though, let's put it that right.

Rachael Jackson 12:43

So I wanted to go back to this vaccine question a little bit, if you may, may seem very, very optimistic, which I think is wonderful. Recognizing that, as a whole, our country is doing well. Right? On in some places, adequate, some places, some populations very poor. But as taken as a whole, we're doing well, right. Our my social commentary is that there's certainly issues in with racial justice surrounding that. But if we take the country as a whole, we're certainly doing better than than others, and certainly doing better than what we were doing. So when we look at vaccines, one of the things that we're facing now, and I was listening to an NPR story about this, was saying that very soon, we're going to have a surplus. But we're still not at a place where we're reaching this generalized herd immunity, whether or not that herd immunity is 75%, or 85%, or even 90%. We know that it's above 70. Like comfortably, we know that above 70, is where we need to go. And we're at 25%, looking at this question of having a surplus. And for me, part of what when I look at that part of the rash, the reason for that is are disparities in terms of equity. But then there's also a question of, there's a lot of people that just aren't going to take it. And what do you think as a scientist that we can do to encourage getting to that place? Well,

Dan Janies 14:31

I think several things and I think it's gonna be patchy. And that's the problem with with the herd immunity question is, surpluses are occurring in in some states already, because they've just exhausted the number of people willing to take the vaccine. They think, you know, with the let's just be honest with any medical intervention, there's a small risk of an adverse reaction. Some people have a psychology Do against needles, some people over psychology against distrust in medicine, and those are all things we're gonna have to work on. I think though the recent news about Johnson Johnson and more, most Previous to that asked her Astra Zeneca, vaccines, causing blood clots, is definitely concerning and will be followed up on by the full force of regulatory agencies. But bear in mind, your chances of having an adverse outcome to SARS COVID to infection are about 125 times more than having an adverse reaction to a vaccine. It's terrible for those people had those reactions, but it's something like six and six individuals and 7 million, you know, so it's terrible for all those people, and we got to do better. But you know, people don't have these emotional reactions to vaccine and medicine don't respond to those numbers. Right. So I just think it's a hard question. And I think it's a question of science literacy just for many things. And this speaks to the misinformation to which finds opportunity and in these, you know, in these areas where the vaccines have slightly failed, or where there's mistrust sewn already, I just think what we should just keep doing what we're doing in terms of nature of science, instruction sciences, and perfect vaccines aren't perfect, but they're better than nothing and way better than these ones are wildly good. Stars Coronavirus. Two vaccines are 90% effective, whereas we lived happily with influenza vaccines, you know, 3040 50% effective, you know, so if you're going out in the rain, take a raincoat, you know, it's like, to me, it's common sense, you

Zack Jackson 16:47

know, so that why is the are they recommending the vaccine the Johnson and Johnson vaccine be put on hold? When it seems like it seems safer than any of the the the medications you see advertised on TV with their litany of side effects afterwards? is just for PR and public confidence, or is that actually concerning? Well, it's,

Dan Janies 17:13

you know, all these, those ads don't have those disclaimers because they like them that's regulated, right. So the major concern is, of course, for all those individuals that are infected but there as if effected by an adverse reaction. But the erosion of public trust by a small event is worse in terms of continuing to give the virus new hosts by all the people who can't or because they're not eligible or because of underlying conditions or because they just have a emotional or psychological problem with taking a vaccine. And this speaks back to the herd immunity question and nobody can really calculate what that is and but that the best estimate, I heard of the best sort of way to explain it is 60%. Sounds good because if the are not the transmission rate of the virus is three and that that number is varied. That means for every person affected, you're affecting three others. If we immunize two of those potential new infections, we're taking them off the playing field off the table for SARS Coronavirus, two leaving only one so are not going to one. So every person infected only infects one more person. The virus spread is not growing. It's that sort of a steady state then and that. That doesn't sound great. I mean, I think Coronavirus is going to be with us like like influences with us. We've just will payment down to that low level transmission. But there always be new hosts. There's always going to be children. And hopefully we get the vaccines approved for children. But there's always newborns and there's always people who won't take it. And there's always the virus continuing to evolve which we've seen in influenza for decades.

