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Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche PhD, is an internationally recognised vaccine developer having worked as the head of the Vaccine Development Office at the German Centre for Infection Research. This Interview was conducted by Dr. Philip McMillan (Vejon Health) [Mar 16, 2021]
Dr. Philip McMillan 1:07
Hello and good evening to everyone well afternoon depending on where you are in the world. Today we have a really, really important topic. And I have the pleasure of having with me, Geert Vanden Bossche from Belgium. The difference is that Geert is truly an international vaccine developer. And he’s here to share some very important and unique perspectives on where we are now in terms of the COVID pandemic. So, pleasure to have you here with me, Geert, how are you?
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 1:43
I’m fine. Thanks for having me, Philip.
Dr. Philip McMillan 1:45
Wonderful, wonderful. Listen, I mean, I think the first thing that we have to clarify is that we have to explain you are someone who is in the vaccine development business, so to speak, what has that background been like?
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 2:03
Well, I have a background essentially, in as far as vaccines are concerned in industry, as well as in the non for profit sector. So I have been working with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, GAVI, especially concentrating on vaccines for global health. And I’ve also been working with several different companies, vaccine companies developing of course, essentially, prophylactic vaccines. And my main focus of interest has always been in fact, the design of vaccines. So the the concept, how can we educate the immune system in ways that are to some extent more efficient than we do right now with our conventional vaccines?
Dr. Philip McMillan 2:54
Right. And so any effect this is the area of work, you’ve been in, you develop vaccines, you are as well working with the Ebola vaccine, as well, one of the really, really dangerous viruses we have out there in the world. How, how does that work? Is it is that easy to do?
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 3:12
Well, I was not, let’s be very clear. I was the Coordinator of the Ebola Program at GAVI. So we were interacting with several different vaccine companies that are developing Ebola vaccines, because it was important for GAVI, to make the right choice, the right vaccine, in order, you know, for this vaccine to be rolled out in the western African countries that had the severe Ebola crisis back a number of years ago. So that was not, let’s say, operational, practical or very, it was more a role of coordination, but of course, was also a role of assessing what would be the impact of using some of these vaccines in larger populations. And in an area where an epidemic is really is going on, because that’s a very particular and peculiar situation.
Dr. Philip McMillan 4:07
Yes. And so in fact, we’ve had so much success over the past 100 years with some very big breakthroughs with vaccines, smallpox, you know, measles, mumps, rubella, and polio. But we have struggled with other vaccines. It’s it without going into the details, because this is very difficult to get across. But is there a difference with how viruses operate that make some easier to get a vaccine for?
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 4:39
Well, I think we have Phillip essentially we need to distinguish, of course between what we call acute self limiting diseases. These are diseases that naturally come to an end in a sense that ultimately the individual will eliminate the pathogen of course, some people may die of course, which be very clear that those who survived will ultimately eliminate a pathogen, that is the vast majority of the vaccines we have been developing so far.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 5:08
You know, I don’t need to tell you that with other viruses, where we, we clearly see that they spread in a completely different way they spread, for example, from cell to cell, they tend to be more intracellular, they tend to develop chronic infections, where it’s, it’s not self limiting, it’s not acute self limiting is chronic, it is much more difficult. And that is, the reason primarily is that most of the vaccines we are developing are still antibody based vaccines.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 5:41
So we need these antibodies in the blood, or we need these antibodies to translate into the mucosa, for example, in order to capture the pathogen and to neutralize it. So some of the other works, I mean, they have a very insidious strategy, in the sense that they hide in cells that they can already at the mucosal barrier, penetrate the you know, immediately to cells, and then the cells may migrate, for example, to the to the lymph nodes, so they are shielded from the antibodies, and that makes it very, very difficult. Because we know that we can catch them to some extent in the blood.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 6:22
But what they do all the time is that they insert mutation and they escape, they fully escaped to our antibody responses. So that makes it way more difficult. It’s also the more or less the reason why also against cancer, etc. We have not been extremely successful with vaccines, as I would say standalone therapy.
