With Dr. Abawi
Yasir Qadhi – The COVID Vaccine Between Fiqh and Medicine – Ask Shaykh YQ #143
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Salam aleikum wa rahmatullah wa barakato. Al hamdu. Lillah wa Salatu. Salam ala rasulillah, who Allah Allah, He will be he woman while I'm about today's q&a is going to be a very special a very important, a very relevant, very exciting q&a, in fact, is going to be just one question. And that is about the vaccine. So Pamela, we have been under locked down for the last 1011 months. You know, it was a lot of other that when the COVID crisis was just beginning, I had a trip plan, do you know to to under to Spain, actually, you see the the college behind me, that's why it's there. And the flights began shutting down while we were outside. As Pamela we began to panic, what's going to
happen, I was on one of the very last flights back into the country after they shut down the fights for a while. And then as you know, complete lockdown, like even shopping, we had only a window of a period of time, the masjid was completely locked down. And we're wondering, you know, when is this going to finish? When will we see, you know, some cure and whatnot, and hamdulillah thing, but Hamdulillah, after all of these months, there is inshallah with some light at the end of the tunnel, there are not just one, but maybe even two, maybe even three potential vaccines that are already being made available across Europe, and even in America, amongst healthcare workers, it has begun.
But now now that we have this light at the end of the tunnel, legitimately people are questioning is this fine? Is this Islamic? Are there any problems. And of course, we love to, you know, forward messages and WhatsApp videos and you know,
people that we don't know who they are, but they just forwarding messages and whatnot. And that raises a subculture, you know, of conspiracy theories. And the problem with conspiracy theories is that they're so ludicrous, except the very few that are actually valid, because there are indeed some strange things that happen. And sometimes there are entities that are behind it. And so it's very difficult to dismiss any theory just because it's bizarre. At the same time, you know, we are told to be an intelligent and a cautious nation, we don't just fall prey to rumor mongering, we don't just, you know, open up the door to any cleaner will call any type of hearsay. And so we have
to have a very intelligent conversation about the realities of this medication. So what I thought we do today, inshallah, to Allah is that we have a very special guest. But before we get to him, I wanted to just very briefly remind us I have given a longer lecture about this, but very briefly remind us that overall, not just about this particular vaccine, but overall, what is the Islamic philosophy about medication? What does the Shetty I say about taking cures for the diseases that we have? And of course, in a nutshell, as our Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said in the beautiful Hadith, that there is not a single disease that Allah azzawajal, you know, has created except that
he has also created a cure for that disease that Allah has never sent a disease down, except that he has also sent to the cure down with it. So Alamo home and Alabama, hula, hula, hula, hula, whoever knows the cure knows it. Whoever doesn't know it does not know it. A man came to the Prophet sallallahu. I said him and he said the Messenger of Allah, should I take medicines when I'm sick? And at that we are a pseudo law. Should I take that law? And our Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said Heidi Budo Nam Tada, whoa, yeah, a bad luck. Yes. take medicine, oh servants of Allah. And therefore, the default position has been that it is permissible, maybe even it is encouraged to take
medication. By the way, I went into detail in my other lecture that no meds have has said that it is obligatory, because obviously this opens up a huge Pandora's box of well, which medication and what if the cost is too high or whatnot. So really, no main school ever said it is obligatory to take every single medication rather, what some might have said in this the position that I follow had been Tamia said this as well, that if the cure or the medication is pretty much guaranteed, and it is very cost effective, very easy to do. And you're going to save a life. If you don't do it, you might potentially die. Simple example. May Allah protect all of us, but suppose you know, there was
