Speaker 1: It's Wednesday, June eight. I'm Oscar Ramrrors from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America.
Speaker 1: Vaccine experts advising the FDA have endorsed a new COVID
Speaker 1: vaccine made by Novavax, saying that the shots benefits outweigh
Speaker 1: any risk associated with it. The vaccine will still need
Speaker 1: full approval before coming on the market, but it will
Speaker 1: be the first one available using more traditional protein based technology.
Speaker 1: Liz s Lee White, reporter at the Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 1: joins for what to know about its effectiveness and concerns.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, Liz, Thanks for having me. Well,
Speaker 1: let's talk about some interesting developments on the covid front.
Speaker 1: We could be getting another vaccine on the market. This
Speaker 1: one's by Novavax. There's a few little differences on this one,
Speaker 1: but what we just saw was vaccine experts advising the
Speaker 1: FDA basically endorsing this, saying that the benefits of this
Speaker 1: new vaccine outweigh some of the risks that have been
Speaker 1: associated with it so far. So tell us about what
Speaker 1: was going on with the FDA, and then we'll get
Speaker 1: into some details about this particular vaccine. As I mentioned,
Speaker 1: it's a little different from the ones that we have
Speaker 1: so far right now, Yeah, that's right. The f d
Speaker 1: A has an outside advisory group that looks at every
Speaker 1: you know, big vaccine like this, and the advisors today said,
Speaker 1: vote of twenty one to zero with one abstention, that
Speaker 1: they thought the vaccine safety profile looked good and they
Speaker 1: thought the effectiveness. The FDA review said that the vaccine
Speaker 1: was effective against COVID nineteen. So now there will be
Speaker 1: if the FDA itself and CDC sign off, another option
Speaker 1: on the table for people looking to get vaccinated. Now,
Speaker 1: this vaccine has also been in development for quite some time,
Speaker 1: but there was a lot of manufacturing related delays things
Speaker 1: like that that kind of kept it off the table
Speaker 1: a little bit longer. But this shot specifically, you know,
Speaker 1: the two main vaccines that we're using right now are
Speaker 1: the one by Fiser and the one by Maderna. Their
Speaker 1: m RNA vaccines have relatively newer technology on this side
Speaker 1: of things and is a more traditional protein based vaccine technology.
Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit about that. That's right. The
Speaker 1: platform that this vaccine uses is the same type that
Speaker 1: is used by the shingles vaccine or hepatitis d vaccine
Speaker 1: UM and it's been around since the around the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: and so you know, there's the thought that there are
Speaker 1: some folks out there who are more hesitant to get
Speaker 1: the relatively new m R and a technology who might
Speaker 1: be um you know, have been waiting around for novavax
Speaker 1: to come onto the scene. It works in a different way. Basically,
Speaker 1: instead of provoking the body to make its own coronavirus
Speaker 1: spike protein version, which then stimulates the NEN system, the
Speaker 1: protein based vaccine sends a bit like an own its
Speaker 1: own version of a coronavirus book by protein to the body,
Speaker 1: which stimulates the immune response. Yeah, and that's the hope, right.
Speaker 1: I guess there's a lot of people that could be
Speaker 1: allergic to some of the other vaccines too, and this
Speaker 1: could be an option for them too. Obviously, it's really
Speaker 1: just to provide more options on the on the table
Speaker 1: for all of this. We have about of the population
Speaker 1: that's fully vaccinated, which is pretty good. A lot of
Speaker 1: other people have already been infected with it too, so
Speaker 1: they have some of that natural immunity and those natural antibodies.
Speaker 1: So on that side of things, we're doing pretty good.
Speaker 1: But you're right, the big question would be will this
Speaker 1: convince others that have been hesitant to take it so far? Now,
Speaker 1: there were some cases of heart inflammation, some of the
Speaker 1: things that we heard associated with other vaccines that were
Speaker 1: also mixed in with this NOA vax one. So what
Speaker 1: did we hear on that front? Right? The FDA pointed
Speaker 1: to six what it called concerning cases of myocarditis or
Speaker 1: paracarditis cases that they found there was some reason to
Speaker 1: suggest that there may be some causality there with the vaccine,
Speaker 1: since that they were all, you know, within a short
Speaker 1: period of time after vaccination, and they were in young men,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. So the FDA kind of highlighted
Speaker 1: that to advisers and it's briefing documents and said, you know,
Speaker 1: we didn't see any of these signals with the mRNA
Speaker 1: vaccines ahead of time. We saw them after authorization when
Speaker 1: they were on the market and a ton of people
Speaker 1: are using them. So they talked about that today and
Speaker 1: they kind of said, well, you know, it's possible that
Speaker 1: as we see more people take novavax the rates will
Speaker 1: be pretty much the same as that the mRNA vaccines.
Speaker 1: And then also just a scientists, they really wanted to
Speaker 1: see more information on why this risk was coming about.
Speaker 1: Is it something about the spike routine, about COVID itself,
Speaker 1: or is there something to do with the platforms of
Speaker 1: the vaccine. That's still an unknown. What's important I think
Speaker 1: for people who just tune in occasionally to know it's
Speaker 1: it's still really rare to have the myocard itist events
Speaker 1: happen calling vaccination. And most of the cases have totally
Speaker 1: resolved and like everyone recovered, h I mean six cases,
Speaker 1: I mean out of it's got to be out of
Speaker 1: the thousands right out of their from their clinical trials. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned little cases, but that's an interesting notion.
Speaker 1: You know, who knows if it's the spike protein that's
Speaker 1: causing this heart inflammation. As we know throughout going through
Speaker 1: the pandemic, you know a lot of people that it
Speaker 1: affects everybody in different ways, but inflammation is one of
Speaker 1: those key things that really throws people's bodies for a loop.
Speaker 1: So that'd be interesting to see if they ever do
Speaker 1: find what that correlation could be. And you know, just
Speaker 1: to end on this right, some of the people that
Speaker 1: you did speak to for this, you know they did
Speaker 1: say still say, hey, you know, I'm glad this new
Speaker 1: one is coming up. Like the quote from the person
Speaker 1: who spoke to they said, you know, this is the
Speaker 1: first version of this vaccine, but to me, this is
Speaker 1: kind of the second version of this traditional technology. We've
Speaker 1: had some other stuff on the market. Now maybe I
Speaker 1: could be ready. So the hope is that's something new
Speaker 1: coming on board could spur some other people to still
Speaker 1: get vaccinated. Yeah, yeah, I've seen. I've gotten even more
Speaker 1: emails from readers saying the same thing since my story
Speaker 1: came out this morning. So we'll be interesting. There's not
Speaker 1: really good data on how many of those people are
Speaker 1: out there, but we'll see. All right, we'll see and
Speaker 1: we'll track this a long as it if it eventually
Speaker 1: gets approved. Liz s Lee White, reporter at the Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journal, thank you very much for joining us. Thanks
Speaker 1: for having me. I'm Oscar Ramrrors and this has been
Speaker 1: reopening America. Don't forget that. For today's big news stories,
Speaker 1: you can check me out in the Daily Dive podcast
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