Dr. Philip McMillan 6:42
Yeah, absolutely, yes. So it brings us into where we are with regards to COVID-19. Now, if we have 2020 vision at the moment, when we look back at the pandemic, and where we started from. And I’ve always said that, at the time, when the pandemic started, when it got from China, into Italy, into Europe into the UK, I thought that the only way that we couldn’t manage this is to lockdown and to prevent the spread of this apparant this very dangerous virus. We do have to stand back and see whether or not those decisions were correct. But as we said that hindsight is 2020. What would you say? Now, as we look back at the decisions we made, then were we about on the right track? Did we make any mistakes?
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 7:37
Well, frankly, speaking from the very beginning, and I mean, there is many people who can witness this or testify this, I always say that it was a bad idea to do lockdowns that would also affect the other people that we would prevent younger people from having contact from being exposed. Because remember, the big difference back then, was, of course, that we had a viral strain COVID strain that was circulating dominant rate.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 8:14
And that was not highly infectious as those that we are seeing right now. Of course, when a new virus gets into a population, it immediately gets to the folks that have, you know, weak immunity. And we know, we know this people this is to a large majority, of course, elderly people, people that have underlying diseases or otherwise immune suppressed, etc.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 8:41
And, of course, I mean, it was certainly the right thing to do to protect these people, and for them also to isolate. But we have to distinguish, frankly speaking, that is what we have not been doing between those people that have strong innate immunity. I mean, it’s not you cannot see when you see a person you don’t know this, but we know that young people have quite decent innate immune response and therefore, they are naturally protected and even more, I mean, if they get in contact with Coronavirus, it will boost their natural immunity.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 9:23
So, therefore, from the very beginning, I don’t I was I disapproved you know, the fact that schools got to close and and universities and that youngsters were preventing even from having contact with each other. That situation is of course completely different. If you look at vulnerable people, the virus is comes in the population there is no new you know humoral immunity there is no immunity at all in fact, so nobody has been in contact.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 9:53
So the answers they can rely on good innate immunity, elderly people I mean the innate immunity is waning, it gets increasingly replaced by antigen specific by specific immunity as people get older, so these people very, very clearly needed to be protected. But it has taken a lot of time before we understood, in fact, what how we how exactly the new response in the virus were interacting. So there has been a lot of confusion, a lot of mistakes made about mistakes, I mean, retrospectively. And that has also led to, you know, better control right from the beginning, I would say.
Dr. Philip McMillan 10:40
So, with that in mind, and where we are now, as we, as countries across the world have been drifting towards the Christmas period, there is still a rise in cases, countries had to try and lock down mass mandates and so on. But we all had the hope that vaccines would come and break the cycle. This is where clearly now from your expertise, you seem to have a different thought about how we should have been thinking about vaccines then and even now, what what is your perspective?