a wound and your hand is bleeding profusely. And all you have to do is basically, you know, bandage it properly or apply pressure or put a tourniquet, whatever needs to be done. And you're like, No, I'm not going to take any type of precautions. This is foolishness. That's something that you know the Shetty, I would say you might even be sinful for allowing a life to die, maybe even in your own life to die for something that is so simple. On the other hand, you know, a person may Allah protect all of if a person has cancer, and then they have to go through many types of radiation terror therapies. There's no cure. There's no sorry. There's no
guarantee, Allah knows what's going to be the result. And the person often says, You know what, I lived a good life and Hamdulillah, whatever Allah was, I'm happy with it, he's fine, he can make that option, the person has the right to decide whether they want to take a medication that has side effects, etc, etc. So the default when it comes to medication is that it is something that is permissible. And it might be recommended, if it's a very, you know, easy medication that is cost effective, and it might be obligatory if it is guaranteed to be life saving, and it is also easy to do. So this is really where the spectrum comes as well. Generally speaking, medications there is a
concession given when it comes to the ingredients in them. That in case, we do not find an alternative, and the medication might have a substance that we view to be noticed, we've used to be something that is impermissible, that generally speaking, if that medication improves the quality of life much less actually life saving, of course, then that's a whole different area altogether, then our scholars have allowed taking a medication that might even have some hot ingredients in it, if it is as we said, either improving the quality of life or ensuring the maintenance of life or there is no alternative to that medication and the the the evidences for this have been given in the previous
lecture. So therefore, in a nutshell, if a vaccine were to appear, which we hope inshallah, it is the case that is possible to eliminate this disease to control this disease, the default shutter a ruling would be that it is permissible, if not at least encouraged to take this medication. Now, that's the Islamic side of things, we now have to get to the medical side of things, which is, is this what is this vaccine? What is the vaccine? Is this vaccine actually effective? And of course, these questions are beyond my purview. They're beyond my training and expertise. I am a PhD doctor, as my mother says not the real doctor of the PhD doctor, right? So I'm not the MD doctor, sorry to
disappoint you, you or me better, you know, so I'm not the MD doctor, but I'm the PhD doctor. And so therefore I'm not qualified to respond to those types of questions. Therefore, in order to get to that, to that topic, we have invited one of our own epics, you know finest somebody that is well known to all of us because marshmallow turbo tomato Cola, that along with being a full time board certified emergency room physician, he's also a volunteer we see him are shoulder to adekola at the front lines in the ER and at the front lines here on epic. I've seen him you know, even manage traffic and do security. He's got an imposing, you know, six foot six, I think Mashallah figure. So
I'd like to welcome Dr. Cinnamon about Dr. Cinnamon. Nice to have you as they come shake. Thank you so much. I do not deserve that wonderful intro. But thank you so much for having me here. And I'm happy to answer any questions that I can to help alleviate some of these concerns about the vaccine, and have the exact color for being with us. And again, I'd like to reiterate that Dr. Silverman is a Board Certified full time, ER doc doctor, he's working full time at the Texas Health Clinic in Frisco. And so he is somebody that inshallah tada understands and is well aware of this new vaccine that is out on the market. Now. I am somebody who doesn't really know medicine. To be honest, I
didn't really like biology that much. Anyway, in college, I was more of a chemistry guy and mathematics. So explain to me, what is this mRNA Mirna? mRNA vaccine? What exactly is it? And how exactly does a vaccine work? Well, there are two main types of vaccines Actually, there are several vaccines, there's what we categorize them as conventional vaccines, and then these new generation mRNA vaccines. So to kind of explain the difference between the two conventional vaccines, the way they were produced, they were very tedious to to create. And it also created a lot of issues with it. But basically, what they would do is they would take live virus injected or incubated in a egg
and then grow as much of the the virus as they could and then deactivate the virus, and then try to make the vaccine from that. So that's what a conventional vaccine was. Now, because of that, that it had a lot of issues because of preservatives that were needed to emit Mercury, aluminum, things like that. Also, it could have created a lot of allergic reactions to either the eggs or you know some of the preservatives that were in them. So though, they actually started developing mRNA technology. This is not a new technology. It's actually been around for almost 15 years. So all of the machinery to develop this Corona vaccine has