Zack Jackson 19:03

So you think we are solidly on the path to this being a seasonal thing and not being eradicated? Like MERS

Dan Janies 19:11

Yeah, I I think early hope in some of the uncertainty around SARS COVID. To You know, this notion that it was different but we couldn't explain why was tied to MERS going first didn't really go extinct though. SARS, SARS one, but I mean SARS covi. did go extinct MERS. There were cases until 2018. People think of Huawei in 2015. But there were still cases until 2018. So MERS might be clinking around out there. But this Yeah. tsarskoe v2 is clearly different. I don't it didn't show any seasonality early in our behaviors drove drove more the transmission of the virus and our lack of vaccines or lack of any defense against it. And so we think of fluid seasonal, it may show some seasonality tsarskoe v2, but think of influenza h one n one that actually emerged in April where we're supposed to be coming out of flu season so.

Ian Binns 20:06

So with you said SARS COVID. One did go extinct, right?

Dan Janies 20:12

That lineage went extinct. This is the most important thing that

Ian Binns 20:15

won't happen.

Dan Janies 20:17

It emerged from bats. And

Ian Binns 20:19

I mean, why did that go extinct? That we have things against it? No,

Dan Janies 20:23

that's a great question. So I thought I ran out of hosts in the countries. We didn't experience it so much in the US, we don't think about it, but just good infection control. It was transmitting a lot between patient and healthcare workers. And in Toronto, for example, and they just they stopped, they were able to stomp it out. In Beijing, there was, you know, panic in the streets. I mean, there was nobody in the streets, so just shut down Beijing. And so early rent responses, I think, muted it quickly. But the point is, from an evolutionary perspective, all the cousins of stars go v1, one of which was MERS, one of which was SARS, go v2, there's probably I don't know the number, but there are multiples of these things clinking around in bats all the time. And what happened with tsarskoe v2 is one emerged that can that turned out to be incredibly transmissible and very well adapted to, to humans or human transmission, it continues to adapt through variants. Right. And that was a game changer. And well, you know, we're worried about source code v3 source code before, and anything else. I mean, we've not even paid attention to the rest of the, you know, virus fear for a long time. So that's what we got to start doing.

Rachael Jackson 21:37

Do you think that so you're you're indicating that this, this family lineage, SARS, and MERS, and SARS, COVID to originated from bats, and the second one has also the one that we're mo focuses focusing on SARS, COVID. Two came from bats and the back to human transmission. Do you think that there's my my question is twofold. Do you think that there are other completely different family lines that has nothing to do with us, rs covi that are coming from bats. And second part of that is, are there other animals that we also need to be thinking about that could have this potential transmission that were just that we haven't really focused on?

Dan Janies 22:28

Yeah, great question. So certainly, bats are the most important host for these severe medically important coronaviruses SARS MERS COVID. However, rodents have been the source of other coronaviruses animal to human transmission events have been recorded in the literature since the 60s. And they've been recorded in genomes since you know, the I would say, right after SARS, we started a sequence when I was at Ohio State that a lot of us agriculturally important coronaviruses. In fact, a lot of them do come from cows and in their cousins, camels since case immerse those coronaviruses In fact, in fact, people but they cause something, I can do a common cold. And so there was never a lot of medical concern about them. So

Rachael Jackson 23:21

medically, who cares?

Dan Janies 23:22

Yeah, yeah, it's a cold, you know, we call it a cold, or we call it influenza like illness that one of the soap boxes, I like to get honest, we don't really know what causes those things. They're one of 30 potential things could be a rhinovirus could be bacteria sometimes, and we never really diagnose the pathogen itself, like we have begun to do with source code to, to delineate it from influenza and so forth. I think that sort of personalized attack on the bug itself, rather than the symptoms is going to be wildly important now. And then we'll know more what oh, a backtrack to the animal sources of these things. So that's a great question and opens up an area of science I've been hoping to open up for a long time.