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 11:17
Well, my perspective was, and still is that if you if you go to war, you better make sure that you have the right weapon. And the weapon in itself can be an excellent weapon. And that is what I’m saying really about the current vaccines. I mean, it’s just brilliant people who have been making these vaccines in no time and with regulatory approval and everything.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 11:44
So the weapon in itself is excellent question is, is this the right weapon for the kinds of war that is going on right now? And there my answer is definitely no, because these are prophylactic vaccines. And prophylactic vaccines should typically not be administered to people who are exposed to high infectious pressure. So don’t forget, we are administering these vaccines in the heat of a pandemic.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 12:13
So in another words, while we are preparing our weapon, we are fully attacked by the virus, the virus is everywhere. So that is a very different scenario, from using such vaccines in a setting where the vaccine he is barely are not exposed to the virus. And I’m saying this because if you have a high infectious pressure, it’s so easy for the virus to jump from one person to the other.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 12:44
So if your immune response, however, is just mounting, as we see right now, with a number of people who get a first though they get it first, those antibodies are not fully mature titers are maybe not very high. So their immune response is suboptimal. But they are in the midst of this war, while they are mounting an immune response, they are fully attacked by by the virus. And every single time I mean, this is textbook knowledge every single time you have an immune response that is suboptimal. In the presence of an infection in the presence of a virus, that infected person, you are at risk for immune escape.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 13:27
So that means that the virus can escape to the immune response. And that is why I’m saying that these vaccines, I mean, in their own right are, of course, excellent, that to use them in the midst of in the midst of a pandemic, and do mass vaccination. Because then you provide within a very short period of time, the population with high antibody types, so the virus comes under enormous pressure.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 13:56
I mean, that that wouldn’t matter if you can eradicate the device, if you can prevent infection with these vaccines don’t prevent infection, they protect against disease, because we are just unfortunately, we look no further than the end of our nose, in a sense that hospitalization that’s all what counts, you know, getting people away from the hospital. But in the meantime, you’re not realizing that we give all the time during this pandemic, by our interventions, the opportunity to escape to the immune to the immune system.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 14:32
And that is, of course, a very, very, very dangerous thing, especially if we realize that these guys they only need 10 hours to replicate. So if you think that by making new vaccines and you new vaccines against the new infectious strains, we are going to catch up. It’s impossible to catch up. I mean, the virus is not going to wait till we have those vaccines ready. I mean, this thing continues. And as I was saying, the thing is, I mean, if if you do this in the midst of a pandemic, that is, that is an enormous problem. These vaccines are excellent, but they are not made for administration to millions of people in the midst in the heat of a pandemic. So that is my thought.
Dr. Philip McMillan 15:22
Is this equivalent, then because you mentioned this in your paper, it is equivalent to using either a partial dose of antibiotics in an anti-microbial or in a bacterial infection, where you then produce superbugs, is this the kind of example that you’re alluding to?
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 15:42
Well, that is a very good parallel, it’s also the parallel I’m using actually in the paper we just posted on LinkedIn, which, you know, should be so open for everybody. I mean, it’s pure science, because as you were pointing out, the thing is, the rule is very simple. I mean, same with antibiotics. Either the antibiotics do not match very well with the bug that’s not good.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 16:08
That’s why we are making anti bio grams, you know, to first identify which, which is this germ, and then we choose the antibiotics, we need to have a very good match. Otherwise, it could be resistance. So when I compare this to the current situation, do we have a good match with our antibodies? No, at this point in time, we don’t have a good match anymore, because we have this kind of like, almost heterologous variants.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 16:36
So that differs from the original strain. So the match isn’t very good anymore. And hence, we see people are still protected, but they are already shedding the virus. So that is one thing. The other thing is the quantity, of course, you tell people, you know, you take your antibiotics, according to the prescription, please don’t. As soon as you feel well, that doesn’t mean that that you can stop the antibiotics saying here, and I give just one example.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 17:02
If you know give people just like one dose, I mean, they are in the process of mounting the antibodies, the antibodies still need to fully mature, etc. So this isn’t suboptimal situation, we are putting them in a suboptimal situation with regard to their immune protection. And on the other end, they are in the midst of the war, they are fully attacked by all, you know, by all these kinds of highly infectious variants. So I mean, it’s very clear that this is driving immune escape.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 17:34
And we ultimately drive resistance to the vaccines. So my point is, yes, Philip is very similar. There is one difference, the virus needs living cells. I mean, if you’re driving immune escape, but the guy has no chance to jump on somebody else, who cares? This situation is now different. Because we are in the midst of a war, we there is a high infectious pressure. So the likelihood that an immune escape immediately finds another living cell, that means another host is very, very high. It’s per definition. It’s the definition almost of a pandemic.
Dr. Philip McMillan 18:12
Yeah. So it raises a simple question that somebody has put in front of us here, which is this perfectly common sense. What do we do?