has already been in place. And that's part of the reason why they were able to get it into the market so quickly, all the Think of it as a, an industrial kind of line. All the machinery had already been there, they had been studying mRNA technology for targeted cancer research for vaccines for other diseases like tuberculosis and HIV. All of that had already been the framework was already there. When coronas started about 910 months ago, really all they had to do was sequence the spike protein on the Coronavirus, and then put that in the machinery and they were able to produce the vaccine very quickly because of that. So what exactly it is, we'll we'll go into it, I'm not going
to make this lecture too technical, I want everybody to be able to understand it. But as we start going through some of the questions, hopefully I'll be able to answer it to the best of my ability. So to understand you correctly, therefore, the mRNA type of vaccine does not contain the live virus in it. Therefore, the question that I have for you, is it possible in any way fashion or form to somehow get the virus get COVID? From the vaccine itself? So that's a very good question. And the answer is no, it is absolutely impossible to get actual COVID or any other disease from the vaccine from an mRNA vaccine. And the reason why is this, the way I'm going to explain this to you is
a simple analogy that will hopefully help you understand. So spike proteins are present on all living things, viruses have them. And what a spike protein is, it's like a badge on a car. So you look at a car, you see a badge that says BMW, you know, it's a BMW C for DC, Jaguar, you see, whatever. So that badge is what differentiates one car from the other. It's the same thing as a spike protein. So a spike protein is a badge on that virus. And what they do for these vaccines is they just they use this mRNA technology to mass produce. Basically all it does is produced copies and copies and copies of the badge. So when it's injected into your body, these badges are being
produced and your your immune system now starts to recognize it and create antibodies against it because it recognizes it as foreign. So as it's impossible to build a whole car from just a badge, it's also impossible to get the disease from just the spike protein. So it is absolutely impossible to get COVID from the COVID vaccine. Hopefully that answers the question. So if there's no live vaccine in there without getting too technical, I mean, I've read again, I'm also believe it or not, I do get WhatsApp, you know, for words from family and relatives about this type of stuff. I mean, we've read that the vaccine might have what mercury or aluminum or so I mean, again, without getting
too technical, but explained to us lay people like if the VAT if the vaccine does not contain the virus, well, then what is in it. So actually, it's, it's pretty amazing that this vaccine has literally five ingredients in it. It has the mRNA molecules, it has a lipid carrier, which helps that mRNA get into ourselves. So basically fat cells, sailing, potassium, and sugar. Those are the five ingredients that are in this vaccine, there is no preservatives, no heavy metals, no Mercury, no aluminum, none of the stuff that they had to put in previous conventional vaccines is present in these new generation mRNA vaccine. So that says should be a sigh of relief for a lot of us that
worry about those kind of things. But how did it that's really good to hear how did it well, another concern? And to be honest, I've also have a little bit of concern in this regard. I mean, the the swiftness with which the FDA approved the the most vaccines I know take years, if not decades of testing, there seems to be and I understand why obviously the COVID crisis is going on. But were any corners cut? Was it too swift? Like we're looking for an answer? Did we just jump on the first potential without really doing a thorough survey? So is it safe? Has it been proven to be safe? Well, to answer your question, I mean, the answer is mostly. No. But in some parts, you may be
correct. What I mean by that is this, like I mentioned before, all the machinery had was already in place prior to even COVID starting. So they already had all that in line. And like I said, when this crisis hit, it was fairly simple for them to you know, your sequence the genome of the spike proteins and then implement that into the thing and start developing the vaccine fairly quickly. Now, the question I think you're asking is that, okay, we understand that the technical