Rachael Jackson 24:06

How is Sorry, just sort of putting on this this other question? How is this for those that aren't super? well read myself included? In terms of what is the difference of I'll just use the bat, as example, right? Drag to human transmission, as opposed to some of these other diseases that we see as carriers, for example, malaria, in mosquitoes, or you used you said rodents and I, that immediately got me thinking, you know, the Black Death or the black plague is centuries ago, which was brought in by rodents, but it wasn't from rodents. It was, you know, the bugs on them. And then it got to us like what is how you talk to me like I'm five in terms of what does it mean to actually have this transmission to cross that barrier? And how is that different than these others? Sort of insect driven issues,

Dan Janies 25:03

it all matters, it's it comes down to the nature of the biology. So pathogens are just they're all just hitching a ride, right? So the bats are good at flying these things around and the bad immune system and this is a whole nother area to seems to be able to fight them off or run so hot, so to speak, that they don't get infected or, and I think they've even reduced their immune repertoire. So they're, they're just flying around happy with full of viruses. It's true. There's NEPA, Andra, don't handle that. Whatever you do. of cool. Yeah, yeah. Cool. Yeah. Oh, it's biology. Don't go to lunch with biologists either. So, so that, you know, the back question is probably people going into caves and collecting guano, I guess it's valuable, maybe eating them. I've heard of bad consumption on around the world. And then let's switch to, you know, insect borne diseases, mosquitoes are worse than bats, right, they cause more death and destruction. And you know, now almost anything on earth in terms of malaria, and flaviviruses, Zika, and dengue and so forth. And the mosquito, the female mosquito essentially bites your friend, then take some of their blood, and your furry friend has the malaria parasite called Plasmodium in it, it's the genus Plasmodium, it's a, it's a little thing called an EP complexin parasite, then the, that female mosquito goes on to you, and bites you, and then injects that Plasmodium into you. And then you get malaria. Right. And in terms of bacterial pathogens, like plague, you know, living close to the rats, and I suppose, you know, historically, rats were getting into food stores, grain and so forth. And people were eating that, and getting infected. And then once it gets into people, you're handling the body and so forth. And all that goes back to all these hygiene issues. Bacteria are terrible, too.

Rachael Jackson 27:10

So we should really, you know, I know, this is not what you're saying. But, you know, part of one of the things that I could hear you saying is be vegan, and wear a mosquito suit all the time. Like, like, like if we want to protect ourselves from these things like that's,

Dan Janies 27:28

yeah. Oh, well. What's interesting about Malaria is we had it in the United States, we had yellow fever in the United States. And so we don't have to be personally hypersensitive or hyper sensitive to what's around us if we do reasonable public health, like control standing water, have screens, our windows, things like simple things like that, that lead to mosquito control. And, you know, this,

Rachael Jackson 27:57

they're the most horrible things. I I am a, you know, from a religious standpoint, and from a you know, perhaps a standpoint of you know, I believe that things have a place and there's Domino effects when you when there's extinctions, you know, we don't fully know understand the ramifications of things but I think the world would be better without mosquitoes. I'm just, I, I see only positives from that. I see nothing good from the mosquito. And I

Zack Jackson 28:32

how will we you know, Jurassic Park without mosquito I don't care.

Ian Binns 28:38

mean, I can become a paleontologist so

Rachael Jackson 28:40

much and I'm, yeah,

Zack Jackson 28:42

that's right. You just be a biologist at that point.

Rachael Jackson 28:44

And I'm one of those people that doesn't get like a cute little mosquito bite, you know, like, oh, it itches. It's like it becomes a welts and it just like my whole like, is awful. So is there any purpose to mosquitoes that that you could shed light on? No, you people have brought

Dan Janies 29:01

up what you have is you know, why don't we just extinct them? Yeah, there there are ways to do it. I don't think we'd be successful mosquitoes

Zack Jackson 29:10

were very good at exterior Yeah.

Dan Janies 29:13

We're going to extinct something Yeah. But But the people would argue that you're taking away the food source for other other organisms like our friends in the bats. Also our friends the fish. Oh, can't

Rachael Jackson 29:26

we just make more flies then?

Dan Janies 29:33

Yeah, yeah. I'm one would, one would say look at Australia, every animal transportation or eradication attempt is calling right.

