Before we get started, it is time for an infamous Fireside Breakdowns “we got it wrong” moment! And by “infamous” I mean, “I don’t think this has every actually happened before, but I feel like when it happens it’s a big deal because I’m so invested in this show and getting things right that it feels like a huge event.” And be “we got it wrong,” this time we didn’t really get a fact wrong. As far as we can tell. But we definitely were completely blind to our own bias in a previous episode. Not acknowledging that would be doing a disservice to both our podcast and goals, and to you, the listener. 

 

The episode in question is Session 27: The Bare Minimum (Wage). While we certainly stand behind the data we presented in the show, the overall presentation had a distinct bias that we didn’t recognize until it was pointed out to us (in a roundabout way). We are not certain about the overall effects that bias had in our research and presentation, but after relistening to the show, it’s pretty apparent that we favor adjusting the minimum wage and were guided by that bias as we recorded. So, our apologies on that front. I think we are going to revisit the minimum wage discussion at a future date, and take greater pains to get a comprehensive understanding of the arguments we personally don’t agree with.

 

NOW THAT THAT’S OUT OF THE WAY. FOLKS. PEOPLE. LISTENERS. We are so excited. Why? Because we’re going to tallllk about. Myths. A couple categories, some myths specific to Covid-19, and then, more generally, some myths about vaccines. 

 

So now, when someone out there asks you to “make it make sense,” you should be a little better armed to do so. This probably won’t be our only episode on the matter, because there’s just SO. MUCH. to address. For this one, we’re going to start with some of the bigger, most prevalent ones.

MYTHS

Ok, so before we talk about the more nefarious, nuanced myths, we’re going to knock one of the easier ones down:

MYTH 1: MASKS CAN’T BLOCK COVID!

I’m not sure if this was the first myth I remember from the Covid era, but it certainly feels like it. It goes something like this: the Sars-Cov-2 virus is only 60-140 nanometres (.06 to .14 microns) in diameter. (Varga et al., 2020) However, the N95 mask is only rated to filter down to .3 microns. THUS the gaps in the weave of the N95 mask are so much larger than the covid virus molecules that the mask doesn’t stop anything! AHA! CONSPIRACY! CONDITIONING THE SHEEPLE!

And it basically continues from there.

 

So let’s dissect this, because there are a lot of problems with this particular myth. First, it is true the Coronavirus molecules are smaller than the gaps in the weave between the individual fibers in the N95 mask. But… that’s basically the only true part here. From that point on, most of the problem lies not with the masks, but with people’s basic understanding of how viruses and masks work.

 

In the first place, when we talk or cough or sneeze or breathe, we aren’t ejecting singular virus particles by themselves. They’re always, and I cannot stress this enough, always attached to or encapsulated by something else. Like what, you ask? Well, things like water, or mucus, or… other bodily fluids. We exhale a lot of things. The important thing to know about those exhalations is that whatever you’re exhaling, the particles are all larger than 1 micron. And N95 masks are very, very effective at filtering out things that big. (Litke, 2020)

 

In fact, due to the way these masks are rated, N95 masks are actually least effective at filtering out particles at .3 microns. That is to say, the particles that have the highest possibility of making it through the fibers of an N95 mask are those in around .3 microns in size. The efficacy of the N95 mask actually increases as the size of the particle diverges from that size. (Qian et al., 1998) This makes sense when the particle gets larger, because we can easily understand how large things don’t fit through small holes.

 

When we think about masks, we tend to think about them working like a pasta strainer. Pour in a mess of pasta and water. Water goes through the holes. Pasta doesn’t. Because pasta is bigger than holes. Easy peasy. But how in the world do these N95 masks get more efficient as the particle gets smaller?

Well, dear friends, allow me to introduce you to our dear friend… physics. The smaller things get, the weirder they act. And at the sizes we’re talking about, things are starting to get funky. For one, particles this small don’t travel in a straight line. They zig zag around erratically. This is called “Brownian motion.” Small particles move weird because there are so many small particles in the air. The smaller the particle gets, the more small particles there are, all the way down to the molecular level. (MIT, n.d.) At this small, small level, molecules are constantly bouncing off one another, causing them to move around and bounce and constantly change direction.