Part of developing the vaccine didn't take very long. But what about the safety of this of this vaccine? Well, in summary, in regards, you are correct, I mean, they have not had the ability to test this vaccine, wait several years to see if there was any kind of side effects or anything and then report back that that part is true, they have not had the luxury of being able to do that, because we're in the midst of a pandemic. But that being said, with all vaccines, most of the side effects that you're going to see with a vaccine you're going to see with within the first few weeks, first three weeks is actually what they say. So what Madonna and Pfizer both did is they extended
their trials to two months to four months, just to more than double, you know, to cover that time period. And, you know, fortunately, they found no major side effects with other than the typical things that you would see with any vaccine. And we'll go over that later. But there was no major side effects reported in that observation period, which was very reassuring. So just to again, verify roughly how many people were actually tested and how well did it work on the on these, you know, test subjects. So the study there, I mean, obviously, there's, there's many vaccines being developed right now. And each of them have their own subgroups. But the one that, you know, we're
taking that the Pfizer vaccine, there was 18,000 people, the way they decided to develop the study, they had 18,000 people who received the vaccine, then they had another 18,000 people who received a placebo, just a saline injection of the vaccine group, only eight people out of 18,000 ended up getting COVID of the placebo group 162 people ended up getting COVID in the placebo group. And that's how they got the efficacy of 95%. And that's where that number, you'll hear it a lot in the media, they say, Oh, it's 95% effective? Well, that's a big difference between 162 people and eight people. So I mean, clearly it's effective. But that's how they got the number and that the sample
size that they were using was fairly large. So okay, are there I mean, there must be some side effects. Are there any what are the ones that those that decide to to offer the vaccine? What are the side effects they should be aware of? and looking for? Yeah, so I mean, common side effects with any vaccine and what was reported from from these studies, fatigue, is very common pain at the injection site, your arm will feel very, you know, sore for a while. fever, headache, myalgia, his arms or body aches and joint joint pains. These are all common, but they're very transient, they don't last very long. And, you know, usually goes away within a day. And that seems to be like, like
you said, for pretty much any In fact, to be honest, sometimes you get a flu shot, and you get the similar types of symptoms as well. Okay, we have to talk very frankly, about one of the most
heated conspiracy theories out there that has been going on for not even just now even before this, this COVID vaccine, and that is the notion of vaccines being linked to autism. I mean, we're all aware, I myself have read a number of articles that have been on Facebook, on Twitter, there are even these interviews by people that look professional, they have medical degrees at the bottom of their interview and names and whatnot. I mean, I haven't done the research, but they're forwarded to me, where people are claiming that vaccines and maybe for this particular vaccine itself is a direct cause of autism or of you know, mental impairment or neurological diseases or something of this
nature. So, is there any credibility and these people that are speaking? I mean, are they reputable doctors? What's the deal with all of this? So that? That's a great question. This whole thing started in the late 90s. There was a British surgeon actually, his name was Dr. Wakefield. He originally published a paper linking autism with vaccinations. And it was published in a very prestigious journal, the Lancet, I'm sure many of you have heard of about it. And then He created you know, he, you know, proposed that there was this link. Well, subsequently, the media ran with this story. It was on front page news everywhere. This was in the late 90s, early 2000s. I'm sure
probably some of you guys remember that. And all of the conspiracy theories and people really ran with this news. Subsequently, though, many, many researchers went back they went through his original data. They found numerous, numerous mistakes, lots of
problems, even so much the fact that they revoked his his medical license because it was so purposefully flawed. And then when they've done when they did subsequent studies, unbiased studies. They found no correlation, no link and this was done multiple, multiple times.