Zack Jackson 29:49

So I want to ask a question about the the variance I keep hearing if you and a question born out of ignorance because I keep hearing these acronyms thrown around and these different variants of places from the UK from South Africa from Brazil, there was that one in what the Netherlands that was coming through mink. And we were all worried about that one. And I, I hear people saying, Oh, don't worry, the vaccines still seems to be fairly effective against it. But here in Pennsylvania, we have one of the highest, the highest rates of transmission right now. We are, I think, in the top three worst states right now for new cases, which is super exciting. Can you shed some light on the, on some of these variants on the development of them? What do you have your eye on? in particular?

Dan Janies 30:47

Yeah, sure. So when we had those, you know, spikes. In late 2020, early 2021, there were a lot of cases, and every time the virus is replicating itself, it will make mistakes, right, and a lot of those mistakes and mutations will produce viral lineages that are not as successful in transmitting themselves as their, you know, their cousins. But some well, and so UK variant, not only was different by, by by 15 mutations, but also started to become predominant in the UK. And those are the two kind of Harbinger's are indicators of a successful variant. Right. And what's interesting about the UK variant, though, is the vaccines are still pretty effective against it. It's the South Africa variant, which shares some of the same mutations as the UK variant, and especially the Brazilian variant that shows some ability to not be neutralized by the first by the antibodies produced in your body by the first versions of the vaccines. Okay. However, remember, these vaccines were 90% effective against what we call the wild type, the original source COVID. So they had some ground to give, and they're still certainly effective. The number of breakthrough cases were people who were beyond two weeks since their second Pfizer materna shot for example. I think in the United States, something like 5000 total, people have been infected. But that's a very small number against, you know, 40,000 in you know, successful injections, right. So they do occur. Nobody ever said these vaccines were perfect. They're slightly less perfect against variants. But we do have to be vigilant. I mean, there are stories out of Brazil that they thought not vaccination, because they've had a terrible rollout. But in the city of Manassas in the Amazon, they thought that they had herd immunity just because 60% of the people have had Coronavirus, just because of transmission. And the variant emerged. And you know, it's not going away. This is just SARS Coronavirus, two in evolution doing its job. And all those people got reinfected by the Brazilian variants. So there was Yeah, so it's just been ravaging in Brazil. And we don't want that here. And I'm not surprised the UK variant got around the border was open, you could fly to London and back, especially post Brexit, right? The interesting thing here is to where there are a few cases of Brazilian variant, but they've been all travel cases and stopped. In South Africa variant, they see it occurs here in South Carolina. In other states, I looked at the original data, and it's not very good. So I'm worried and vigilant.

Rachael Jackson 33:46

And what does that mean? I'm sorry, what is what is not very good mean?

Dan Janies 33:49

They sequence the virus, and it was an incomplete sequence. And some of the mutations were not characterized. They had Say, say these things are characterized on 15 mutations, they and eight of them that they called it is good enough. So

Rachael Jackson 34:04

okay, so so it's not it's not that, Oh, no, the data is showing bad. It's saying the data was bad, the data was complete.

Dan Janies 34:12

So I, you know, I'll take that back tomorrow, if the if more data comes out, and it's all good. But these things going to other, there's also domestic variants occurring too. There's a variant thing called a California variant, there was a Ohio or Midwest variant. And we're watching all of those vaccines vaccine seemed to continue to work against those even though they're transmitting a lot. So our domestic variants are not quite as worrisome as these originally foreign variants in all these things have overlap. So to call them a, you know, a unique entity is is is a little bit strange. They're they're nested sets of mutations, so to speak.

Kendra Holt-Moore 34:56

I just wanted to follow up and ask Do we know Why the vaccines work against some of the variants and not others? Is that still just like totally mysterious to us? Or is there something that people are finding like this is why it's sort of effective.

Dan Janies 35:19

The key part of the spike protein that binds to yourself called the receptor binding domain. Those are sort of the business end of the virus, and the antibodies produced by the original vaccine against those are not as effective as against the new variants who have modified that receptor binding domain. So they're, they're those new variants are modifying their business and to get into your cells, even though you've been vaccinated.