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 18:25
That question is very easy. I mean, we need we need to do a better job, when we are confronted with situations that seem very dramatic, like, you know, an epidemic, our generation has not, you know, been living in times where there are epidemics or pandemics. And so we immediately take action and and jump on the beast, with the tools we have instead of analyzing what is really going on.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 19:00
And one thing that I thought was extremely interesting, was, and it’s something that was not really understood, we know that a number of people are asymptomatically infected, so they are infected, but they don’t develop severe symptoms of course that they can have some mild symptoms of respiratory disease, whatever.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 19:22
So the question is, what exactly happens with those folks that they can eliminate the virus, they eliminate the virus, they will transmit it, they will they will shed it for like a week or so. And then they eliminate this. Or you could say of course, we know that antibodies eliminate, oh, wait a minute, the antibodies come later.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 19:44
You have first the search of, you know, shedding of the virus, and it’s only afterwards that you see, you know, a moderate and short lived raise of antibodies, so the antibodies cannot be responsible for elimination of the virus. So what is responsible for elimination of the virus?
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 20:04
Luckily enough, we have a number of brilliant scientists, independent brilliant scientists that have now increasingly been showing and there is increasing evidence that what in fact is happening is that NK cells are taking care of virus. So so NK cells that the virus gets into into these epithelial cells and starts to replicate, but NK cells get activated, and they will kill, they will kill the cell, you know, in which the virus tries to replicate. So I was saying that the virus needs to rely on a living cell. So you kill that cell, it’s gone. It’s all over. So what is the solution, we have the solution in in the pathogenesis, because some people eliminate it.
Dr. Philip McMillan 20:52
I just wanted to clarify, because when you said NK cells, somebody may not quite know what you mean. So you mean, none killer cells? So it’s a specific group of white blood cells.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 21:03
Natural killer cells.
Dr. Philip McMillan 21:04
Natural killer cells. Sorry, yes, yes, natural killer cells, a special group of white blood cells that go and take out the virally infected cells? Yeah, let’s go. Yes. So yes, you’re right, is that because I have seen from a clinical perspective, a very old patients who you would expect to be overwhelmed by the virus, and they have a few symptoms, and then they’re okay, so the, the body does manage to get rid of it in some cases. And so it raises the point that I’ve always been saying is that we haven’t spent enough time understanding how the virus impacts the body, and understanding how the pandemic then will impact the world, we’ve spent all of our time just going for solutions. Has that been a mistake?
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 21:50
Of course, this has been the, you know, the most the most important mistake I think, I’m not sure many people and I was part of them. So in all modesty, I was part of them. Not sure whether many people understand how a natural pandemic develops, and why we have this first wave, we have the second wave and we have this third wave and and I mean, these waves of disease and mortality and morbidity, they shift from one population to another so um, say for example, the second wave This was typically also the case with influenza or World War One, when basically more soldiers, young people, you know, died in the trenches of influenza, then then you know, from, from injuries or whatever.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 22:40
So, firstly, elderly, I mean, weak immune system, etc, then it gets to the the wave of morbidity and mortality to the younger people. And then it gets back to people who have, you know, have antibodies. So, we have to understand this first, oh, how does this come? Why all of a sudden, is this this, this wave of validity and mortality shift? For example, why are the three waves? How do we, how do we explain this? And also, how does it come that some people are naturally protected and others are not? What all these mechanisms, what are these molecular mechanisms, because if you make vaccines and all these things, at the end of the day, this is going to interact at the molecular level.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 23:29
And we have not been understanding this, I was just explaining, we don’t understand our weapon, because we don’t understand that prophylactic vaccines should not be used in the midst of an epidemic. And we don’t understand exactly what the virus is doing. So we go to a war, and we don’t know, our enemy, we don’t understand the strategy of our enemy. And we don’t know how our weapon works. I mean, how is how is that gonna go? We have fundamental problem to begin with.
Dr. Philip McMillan 24:00
I understand and I completely accept that. But at the same time, I am still thinking that if the government’s don’t respond in some way, because they have to be seen to be doing something. What they seem to be in a lose lose situation, if they don’t do anything, they’re going to be criticized, and if they do do something, they’re going to be criticized. Is that a fair statement to make?