But unfortunately by then the damage was already done. And it became part of the anti vaxxer movement to kind of get people to stay away from vaccines and you know, all the all the things that went along with it. So that was an unfortunate thing that happened. I mean, if you look at public health, in the last 200 years, the single best accomplishment that we have made in medicine in the last 200 years has to be vaccinations. It's really an amazing thing. And it's sad that people are now starting to turn away from them. And frankly, this is something that is verifiable, you can actually see for yourself child mortality rates and specific diseases that have been pretty much
eliminated because we've introduced vaccines. So I think it is true to say that no mainstream reputable
person, you know, have a medical background is buying into this notion that vaccinations, they cause you know, autism and whatnot. This is a very well debunked theory that was propagated in the late 90s. But we go back to the issue of the the vaccine, the vaccine right now for our COVID case. And the question arises, then again, we're, I'm not very familiar with this, but is there any change to the actual DNA that takes place because of the vaccine? That's a good question. So now, it would seem, it would seem logical that if you're injecting messenger RNA into yourselves, that it could potentially change your own DNA. And the good news is that that it does not happen, there's no way
this vaccine is going to change your DNA, it does not impact it anyway, it does not even enter into the nucleus, which is where your DNA
where it's found, the way I want you to think about mRNA is it's like a photocopy machine, it's a, when you have an original, you go to the photocopy machine, you make as many copies as you want, every time you make a copy, it does not change the original at all, it does not impact it at all. And that's exactly how messenger RNA works. It's just making photocopies of the spike protein, but it does not impact your DNA at all. But check I will, I will admit there is one caveat, there has been only one case of somebody actually having physical changes from a vaccine. It was an unfortunate scenario as a young man who received a vaccine and got bitten by a spider at the same
time, and then shortly afterwards developed superpowers and began swinging from building so that's the only one that I can I can come up with. But all kidding aside, other than Spider Man, nobody's been affected by vaccines, and it will not alter your DNA in any way. Of course, there's been a lot of research done on Spider Man, you can look up very reputable publications known as Marvel magazines and comics. And so you'll find a lot of very advanced materials, whether is to read them. I used to read Marvel Comics as a kid, but anyway, okay, so that was a joke, guys. There is no strange, bizarre case because of them. But I have a question about Madonna versus Pfizer. I know
that Pfizer has to be super refrigerated. I mean, firstly, why? And secondly, just briefly, is there any difference that we should be aware of between the two? Yeah, so the there is a difference between the two companies Pfizer's has to be super refrigerated. The reason why is messenger RNA is extremely fragile. And the risk is is that if it's not kept in a super refrigerated state,
then it's going to basically break down and it's going to become ineffective. Now, the difference between the two, Pfizer when they did their study, they set up their study that way that they were preserving their vaccine in that state. So once they came to market, they had to continue that, that method. Now Madonna, they did not keep it in that state it there obviously was refrigerated, but at more conventional temperatures. And then when they came to market, they were able to continue that. So it did create a little bit of a logistical challenge for Pfizer. But nonetheless, once the vaccine is thawed, you have about six hours to use it. Unfortunately, if it's not used within six
hours, it has to be discarded because it becomes ineffective. So just a personal question here, like you've done research in this regard. Is there a preference that you would offer us between fires if we get an opportunity to have a decision between fires and murder? No? Good? Good question. Honestly, the data for both of them look very, very similar. And that's honestly what we would expect if they're both working in the same way. They're not using novel approaches. They're both working in the same way we would expect around the same efficacy. Also, if the trials were unbiased, then you should get about the same results for both trials. And that's actually what we do see. So
between the two, I mean, it's heads or tails. Honestly, it really doesn't make whichever one is available as soon as would be the one that I would I would go for how about specific sub demographics
pregnant ladies
Children, breastfeeding mothers, elderly? I mean, is it? Has there been enough surveys or research done on them? Or is there any exceptions to be made for specific demographics? So that's a good question. But the issue is, is that anytime they do an immunization trial, they always do a trial with nonpregnant. Adults, they never ever start off a trial with kids or, you know, lactating women or things like that it's always going to be nonpregnant adults that they start to trial with. Now, does that mean that these vaccines would not help or benefit people? Of course, they potentially would. But when they start a trial, they always have to start that way.