Kendra Holt-Moore 35:54

Okay, that makes sense. So it's just that some mutations are like closer, they're in the

Zack Jackson 35:59

right spot

Kendra Holt-Moore 36:01

than others.

Dan Janies 36:02

Yeah. And they're in the right spot, they've hit on Yeah. There's, there's one called e 44k, which seems to open up a lot of infectious territory for the virus, then there's one called en 501, y that does the same. And in some of these things have to happen in sets, like, one has changed to compensate for the loss of fitness, or the virus might work a little bad if it only had that one. But if it has to works even better, so it's a it's a complicated choreography that the virus does through evolution.

Kendra Holt-Moore 36:41

Yeah, that makes sense. And then I guess, one more follow up, cuz I know, Rachel has question is, you know, if, if some of these variants are so different that the vaccines we have now aren't really doing it? Like, do you think that in the future, we will be able to formulate a vaccine that can cover all variants? Or are we going to end up with like multiple vaccines to cover different kinds of variants? And it'll just be like, extra shots every year?

Dan Janies 37:13

Yeah, there's a couple of questions there. So one is the first thing is the vaccines are good. They remain good and effective against most variants. The most important thing is even if you're reinfected, you have some immune protection. And the people who are reinfected the small fraction, they're reinfected are not going into the intensive care and are not dying. And so you may have a mild experience, rather than just being immune, I mean, immunologically naive, being re infected post inoculation, but you're not gonna die, right? I mean, you're not going to go to the hospital, we, so that that's the most important thing. And that's, that's the key message. So it's not game over with a variant. Yeah. But it's an ongoing game, right? And an ongoing struggle. And there's a couple of things going on, if we want to roll out, there's a window of opportunity to roll out more and more vaccinations before the virus continues to vary in a way that we can't combat. And then also back to the lab, right. studies are being done to reprint the vaccine, these vaccines are, especially the MMR and a vaccines, they're amazing. You basically just specify what kind of protein you're through what kind of mRNA you want to make, which is the instructions for your body to make the protein free reanna your antibodies to respond to. So they can just say, okay, we see you variant, we're printing you out, and we're going to put that in people now. You know. So that that's, that's just tremendous. I mean, we are, we are incrementally winning this arms race. If we do all things, right, if we prepare, and we do all our due diligence, and people listen.

Rachael Jackson 39:06

You can hear all of our cynicism, and that laugh.

Dan Janies 39:09

Yeah.

Kendra Holt-Moore 39:11

It is really cool, though. And like really, you know, we

Dan Janies 39:13

are much better prepared than we were six months ago. It's amazing. And now, I mean, I'll, I'll go on for just a minute more. There's talk of preparing mRNA technologies against cancer, preparing mRNA technologies against all kinds of other infectious agents. So this, although as terrible as this was the technological spin off, could be tremendous. And, you know, vaccines and infectious disease were, were not a well funded enterprise for a long time. And now we've learned our lesson the hard way it was in the 70s. I think the, you know, least the American Medical enterprise said, you know, cancer is where it's at, and we think and Excess diseases pretty much whipped. And that's completely not true.

Ian Binns 40:04

So is it because of the mRNA technology? Is that what makes the these vaccines so effective? I mean, you talked about like, even Historically, the level the percentage, what 90 to 95% effective is just mind boggling compared to historically with vaccines, Is it because of that technology? Well,

Dan Janies 40:26

bear in mind the the dino virus, which is also a relatively newly employed technology to were also very effective. So much of, you know, Johnson Johnson was one shot at 76%, I think we had the advantage of, at the time fighting one variant, whereas with influenza, there's multiple circulating variants all the time, it's been around, you know, for a long time, where's this source code to was newly emergent, it looked like one thing at the time, the decisions were being made. Whereas influenza is basically a committee decision. And if, nowadays, we we design a vaccine against four of them. And it's a lot of guesswork, but this was not guesswork. We, you know, the MRIs were printed against the stars COVID, two that came out of Wuhan. And so, so now they're gonna have to print them against the one coming out of South Africa, the one coming out of