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 24:26
I don’t think so. What was this oath of what’s the name of the guy, Hippocrates. You know?
Dr. Philip McMillan 24:35
The first do no harm.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 24:37
Okay. Well, I mean, it wouldn’t matters if you if you start vaccinating people and even it doesn’t work. The problem is that we induce a long lived antibody response. And as a matter of fact, we know I mean, that is not my knowledge is all published problem is that we we fail to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 25:00
Fact is that his long lived antibodies which have high specificity, of course, for the for the for the virus, they outcompete our natural antibodies, because they’re natural antibodies, they have a very broad spectrum but they have low affinity, right? And so by doing this, even if your antibodies don’t work anymore, because there is resistance or the you know that the strains or too different from the original strain, we still this antibody specific antibody will still continue to outcompete your natural antibodies.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 25:33
And that is a huge problem because I was saying just a few minutes ago, these natural antibodies, they provide you with broad protection. This protection is yes, it is variant nonspecific, doesn’t matter what variant you get, it doesn’t even matter what type of Coronavirus is coming in, they will protect you. Unless of course, you suppress his level of innate immunity. Or it is, for example, out competed by long lived specific antibodies.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 26:06
And so it’s not like okay, you know, yo, yo, you missed it. Okay, let’s try again. No, you did some harm. I mean, this is different from drugs. Immunizing somebody is installing a new software on your computer. Don’t forget, I mean, these antibodies, they will be recalled every single time you’re encountering a Coronavirus, right. I mean, you cannot just erase this. So this is very serious. This is very serious.
Dr. Philip McMillan 26:35
So this is an important point, because when I was looking at some of the research around the challenges that they faced with the initial SARS, called the first epidemic, and they tried to develop the vaccines. One of the things they found certainly when they tested it on the ferrets was that when they expose them to a Coronavirus, again, they got a very severe response to it. Is this what you’re saying that we’re putting ourselves in a position where we can then have much more severe disease, even to viruses that should normally be quite benign?
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 27:14
Well, you know, you see all my passion and my conviction. But I mean, I’ve been the last to criticize the vaccines, in terms of would they in some regard could in some regard be unsafe, because you know, you would have even this exacerbation of disease due to antibodies that doesn’t match very well with the Coronavirus are exposed to etc. I know there is there’s reports on this and there is a lot of, you know, serious thoughts about this.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 27:50
But I think what we are talking about right now, the really the the epidemic or the pandemic problem of having a population that is at no point during the pandemic. And to large extent due to our intervention has not a strong immune response. I mean, this is already serious enough this is this is more concerning than one or the other adverse event that could maybe elicited. I’m not downplaying it. But that could maybe be elicited, because people have antibodies that do no longer match very well with the strain, they were or with the strain they are exposed to.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 28:37
And therefore, you know, they build a complex, they don’t neutralize a virus, they build a complex and this complex could maybe even enhance viral entry into susceptible cells and hence lead to exacerbation of disease. I mean, this may be possible, but the problem I’m talking about is a global a global problem, it’s not an individual getting an adverse event, it’s a global problem of you know, making this virus increasingly infectious because we leave it all the time, a chance, an opportunity to escape the immune system.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 29:12
And to drive this so, to whip this up, you know, up to a level where the virus is so infectious that we can even no longer control it because I mean, these highly infectious strains, people, some people think, oh, the virus is going to calm down and it will insert a number of mutations, you know, just to be gentle and kind with us. That’s not gonna happen, I mean, this highly infectious range remain is it is not going to be spontaneous mutations that all of a sudden would become, you know, what would make these fighters again harmless, because such a virus would have a competitive disadvantage could no low could not be dominant anymore. So that’s not going to happen. So we are talking about a very, very, very serious problem.