Now, that being said, they, Pfizer just revised their study, and now they're including children 12 years and older. So what and Madonna is following suit. So I think that that's kind of setting the stage for the next thing. And and and they both announced that, you know, likely they're going to have the vaccine available for children, probably towards the end of late 2021. But the good news is that, I mean, I can tell you, from my experience, as an emergency room physician,
I have seen kids who have had COVID, most of them are either asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic. I have seen kids that have become very sick. Fortunately, it's it's much more rare. So the population that we really, really need to immunize right now or concentrate on are the vulnerable and the and, and, and the people who are tend to be more affected by by COVID. So I'm going to go back to something you said earlier, because this is definitely one of the concerns that a lot of people have. And I'd like to talk a little bit more about it. And that is the issue of potential long term effects. Like you said that, obviously, look, I mean, I understand we are in a crisis, we're in a
pandemic, we haven't seen something like this for 105 years, we're all in crisis mode, we don't have the luxury of waiting a year or however many years that most vaccine tests are done. So I understand. We need to be very fast. But what if we're still like, I mean, there's a legitimate concern, what if dot dot dot like what if something happens, you know, I mean, I literally have people texting and tweeting that, you know, people are going to start turning into zombies or something, if they take the vaccine in a few years. I mean, what what can we do to, to allay such fears? Or are these fears? Maybe totally unfounded, or slightly? Not zombies? No, saying like, who
knows the repercussions? So, talk to us about that. So good. Again, there is, I don't want to sugarcoat this in any way and say, No, this is 100% safe, everything is good. I mean, you are right there, we don't have any long term data. And we're not going to have long term data for a while. But that being said, I myself am I was apprehensive. Even though I'm a medical professional, it's not that I blanket give endorsements to anything. But once I actually did the research and once actually studied it, and I saw, these are the new generation immunizations, these are not a lot of the problems that we've had with older immunizations, had more to do with it being inactivated live
virus with it being incubated in different types of mediums with the preservatives that were in in them heavy metals, and so on and so forth. I understand why people have hesitation when it comes to emanations because of where we started from. But these new mRNA vaccines, literally they you're using your body to train it to be able to defend itself. And it does it in a very, very simple kind of way. And that's why we were able to you know, come up with this vaccine with very few ingredients because they're really not super complicated. And you know, all the trial data that I've seen everything that I've looked at, I mean it looks very very promising. Now are you going to have
somebody that potentially could have an allergic reaction to absolutely but you could have somebody that could go eat a candy bar and have an allergic reaction to that so I mean, there's no 100% safe anything but that being said, this is this is as good as it's going to come you know for what we do but if you know
I wish there was more I could say about that other than you know we don't have the long term data that is a valid concern but what we have so far looks very very promising. So you know, this reminds me of the headaches of the process and I'm tired Campbell it put your trust in a lot you know, by tying your camel there is no guaranteed that the camels not going to somehow break away You're not could be looser, the rope could be at its frayed length or whatever. I mean, you do your best and you leave the rest to Allah subhana wa tada there is no you know foolproof anything I mean, so we have to just be reasonable in this regard. And
every I mean, you know, this is the the cumulative research of this