Imagine the most crowded space you’ve ever been in. A concert, or theme park… or Wal-Mart on Black Friday. Now imagine you need to get from where you are to a spot 100 ft in front of you. But it’s packed. Shoulder to shoulder. How do you get to your destination? You can try moving in a straight line, but you will constantly have to side step and move to get around people. So, even as you move toward your goal, you have to move a little away from it, or to the side, or back the other way, over and over and over until you finally get there.

That’s basically Brownian motion. Except small molecules don’t have brains to guide them to a direction, they just bounce off each other kinda like billiard balls. And they move in 3 dimensions. So the crowded Wal-Mart they are in isn’t just people shoulder to shoulder, but also standing on top of one another. And they’re all trying to get someplace. And none of them have any brains. So they’re just bouncing off each other like a giant, nightmarish mosh pit of brainless Holiday shoppers.

What’s this have to do with masks? Well that motion means that, instead of just shooting right through the gaps in a fabric, a molecule is much more likely to get tangled up in the fibers as it careens through the atmosphere and bounces around. For every bit of forward progress it makes, it is basically 4 times as likely to move laterally because it bounced off of something (It’s actually… like, infinitely more likely to move laterally but now we’re getting into integrations and calculus and I have no idea how to explain that concisely.) And when that molecule moves sideways… boom. Fiber. WHERE YOU GOING? NOWHERE. (Litke, 2020)

On top of that, there’s a second factor at play called electrostatic absorption. I’m going to try not to get toooooo deep into the physical properties of molecules here (mainly because I only remember so much of my high school chemistry classes) but suffice it to say, there are lots of forces at play between molecules floating through our atmosphere. These are generally called “weak nuclear forces” These are things like Dipole-Dipole or London Dispersion forces, and if you’re interested in the physics of chemicals you should read up and Van der Waals forces, but for our purposes, this means that individual molecules act like little bitty magnets to other molecules. Sometimes all the time, sometimes only momentarily. And, like magnets, the closer the molecules are together, the stronger the effect of these forces are on the molecules. The closer to magnets get together, the stronger they pull at each other. The same for molecules. (LibreTexts, 2020)

At the very small levels we’re talking about, this can cause the very tiny mucous and water molecules with the covid trapped inside to get drawn towards the molecules of the much larger mask fibers and trapped. Like… gravity. This is electrostatic absorption.

These probabilities and forces are at play for every single layer of a mask that the virus must pass through. So more layers tends to translate to a higher probability of the mask trapping the molecule.

OKAY, BUT THAT’S ONLY N95, the random stranger on Facebook is yelling at me. WHAT ABOUT OTHER MASKS LIKE COTTON. THOSE DON’T WORK!

Well. Yes and no. Obviously, these masks are not rated to be as effective as an N95 mask. However, they still function to reduce the chances of you exhaling and sending virus laden water molecules into the face of someone in front of you. The layers still act as a physical barrier to the larger particles you exhale, and will significantly both the number of particles that enter the area in front of you, and the distance which those particles travel. Their fibers still benefit from things like Brownian motion and electrostatic absorption. Just not to the same extent as N95 masks. And the more layers those cotton masks have, the more effective they are.

Masks are not about creating completely hermetically sealed and impervious environments. Getting sick is a numbers game. Especially with this virus, that spreads so easily and silently. The two week incubation period means that there’s a lot of time that you can be sick and contagious without actually knowing you’re sick. OH HEY MINI MYTH: Yes, asymptomatic spread is a thing. This isn’t up for debate anymore. For example, Nearly 40% of children ages 6 to 13 tested positive for COVID-19, but were asymptomatic, according to research from a Duke University study. While the children had no symptoms of COVID-19, they had the same viral load of SARS-CoV-2 in their nasal areas, meaning that asymptomatic children had the same capacity to spread the virus compared to others who had symptoms of COVID-19. (McCrimmon, 2020) That’s only one study, but there is SO MUCH evidence to show asymptomatic spread is a thing. The point of masks is that they simply reduce the chances of you accidentally spreading Covid to someone. They reduce the viral load you’re exposing any one person to in your interactions if you’re sick. This is important, because your body can handle certain amounts of exposure without getting sick. There are thresholds. The more virus you’re exposed to - the higher your viral load - the more likely you are to get sick, and the more likely you are to get severely sick. (Fajnzylber et al., 2020)