Zack Jackson 41:22

Britain, I should point out for those at home, who are not super familiar with the way that vaccines have worked, and you can feel free to correct me, because I'm sure I'll be wrong. But the way that flu vaccines have worked is, you know, basically you they try to figure out ahead of time, which ones are going to be the dominant strains, and they have to isolate those strains, and then breed those strains in isolation and breed a variant that is less deadly, and then kill it, and then put it into egg whites. Yes, right. And like, that whole process takes months and months and months and tons of eggs for some reason it I think people still don't realize how, in some ways primitive the technology is, whereas the mRNA vaccine contains the the information for your body to do the creating of the thing that it wants to have resistance against. And so we have the information about the spike protein at the end, we tell your arm muscle, make that spike spike protein, your immune system goes, What is this mess? We need to kill this and sleep and then a couple of weeks later, it's like it's back again. All right, now we really need to remember this. And then whenever it sees the spike protein, chillin on a Coronavirus. It goes and eats it up. Yeah. And there's no eggs that have to be used.

Dan Janies 42:53

Excellent. With it, the one caveat that cell cultures now use for a lot of influenza vaccine production. So but i would i would bet money that, you know, we see I'm already vaccines for from influenza, in the near future to and other other viruses. So,

Rachael Jackson 43:15

you know, from a genetic standpoint, is there I am really trying to understand why this technology took until now to be used. Right? There's there's I think there's sort of maybe, maybe a general misconception in the overall populace that you know, this mRNA it's brand new, and we've we've never seen it before. And it's it's this newfangled thing when it's, there's this woman, Caitlin carico. And I might be mispronouncing her name, I have only read it, but she's been doing this for 30 years. So what, why not just a why now, but why not? Then? Like, what what has changed in the genetics fields? What has changed in epidemiology that has said, Sure, let's try it now.

Dan Janies 44:10

I think the crisis, and you know, the business model wasn't there before and the crisis drove for there be a business model for a rapidly developed vaccine that was tunable. And we put enough money into it that we didn't bank on just one technology. So nobody, nobody said it's mRNA or nothing. They they also did a dino virus technology. And yeah,

Rachael Jackson 44:34

what have we done this 2030 years ago? Like, what if because you're saying one of the statements you just made was that there's a potential now that we've seen the efficacy and that we've poured money into it that we might transition from the influenza vaccine that we all know and love and hate. And take a button that went out there to this completely new way of understanding it? Why wouldn't we have done that 20 years ago.

Dan Janies 45:02

conservatism, I mean, getting getting things approved is is hard. You know, vaccines are, you know, I'm not an expert in this field. But I understand that it's not a great business does take a lot of government influence and incentives. There's this agency called BARDA, VA, er, da, that that their role is to protect the country by making government investments in pharmaceutical development such that we are prepared for this. And I imagine agencies like that will become ever more important than how we run the country.

Ian Binns 45:36

So can I ask you something, just for clarification with the fact that we are at the very beginning of this when we realize we need to develop and produce and distribute vaccines to beat this thing? Where the idea is already there? Well, before this of mRNA technology is the way we should go in the future? Or was this a we need all hands on deck, whatever technology you have you better to use it?

Dan Janies 46:01

Yeah, the ladder in this case, but this was, you know, hopefully 100 year flood. All these technologies existed on paper, or, or even in the case of adenovirus vector technology. It was used in the gene therapy field, and there was a death of a patient. And so it got taken off the shelf. Because then that was recently resurrected. And in terms of vaccines.

Ian Binns 46:29

Okay, but mRNA technology? I'm sorry, you may have said earlier, what else is was it used for prior to this? Because obviously, it's existed, but for medical treatments, is it been used for other things,

Dan Janies 46:41

I'm not aware of any, I could be wrong about that. But we use it every day to make you need to transcribe our DNA and the proteins

Zack Jackson 46:50

you're doing right now. So

Rachael Jackson 46:55

what we've sort of had sort of a roundtable q&a today, which I really appreciate that you've been able to be here for Daniel and allowed us to have this. We're limited by what we know. So are there things that you want to tell us and all those listening, things that we just didn't even know to ask?