scientific community is telling us that these vaccines are far better than the alternative. nobody's saying that it's, you know, you're gonna become Superman, or maybe you know, Spider Man or whatever, nobody's saying, you're gonna, everything's gonna be fine. But realistically, everything appears to be that this is the best medication that we have. And frankly, 95% is a staggeringly high statistic, it's actually better than most other vaccines. So we thank Alon. And remember, I mean, dear Muslims did not prophesy Some say himself that for every disease, there's going to be a cure. And so if a lot as origin has blessed us to come to the cure, then why problematize it when there doesn't seem
to be you know, that any reasonable ground and, you know, we are told in our religion to look at the source of information, we're told that if a person who doesn't have a good reputation comes and tells you something, then verify it, don't accept it. And every single field has its experts, every single area has those that have studied it, and are masters of it. Therefore, we go to the people of special speciality LSS first degree in quantum let alamode ask the people of knowledge, you know, if you do not know, every field has its experts and people have knowledge, and generally speaking, you know, to to to claim that the entire scientific community is a part of a cabal or a global
conspiracy theory. You know, it defies the imagination. It's something that is unrealistic, and it doesn't become doesn't behoove a believer to go down that type of route. And speaking of bizarre conspiracy theories, I have to ask you point blank doctors today, man, how did Bill Gates managed to introduce a nano chip into the vaccine? Can you explain the technology behind tracking where we're going to be moving in every single thing that we say? Explain that to us, please? Now share, I think you you, you got this, you nailed this one right on the head. This is actually true. This is true in a bid to improve Wi Fi signals throughout the United States, the United States government, coupled
with Bill Gates, implemented this nanotechnology into the vaccines. And I'll tell you what, my Wi Fi signals have been better than ever. So I'm a big fan of this. I opted for the 5g version, actually. But so I mean, I do get a little bit better signal now. But no kidding aside, Jeff, I really don't know how this one came about. I mean, people who are so concerned about government tracking and things like that, every single one of those people have a cell phone, I mean, literally, they can track you everywhere you go everything you say listen to it, if you're really that concerned, get rid of your cell phone, but go get the vaccine.
And by the way, that's absolutely true. All conspiracy theories aside, anybody who has a cell phone, and then comes in tells me about, you know, the vaccine has a tracking device, honestly, with utmost respect, but you've lost the plot on this. Okay. We now I mean, you know, Snowden, and all of these guys, they have verified for us, you know, Assange and they have verified We know, for a fact, and I'm not a conspiracy theories, you know, this by now. But we know for a fact that the government, our government monitors, if they wish to they could it's not every a person is reading your email, but if they wish to, they could listen on to any conversation and check any email that is ever sent
from any device, you know, probably in the world, I think, or at least in the country, for sure. That's something that has been verified by our in our own court documents has been brought up in the senate hearings and in a congressional hearing. So for anybody to to neglect that, which we know for sure. And then jump on something that is, again, I mean, I'm not, you know, a person who knows biology that will, but I know my chemistry, and I know my physics, there is no such thing as a tracking device at the nano technology level, it doesn't work. It's not there right now. And frankly, I don't think you can ever exist this a little bit too small for mankind to to get to that
level. So this is a conspiracy theory. Look, I mean, I'll be honest with you, I can understand and I am myself concerned about the long term potential effects, we don't know, it's just better than nothing. And that's a fair concern to have. But to think that somehow, you know, some entity out there is going to be tracking you via this vaccination. This is a level of conspiracy theory that really, it simply does not go with an intelligent and rational person. And so I'm just going to say this bluntly, that there are legitimate concerns, but this is not one of them. So let's just put that completely, to rest.