 

There’s a lot more that we could dive into about masks, but for now, suffice it to say that masks work and we should all be making a point of wearing them when we’re around others. Especially when we’re around people who have not been vaccinated.

MYTH 2: COVID SHOTS ARE NOT VACCINES

 

That the COVID shots are not actually vaccines. That they don’t meet the definition and so they don’t count. This one is actually pretty pervasive, probably because it ties back to a reliable source.

 

There is an accessible page on the CDC website called the Basics of Vaccines.  It says: “Vaccines contain the same germs that cause disease. (For example, measles vaccine contains measles virus) But they have been either killed or weakened to the point that they don’t make you sick. Some vaccines contain only a part of the disease germ.

 

A vaccine stimulates your immune system to produce antibodies, exactly like it would if you were exposed to the disease. After getting vaccinated, you develop immunity to that disease, without having to get the disease first.”

 

And, based on what we know of the current COVID vaccines, they don’t fit that definition. So case closed, right?  You know us better than that. We wouldn’t be talking about this if it was that simple. The problem with this myth is that the page we referenced above was last reviewed in March 2012. It’s 9 years old. And our explanations of - and the technology for - vaccines has changed a LOT in those 9 years. 

 

A CDC article dated 2018  defines a vaccine as: “A product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease.”  And, according to that definition the COVID vaccines definitely meet the (super duper vague) criteria.  

 

In fact, though, we have to look to an even NEWER CDC article to determine where the COVID vaccines fit into the spectrum of inoculations. The COVID vaccines many people around the world are receiving are a brand new type of immunization called an mRNA vaccine, which teaches our own cells to replicate a protein and then activates our immune cells to respond to it. This is the first time an mRNA vaccine has been approved for use, so it makes sense that there may be some misunderstanding about why it qualifies as a vaccine in the way that many people traditionally understand vaccines to function.

 

But that misunderstanding highlights a significant issue with how people react to science, especially during this pandemic.  So many people are used to a...static sort of science. We’ve spent so long reinforcing the idea that science is how we discover truth, and portraying scientific reports and studies as the final word, that we’ve built a culture that has forgotten how almost the WHOLE SCIENTIFIC METHOD works.  We’ve discarded the hypothesis and experiment parts of the process, expecting scientists to give us the right answer the first time, expecting all scientists to agree with that answer, and then expecting that answer to be the right answer for the rest of time.  

 

The definition of “vaccine” is not set in stone - it grows and changes with the technology and information we have available. And, that’s what we should expect from science. 

MYTH 3: THE VACCINE DISRUPTS REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH

 

Next, we need to talk about the concerns surrounding reproductive health. We heard so many overlapping myths about the vaccines that we weren’t actually able to break them out into distinct concepts. So we’re tackling them kind of simultaneously. 

 

Many people are reporting anecdotally that they are experiencing adverse effects to their reproductive health after receiving the vaccine, or even being around those who have received the vaccine.  These reports run the gamut from more intense menstrual cramps to miscarriage. Most of these anecdotes are posted and shared on social media, but online blog sites are serving as repeaters - and in some cases generators - of these stories as well.

 

One of the strongest myths we encountered stated that the rate of miscarriage among women who recieved the vaccine increased by 475% over the course of 7 weeks. This story was perpetuated by a site called the Daily Expose (totally reliable and trustworthy name, right??), which posted in a Breaking News Report on March 21, “we’re both saddened and shocked to bring you the latest update on the number of unborn and newborn children to lose their lives as a result of the mothers receiving one of the Covid-19 vaccines in the United Kingdom.”