Dan Janies 47:19

Yeah, um, please, you know, seek a vaccine, if you're able, and you're your physician, you know, the real regulate Shin allows you to, you're taking taking advantage of tremendous technology that's not going to only, you know, make your health better, but everybody around you, that's what's amazing, though, no vaccines. So I would like to see this starting to be part of in part of good citizenship. And something that we touched upon in prep that we haven't really gotten to is the threat of misinformation. So I think also, it's a matter of good citizenship, not to Ford wonky things, you know, he is free country, you can say whatever you want, but, you know, don't I would like people to care about their reputations online, and then maybe try to check multiple sources and or ask questions and, and not only we having this done to us by foreign adversaries who, for whatever reason, want to slow down our rollout or want to diminish the quality of our vaccine, or the perceived quality of our vaccine so they can sell theirs. We're doing the starting to do it to ourselves with shame. So we're starting to misinformed ourselves for whatever reason,

Ian Binns 48:37

what have been some of your biggest surprises. I know you talked about this a little bit earlier, but over the past year, like things have just really surprised you about your field scientific community in general. The public I mean, just Yes,

Dan Janies 48:54

I would say three things. How big search COBie two was, versus its predecessors, MERS and SARS GAVI to our lack of ability to see what was happening, and we saw it in China, and we didn't believe it. China and Italy, in not take it seriously. That American arrogance, or however you want to put it, which I hated to say wouldn't have said it in 2019. But the fact that this wasn't going to happen to us was just surprising. And then, how bad it was and how we thought we and how we couldn't hold the fort, right? We thought we were through this and people are impatient and they relax their behaviors. And now that we've been having that vaccines, people don't want to accept them and we have this window of opportunity. Now a real window of opportunity. That's not not even you know, terrible. You're not in here vaccine, you can see your grandkids you can you know, you can circulate you can Do all the fun things you want. It's and people are not accepting it. And so all this is a, it's gonna be an ongoing struggle, I

Zack Jackson 50:07

think on multiple fronts. What's your most optimistic projection for what 2021 will look like for the world?

Dan Janies 50:16

I think it's gonna matter every year, it's gonna be patchy, you know, I think your IRA economy's already recovering, I think through tremendous stimulus, I don't know how long that's gonna last. So I'm digressing into a different field here, but but we have the, you know, we have the tools to get out of this thing, we just need to bear down and use them, their place in the world where it's gonna be bad for a long time. And Brazil has a terrible rollout. You know, these places that bought vaccines from China and Russia, may get them may not get them. You know, they may work fine, but they can't produce in the numbers that need to be produced. You know, we we definitely could roll out some of our surplus once we get to that point to to other countries, and we shall, but that's gonna, that's going to take time. So I think we're going to be okay. I think there's going to be pockets of the world that are not going to be okay. For a very long time.

Ian Binns 51:13

Didn't how does that play in for us?

Dan Janies 51:15

Don't Don't count on traveling up. Yeah, enjoy go to the Grand Canyon or something. You're not going to you're not going to Asia? Or or you're not going to the Olympics. You're not going to Europe anytime soon. You can't

Ian Binns 51:30

feel like the impact of international travel. Yeah, it's gonna last for a long time.

51:36

Yeah. Like,

Ian Binns 51:36

I just feel like it's potential for that for several years. Yeah.

Zack Jackson 51:41

But I can go to a Phillies game this summer. Sure. If you want it. Yeah,

Dan Janies 51:50

I think we'll get back to normal domestic activities, including school in the fall,

Zack Jackson 51:56

including drunken karaoke and a smoky bar.

Dan Janies 52:00

Just don't, I said this podcast. I think individually packaged peanuts are going to be

Zack Jackson 52:12

Oh, you should already see the variety and individually packaged communion kits. Yeah, they have just in the past year exploded in variety, and flavors and shapes and sizes. And we're all about that individual packaging now. Thank you again, thanks for taking time to, to spend with us to answer our questions to help illuminate some of our pockets of ignorance. I hope that things will really rolled out as as well as you. You make them seem at least here. You are not very optimistic for the rest of the world. But I hope you're wrong about that. So I doubt you are you've been right about everything so far.

Dan Janies 53:04

Well, thanks for having me. It's really important work that you're doing. So thanks very much.

Ian Binns 53:08

Thank you