Seth Berkley : The quest for the coronavirus vaccine

Seth Berkley·TED Connects
The quest for the coronavirus vaccine
Summary
The speaker was introduced as a vaccine visionary. He and his team contributed to produce vaccines when Ebola outbroke in Africa in 2014 to 2015.

Ebola has a high fatality disease. It’s about 80 percent. Coronavirus fatality is lower than Ebola, though, it’s spreading all over the world. The world now wants medicines and vaccines.

Accordingly, we have to understand what a vaccine is.
A vaccine is, you know, made from pathogens first. By injecting it into our bodies, we are pre-immunized. Its antibody can recognize a specific virus, neutralize, and protect our babies.

However, there are side effects, 1) there are people who don’t want to inject it, 2) and this time, the coronavirus virus is changing quickly. It means that it’s a high possibility that it’s different between this virus and the next one. It means that if you are injected, you are safe this time, but you are not safe next time. 3) Is it necessary for asymptomatic people? 4)
For many people, coronavirus is mild. 5)
A vaccine is expensive thus we don’t know how many vaccines we need. 6)
And then, in Japan, there is another vaccine that is said that it might be better for coronavirus, though, it’s made for another severe disease to protect children. If we use it, we can’t help children. 7)

In fact, it’s more difficult to produce vaccines than how to use it. Thus the speaker might say that he is optimistic many times.

Now, what we can do is to practice social distancing, to wash our hands, and not to touch our face. The most important things are to stop the chain of transmission to protect not only elderly people but also health workers in hospitals. We want to wear a mask, though, give our masks for health workers and patients, please.

Words in this story
asymptomatic / a(ei) symp to mat ic / without symptoms