“Just six weeks separate the first and seventh report, and the shocking increase in the number of women losing their unborn and newborn child in that time due to having either the Pfizer or AstraZeneca Covid vaccine is appalling.”

 

The article goes on to show screenshots of January 28 reports from the U.K.’s  Medicine and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) that show 4 reported spontaneous abortions after the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and 2 after the AstraZeneca vaccine.  Next, it shows screenshots from the same 2 companies indicating a total of 28 reports of miscarriage and 1 stillbirth. 

 

On its face, this article looks like a shocker. That’s a very significant increase in pregnancy losses. However, there are several factors this article ignores that are essential to understanding what might be happening here. 

 

FIRST, we have to take into account that in the U.K. around 1:4 recorded pregnancies end in miscarriage. That means, of all the pregnant women who received a vaccine inside of that time frame, it’s likely that 25% of them will experience a pregnancy loss. And, as the number of vaccinated women increases, the number of vaccinated women who experience pregnancy loss will also increase.

 

According to a representative from the MHRA, there is no pattern to suggest an elevated risk of miscarriage related to exposure to the COVID-19 vaccines in pregnancy. “The numbers of people who have received a 1st dose COVID-19 vaccination increased from 1,340,043 to 4,322,791 for the same time frame. At least half of these would be expected to be women, so the number of women of child-bearing age (taking the vaccine) is estimated to have increased from 665,424 to 2,146,866 for the same time frame.” (MHRA, 2021)

 

It sounds cold and cruel to say it out loud - I know - but those numbers are pretty consistent with what researchers expect to see regarding pregnancy loss in population groups that size. 

 

SECOND, a report of an adverse reaction is not evidence of an adverse reaction.  It simply means that the person reporting the reaction believes it may have been caused by the vaccine. Those reports still have to be investigated and validated by actual data. And, oftentimes, an undiagnosed illness or underlying condition is found to be the significant causative factor in the reaction. Unfortunately, in the case of pregnancy loss, so little is known about the causative factors that it can be nearly impossible to determine whether or not a vaccination served as the catalyst. (MHRA)

 

And that leads neatly into the next myth, which claims to be able to explain why the COVID vaccines would cause pregnancy loss and even infertility. 

 

While the EU was still in the testing phases for the vaccines, a now-infamous letter was written by two doctors insisting that testing be halted. They erroneously claimed that the vaccines contain a spike protein called syncytin-1 that is essential to the healthy formation of placental tissue in pregnant women. And that protein absolutely is essential - destruction of it would lead to infertility or miscarriage. But the claim that the mRNA Covid-19 vaccines either contain syncytin-1 or the message to generate antibodies to it is completely false.  (Shattering) The protein created and targeted by the current vaccines only shares a sequence of 4 amino acids with syncytin-1 (out of 538), which is not enough to cause confusion or autoimmunity problems.  The British Fertility Society has even issued guidance on the subject, saying “There is absolutely no evidence, and no theoretical reason, that any of the vaccines can affect the fertility of women or men.” It’s mistaken science.

 

And, mistaken science - or even just blatant misunderstanding of how the different systems of the body work - is to blame for the idea that the COVID vaccine would have any impact on the reproductive health of someone who is not vaccinated themselves. 

 

Remember: These vaccines do not actually contain any virus particles. None at all. They teach your body to make and destroy the same protein spike as the virus uses, but that process never leaves the cell. Once the protein spike is manufactured that mRNA is degraded and useless. 

 

Scientists and health professionals agree - there’s no scientifically reasonable mechanism by which the COVID vaccines could have any actual effect on anyone who is not personally vaccinated. Microbiologist and professor of molecular genetics Carolyn Coyne said in a fact check article by U.S.A. Today, "There is no sort of mechanism that would even exist that would suggest in any way (a vaccine) could be transferred... or lead to a sequence of events that would alter pregnancy or a menstrual cycle." 