Dr. Philip McMillan 29:58
So it I’ve seen the question many times, and quite frankly, I get asked the questions, we’re coming to a point where people are going to have to take these vaccines. So that looks as though it’s the reality either in the context of work, or in the context of travel. Based on what you’re saying they’re in a lose lose situation. What does what does this mean?
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 30:26
Well, what does this mean? It’s very clear, it’s very clear what this is gonna mean. So let’s consider the consequences of this, both at the population level and at an individual level, because I would well understand it for the population is maybe not the best thing to do. But you know, on an individual level, it’s still okay. Yeah, then it’s not an easy, that’s an easy question. But as a matter of fact, it’s exactly the opposite. Well, it’s not the opposite.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 30:54
It is detrimental both on a population level, as on an individual level, and I’m telling you why I think the population level I explain you, we are increasingly facing highly infectious strains that already right now, we cannot control because basically, what we are doing is that we are turning, when we vaccinate somebody, we are turning this person in a potential asymptomatic carrier that is shedding the virus, but at an individual level, I just told you that if you have these antibodies, and at some point, and I’m sure this will, if people can challenge me on this, but, you know, reality will prove it. I think we are very close to vaccine resistance right now.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 31:38
And it’s not for nothing, that already people start developing, you know, new vaccines against the strains, etc. But what I was saying is that, okay, if you miss this issue, okay, you could say nothing has happened, no, you all at the same time losing the most precious part of your immune system that you could ever imagine. And that is your innate immune system, because the innate antibodies, the natural antibodies, the secondary IGMs will be out competed by this antigen specific antibodies for binding to the virus, and there will be long lived that is a long lived suppression and you lose every protection against any viral variant or Coronavirus, variant, etc.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 32:29
So this means that you are left just with no single immune response with your you know, you it’s gone, your immune immunity has become nil, it’s all gone, the antibodies don’t work anymore and your your innate immunity has been completely bypassed.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 32:48
And this and this while highly infectious strains are circulating. So, I mean, if that isn’t clear enough, I really don’t get it. And people please do read my, my, you know, what I posted, because it’s pure science, pure science. And and as everybody knows, I’m a highly passionate vaccine guy. Right? And, and I’ve no criticism on the vaccines. But please use the right vaccine at the right place and don’t use it in the heat of a pandemic, or millions of millions of people.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 33:23
We are going to pay a huge price for this and are becoming emotional because I’m thinking of my children of the younger generation. I mean, it’s just impossible what we are doing. We don’t understand the pandemic. We have been, we have been terming it in an artificial pandemic, who can explain who can explain where all of a sudden, all these highly infectious thrain come from. Nobody can explain this. I can explain it.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 33:50
But we have not been seeing this. During previous pandemics during natural pandemics. We have not been seen it because at every single time there was the immunity was low enough so that the virus didn’t need to escape. So back at the end of the pandemic, when things calm down, and it was herd immunity it was still the same virus recirculating.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 34:13
What we are now doing is that we are really chasing this virus, and it becomes all you know, increasingly infectious. And I mean, this is just a situation that is completely completely, completely out of control. So it’s also we we are now getting plenty of asymptomatic shedders you know people who shed the virus, because if you’re vaccinated or they have even antibodies from previous disease, they can no longer control this highly infectious variants.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 34:45
So how does that come? Does anybody still understand the curves? I see all these top scientists looking at these curves that these waves like somebody else is looking at the currency rates at the stock market. All they can say is oh, it goes up, it’s it’s stabilizing, may go down may go up, etc. I mean, that is not science, they don’t have any clue, they don’t even know whether the curve is gonna go up exponentially, or whether it’s gonna go down or whatever, they’re completely lost. And that is extremely scary. That has been the point where I said, okay guy, you have, you have to analyze you have to, but you know, these people are not listening, that is the problem.
Dr. Philip McMillan 35:28
So you are in effect, putting your reputation on the line, because you feel so passionately about this, because I guarantee you that no government, no, no health system is going to want to hear what you’re saying you’re in effect, almost giving fuel to the fire for an anti vaxxer, who does not want the vaccine?
