“We will have to wait,” says Michel Cymes

Pfizer lab announced Monday, Nov.9 that its vaccine candidate was entering Phase 3 testing and was suddenly euphoria in stock markets around the world. But is it really reasonable? As a matter of fact, we are all impatient for a vaccine to arrive and save world health and economy, but whether it is this vaccine or another, we will have to avoid falling into euphoria. Because even though it is 90% effective as specified by the laboratory, its launch is not scheduled for next week.

Because phase 3 can last for years between 3 and 5 years usually. This phase is not only the one that will evaluate the real efficiency but also and above all the one that will allow the evaluation of what is called the balance of benefits and risks.

In other words, will this vaccine be effective enough to be able to stop the epidemic by protecting enough people and will it be safe enough not to cause side effects?

Use of messenger RNA

And you can imagine that in the most vaccine skeptical country in the world, this is not a detail. So we will have to be patient even if we imagine that, given the means put in place to find the vaccine, there will be an acceleration of the process, but an acceleration that must imperatively respect the stages, otherwise it will not be accepted by the population.

There could also be another concern, it is that the technique used is very original, it is also the first time it is used. It is the one of messenger RNA, I will try to explain it to you simply but, I want to tell you that this technique is fine. Because when I talk about the vaccine around me, I hear people say, “Ooh la la, I’m definitely not going to get the virus injected to avoid contracting the disease. This is obviously not the concept of this vaccination at all.

Everyone knows about DNA, the support of our genetic material, mRNA is also found in the cell nucleus but its role, as the name suggests, is to some extent convey messages for the realization of what makes us who we are: proteins.

No virus injection

And there you will see that there is creativity in the workshops. Let’s do the metaphor first, you will understand the rest better. Imagine that you are at war with another country’s army. You take a helmet from an enemy soldier, just the helmet, with no one inside, you have it done on a large scale, you give a copy to each of your soldiers and tell them “every time you see this helmet. A head, you don’t try to understand, you prevent him from entering “.

Do you follow me so far? Well, that’s exactly what we’re doing with this vaccine and the mRNA. You take this messenger RNA and ask it to produce, not the entire coronavirus but the little spikes that are on its surface. These spikes that allow it to attach itself to our cells.

Once done, the soldiers of our immune system will photograph these totally harmless little spikes and the day the real virus attempts to enter the body. the immune system recognizes its little spikes, the helmet in our example, and turns it long manu.

What’s interesting in the end is that, when said so, it looks completely safe. However we do not inject the virus or part of the virus in the body, and this can reassure many people. Now nothing is completely safe in medicine, hence the importance of not rushing and being patient.

Read more