MYTH 4: THE COVID VACCINES CONTAIN CELLS FROM ABORTED FETUSES

 

You know, while we’re on the subject of reproduction, we should take the time to address the myth that COVID vaccines contain cells from aborted fetuses. The myth we heard specifically noted a “white, male fetus” which is oddly specific, but not exactly true. In order to explain this well, we’re going to have to talk about something called “fetal cell lines”.  

 

A long long time ago, almost 60 years now, a woman in Sweden had an elective abortion at 12 weeks. But instead of disposing of the fetus in any of the typical ways, the tissue was sent to the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, and then a small portion of it was sent to a scientist named Leonard Hayflick.  Hayflick had recently discovered that human cells only divide a finite number of times before they die, and was in search of new and effective ways in which scientists could grow cells in a laboratory for research, vaccine production, and other important sciencey things. 

 

So, he took some of those cells, gave them everything they would need to grow, and waited.  Soon, he had a sheet of human cells to work with. He separated some of those off, repeated the process, and thus began developing a fetal cell line now called WI-38.  Cells from that line have been sent to laboratories all over the world, and reproduced for thousands of generations. They  have been used to research and develop world-changing vaccines for polio, measles, rubella, and hepatitis A. And, yes, that process has been repeated with other cell groupings from aborted fetuses, and used for the same purposes. 

 

For vaccines, these cells may be used in three different ways: development (identifying what works), confirmation (making sure it works) and production (producing the thing that worked). (Nebraska) The mRNA COVID vaccines - Pzifer and Moderna - only utilized fetal cell lines in the confirmation part of the process.  The Johnson and Johnson vaccine, because it uses a different method of vaccine delivery, utilized these cells in all the phases of its process. 

 

But, these cells do not get included in the final product. NONE of the vaccines injected into your body include any fetal tissue. Not from recently aborted fetuses, not from cell lines thousands of generations old. 

MYTH 5: THE VACCINE IS GOING TO CHANGE YOUR DNA

This one is one of my (Jon’s) favorites. These new fangled mRNA vaccines are going to get into your blood, and edit your DNA. The nefarious reasons for this particular gene editing conspiracy are all over the map. Some people think it’s to cause cancer, others think it’s to make people infertile in order to control the population

 

This goes back to something that’s actually really cool: we have a new vaccine technology! We discussed this a little bit earlier, but we’re going to take a moment here to do a bit of a deeper dive here because it’s important. This new class of vaccine are called “mRNA” vaccines. Duh, we’ve already said that a bunch. It stands for “Messenger RNA,” and this new style of vaccine has the potential to literally change the world over, and over, and over again. We’ve already seen it once with the Coronavirus vaccine. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. And what an iceberg.

These vaccines hold almost unlimited possibilities. Literally. This technology could be used to treat diseases like cystic fibrosis, cancer, and HIV. (Chen, 2021) And the possibilities don’t stop with treating “simple” illnesses. Some scientists think that mRNA therapeutics could reverse aging. And the ideas behind using mRNA to treat humans isn’t a new one. In fact, mRNA was first described in the 1960s. Study to use mRNA to elicit specific, controlled responses in the human body began a few decades later, in the early 1990s. This is one of the reasons that producing the COVID-19 vaccine happened so fast; the foundation to make it happen has been under construction for almost three decades now. (Shea, 2020) The pandemic just provided an incredible, horrible opportunity for the technology to shine.

 

But with new technology comes incomplete understandings of how that technology works. Lookin’ at you 5G. And nuclear energy. And... *sigh* solar energy. And wind energy. Basically a lot of misunderstandings about energy production in general. But I digress. A lot of people, smart, well intentioned people, have heard an incomplete story about how mRNA vaccines work, and it has caused a considerable amount of fear around them. So let’s get it straight, once and for all.

mRNA does nothing to your DNA. Nothing about the DNA of the vaccine recipient’s body changes whatsoever. The actual explanation for what happens when you are injected with an mRNA vaccine is actually way cooler to me.

