Ep. 6 — How the COVID-19 vaccines will change our approach to future pxandemics / Dr. Robert Pearl, Author, Uncaring: How the Culture of Medicine Kills Doctors and Patients.
Apr 22, 2021•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast Episode description
The extraordinary scientific and technological innovations around the COVID-19 vaccines have enabled the U.S. government and governments around the world to deploy multiple vaccines against the lethal virus — allowing a gradual reopening of society and return to a new normal. What do we need to do to defeat COVID-19 once and for all and how can technology be used to prevent such devastating pandemics in the future? It’s always a wake-up call to speak with Dr. Robert Pearl, author of a new book out this spring called “Uncaring: How the Culture of Medicine Kills Doctors and Patients.” Dr. Pearl also hosts two popular podcasts, Fixing Healthcare and Coronavirus: The Truth.
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Chitra Ragavan:
The extraordinary scientific and technological innovations around the COVID-19 vaccines, have enabled the U.S. Government and governments around the world to deploy multiple vaccines against the lethal virus, allowing a gradual reopening of society and return to a new normal. Hello, everyone I'm Chitra Ragavan and this is Techtopia. What do we need to do to defeat COVID-19 once and for all? And how can technology be used to prevent such devastating pandemics in the future? Here to answer those questions and more is Dr. Robert Pearl. He's the author of a new book out this Spring called Uncaring: How the Culture of Medicine Kills Doctors and Patients. Dr. Pearl hosts, the popular podcasts, Fixing Healthcare and Coronavirus, The Truth. Dr. Pearl, welcome to Techtopia.
Robert Pearl:
Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here.
Chitra Ragavan:
It seems as if we're finally seeing the light at the end of a very dark tunnel with these multiple vaccines being given emergency authorization, more and more shots given in arms, schools starting to reopen, businesses reopening. What's your assessment of where we are today compared to even a month ago, here in the U.S. and what are we likely to see in coming days, weeks, and months?
Robert Pearl:
Great question. Let me go back to one thing that you said earlier. I want listeners to know that all the profits from the book Uncaring: How the Culture of Medicine Kills Doctors and Patients, goes to a charity, Doctors without Borders, so if they purchase the book, they actually are going to be contributing to some global healthcare delivery. Thank you. In terms of the vaccine, this is a massive breakthrough. In "The Coronavirus: The Truth" podcast that Jeremy Corr and I do, I talk about chess games, an opening set of moves that the United States totally failed at. We did insufficient amount to limit the spread, to provide education, to have a national strategy, we could spend hours talking about the failures. But the middle game that we're in right now, is one of the vaccine and it's absolutely brilliant, particularly the messenger RNA vaccines.
Robert Pearl:
I know that a lot of your listeners are in the tech world, CEOs of companies, so to help to provide context, the human body or the viral organism has genetic material, and that material directs the body to create proteins. And between the genetic material in humans inside the nucleus and the actual proteins that are created, there is a code sent out. It's called messenger. Think about that, the message is trotting out there with the code and RNA for the ribonucleic acid. And although it's been thought of for a long time, that we could take this RNA, this messenger RNA, and inject it into people, get their bodies to produce the proteins that are responsible for the infection, the proteins that are specific to the virus or the bacteria for that matter, and then get our bodies to create an immune response, it had never been done. Despite two decades of trying to make it work.
Robert Pearl:
It's why it was a long shot. And I wrote a piece in August questioning whether we'd be successful. And that was only seven months ago, and today 95% efficacy, tremendous safety,