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 35:53
No, no, well, no, no, not yet. Because I i’ve clearly also addressed some emails from anti vaxxers. I mean, I’m not interested, but I’m clearly telling them that you know, it at this point, at this point, it’s so irrelevant, you know, whether you’re a pro vaxxer or an anti vaxxer, etc. It is about the science, it’s about, it’s about humanity, right. I mean, let’s, let’s not lose our time now with you know, criticizing people or, you know, I mean, anti vaxxer Okay, if you’re not an anti vaxxer, you could be a stalker, you could be you know, we like to stigmatize because if you stigmatize people, you don’t need to bother about them anymore. Oh, this guy’s an anti vaxxer. Okay. I mean, he’s out of the scope. Oh, he’s a stalker. He’s out of the scope.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 36:46
I mean, that what is the discussion that is completely irrelevant at this point? It is about humanity. And, of course, passion, of course. I mean, it’s about it’s about your children. It’s your family. It’s my family. It’s everyone. Right. And it’s simply for me, I put everything at stake, because I’ve done my homework. Right. And this is simply a moral obligation, a moral obligation. Right.
Dr. Philip McMillan 37:14
Wow. Wow. I mean, I, there’s very little one can say, as I said, he, when you position that you are in the business of developing vaccines, and helping societies protect against infections through the use of vaccines, and in this circumstance, you’re saying, hold it, we’re doing the wrong thing here. It’s very difficult to not listened to that. That’s the that’s the truth?
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 37:45
Well, if the answer is very easy, I mean, this is human behavior. You know, we, if we have if we are, you know, having panic, we do something, and we try to make ourselves believe that it is the right thing to do. Till you know, there is complete chaos, and there is a complete disaster. And then people say, well, you know, I mean, yeah, politicians will probably say, you know, we have been advised by the scientists and scientists, you know, will maybe point to somebody else, but this is now the situation.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 38:23
I’m asking every single scientists to scrutinize, to look at what I am writing to do to do the science and to study exactly the, I call these the immune pathogenesis of the disease. And because, you know, I mean, I like I like people to do to do their homework, and if the science is wrong, you know, if I’m proven wrong, I will admit it. But I can tell you, I’m not putting my career, my reputation at stake, I would not do this, whether when I would not be 200%, you know, convinced and it’s not about me, not about me at all.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 39:02
It’s about humanity. People don’t understand what is currently going on. And we have an obligation to explain this. And I posted my paper on LinkedIn, and I invite all independent scientists, please to look at it because this can be easily understood by microbiologist, immunologist, geneticists, you know, plenty, you know, biochemist, et cetera, et cetera, all the biologists, all these people who have elementary knowledge, it’s not rocket science, elementary knowledge of biology should be able to understand this. And I mean, I can only appeal to these people, you know, to stand up as independent scientists and to voice you know, their opinion.
Dr. Philip McMillan 39:44
Yes, yes. Yes. I mean, that was a long point that somebody put on about the innate immune response over the falls over reacting of the innate immune response leading to detrimental effects on other in other coronaviruses So, I think you’ve expressed this so well accurate is that I think that just hearing your explanation, the passion, the focus on the science, I think that that’s as much as you can do. I think that I don’t even want to say any more, because I don’t want to lose that passion that you have just expressed, how much you are doing in terms of trying to see if you can make a difference with regards to the impact that we are having in this pandemic.
Philip McMillan 40:32
You know, we really, really appreciate that Geert. We really, really appreciate that. I hope enough people shares this listens to it, certainly because I’m connected with a lot of scientists, please connect with Geert. Take a look at his paper and and see what you think. And as you said, let’s make decisions based on science. That’s the best that we can do at this point. Wonderful. Just stay on the line there. We’re just going to close off now Geert so thank you again very, very much Geert, and I hope maybe we can speak again in the near future to expand a little bit further on what you have said.
Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche 41:13
Thanks Philip for having me on.
Dr. Philip McMillan 41:14
Wonderful.
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