So I think just about everyone understands that vaccines work by introducing a relatively harmless version of the illness to be treated into the body, in order to allow your body to train to fight off that illness. Sometimes that’s a dead virus, or denatured virus, or just part of a virus. The body looks at this horrible, threatening thing, and deploys the troops to destroy it. Those troops, having successfully vanquished the foe, then spread information to other troops about how to defeat that foe should they encounter it again. Like a well oiled, military machine.

But this has limitations. Sometimes there’s no way to produce a safe version of a virus. Sometimes the body doesn’t react to a partial pathogen the way it should, so there isn’t an immune response. It’s why we don’t have a vaccine for HIV yet. That virus just doesn’t lend itself to other methods of vaccine production.

Enter mRNA. Unlike previous vaccines, the mRNA itself isn’t actually a virus or bacteria. In fact, to your body, it doesn’t look like much of anything. Maybe a little shifty, but okay. Nothing worth calling out the troops to attack. Just a messenger, carry on. The little messenger then goes into your cell and transmits instructions to your cell. We’re not going to get into the nitty gritty, but basically your cells have the capacity to operate as little manufacturing plants for whatever they are told the body needs to produce. The mRNA messenger gives the cell its new orders. In this case, it tells the cell to start producing something called the “spike protein” from the Coronavirus. Your little cell manufacturing plant, ever dutiful, goes, “Okie doke coming right up!” and begins to manufacture these spike proteins. These spikes are what the coronavirus uses to attach itself to your cells and deliver its own instructions to the manufacturing plant in there. (Chen, 2021)

In fact, mRNA vaccines and viruses operate in essentially the same way. Viruses tell your cells to produce more viruses. Eventually, that cell gets so full of new viruses, that the cell ruptures, spewing new viruses to all the surrounding cells, which then implant instructions into those cells to make more viruses, which then burst and spread more virus, and so and and so forth until you feel completely horrible as your immune system works overtime to kill the invaders. The mRNA vaccine basically does the same thing, but instead of causing you to get truly ill, it basically causes your cells to kinda… grow a harmless part of the coronavirus. Your cells basically grow a spike protein, which the immune system then attacks because “HOLY CRAP THAT’S A VIRUS!” Remember, our cells don’t have… actual intelligence. They just react to what they’re built to react to. So your body attacks those new “viruses.” Then, after your immune system has actually defeated those spike proteins, it spreads the instructions so that all the troops in the immune system know how to target and destroy those spike proteins. (CDC, 2021)

When a real coronavirus enters the body, your immune system doesn’t really recognize it as a threat because of the coronavirus itself. But it sure recognizes those big bad spike proteins. It says, “HOLY CRAP SPIKE PROTEINS. WE SAW THAT BEFORE. GET ‘EM!” And hey presto, the spike proteins can no longer attach to your cells, meaning the coronavirus can’t deliver new instructions to your cellular manufacturing plant, meaning the virus can’t replicate, meaning you don’t get infected. Boom. Successful immunization. (Chen, 2021)

 

Now, at no point in this step does the vaccine enter the nucleus of your cells. People who took biology will remember that the nucleus is the part of your cell that actually carries DNA. The mRNA never goes to that part of the cell, meaning that it never has the opportunity to edit your DNA in any way. All it does is train your cell to make a harmless bit of the virus called the spike protein. That’s it. No gene splicing need apply. (CDC, 2021)

The only place that editing of any kind takes place is well before the vaccine enters your body. The mRNA technology used to develop these vaccines is highly flexible. Now that the technology has been developed, all that needs to happen to make a different treatment is to edit the genetic code in the vaccine. Or, to use our little troops and messenger metaphor, all you need to do is give the messenger a different message, and you have a whole new vaccine. IT’S SO COOL GUYS. SO COOL.

PLUG

 

GOOD NEWS

 

The US has committed to releasing its entire stock of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine to other countries as soon as it clears its final safety check. That’s 10 million already secured doses and another 50 million to be produced and distributed after that. The Biden Administration has indicated that we have enough vaccine resources in the US with the three vaccines that are already approved. In fact, nearly half of US adults have received at least one dose of the vaccine so far! That’s good news on its own.

 

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