Final question, to cover our amount of questions pretty much from my side, or maybe one or two more. But final question. One of the final questions is
one of the things you're talking about is long term effects. Okay, well, does that mean that we're going to be immune? Does that mean that we cannot even carry the disease? So again, the vaccine does it prevent the carrying of the disease or does it prevent the symptoms of the disease? Right? And how long will the vaccine be effective? There's a lot of questions jahl to what I'm going to try to unpackage this using your words
From your lectures, but we'll try to unpackage this, this is a lot. These are very, very good questions. And this is the one where there's still some unknowns now to to answer one of your questions, as far as how long does immunity lasts from this vaccine? Well, they don't know. The best guest right now is somewhere between four and 12 months. But again, it's not known. Why do I say that? Even people who've had COVID themselves, like native infection, they don't know how long their immunity, they can test their blood levels to see how much how long they produce antibodies, but that doesn't necessarily tell them how long it's going to protect them. So I personally have known
people who've gotten COVID twice. I mean, symptomatic COVID, twice. So to know how long this vaccine is going to last? I would not be surprised if we're going to have to get a booster at some stage. So when is that going to be in six months? Is it going to be in a year like a yearly flu shot kind of thing? We just don't know right now. So I wish I had a better answer for that question. But right now, we just don't know. Now, the second point that you made, which was really, really important, is Does it mean that if I get the vaccine I can carry about my business like normal, don't wear a mask, I can never get COVID, so on and so forth. And that's not actually true. I mean, what this study
showed is that you have a 95% reduction of risk to getting COVID disease, that doesn't mean that you can't get COVID and spread COVID, but you remain asymptomatic. As a matter of fact, that's one of the concerns about this vaccine is that as people start getting vaccinated, and you know, they may potentially still be able to spread COVID, but they just won't even know it because they don't have any symptoms. But that being said, That being said, if the chances of getting COVID now, especially now here in Texas, and all over the United States, and probably in the world, it's pretty high. And if you get COVID, we know that most people who get COVID, they do fairly well. But there are some
people that get really, really sick. Now, if you compare that risk with the risk of getting the vaccine, I mean, it's not even you're not it's you can't even make the comparison. The the COVID vaccine, I think is is really our chance at a kind of a game changer to get life back to normal. You know what I mean? So
I, it doesn't it's my point to kind of summarize is that even if you get vaccinated, you're still going to have to take some precautions. Yes, you're still probably going to have to wear a mask. I would feel uncomfortable now walking around without a mask, even though I'm vaccinated, because I wouldn't want people to think that I'm disregarding public health or care for others. So, so out of curiosity, you said you were vaccinated? How was the experience for you? Obviously, you're a healthcare worker, you're on the front line. So obviously, how is it for you number one, number two, we're not going to hold you to your word. But do you have any rough idea or any, you know
whisperings about when the vaccine will be available to non specialist, non doctors non MDS like us, like where are we in the priority of
the vaccination? Well, I'm happy to report that no, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I had to do that. No major side effects. I did get the vaccine a few days ago. The next day, I did feel a little tired. My arm was sore.
Maybe felt a little feverish, took some Tylenol next morning and woke up. Absolutely no problem. So as far as Yeah, I feel great. I haven't noticed any unusual superpowers or anything bad in that regard. No major side effects. Now. your other question was, when will it be available to non medical personnel? Well, that actually is being controlled by the government. I mean, they have a tiered approach of how they wanted it to roll out. Obviously, frontline workers, like myself got it first. And then I think they're going to start targeting the high risk populations, so nursing homes, elderly, so on and so forth. And then you know, it's going to work way. But honestly, I was
astounded at how well this thing rolled out. I mean, usually you think of government you think of inefficiency. But they had this whole ball rolling before they were just literally waiting for the green light from the FDA. And once it did, shortly afterwards, the vaccine was at the frontline workers. Now think of it this way, all of us
or frontline workers were the guinea pigs. If you're really that apprehensive about this thing. Me and hundreds of 1000s of health care workers have got the vaccine first. So some bad's gonna happen to us and shall Allah protect us, but you guys will be in bad shape of all the doctors and frontline workers in the constellation
Because then we'd be without any doctors, like all the doctors just one day wake up, they're gone. We gotta fend for ourselves, you know,
you'll be fine inshallah inshallah. But that being said, I mean, they literally gave it to us first so and then by the time it rolls out to you guys, I would think probably within the next month, month and a half, you're gonna start seeing the mass immunizations. I hope so. But I don't know for sure. hamdulillah You know, that's been a very beneficial I mean, I've benefited a lot I asked a lot of questions that I had in my mind. And, you know, on a personal note, I mean, again, for whatever it's worth, inshallah, tada, whenever the vaccine does come out, I will be there in line to receive it, and with my family with my kids, I mean, I, I don't believe that there's any I mean, that that
everything that I've read about this, and I'm a person who does a lot of reading and research, everything that I've read, it seems to be that Sharla This is as good of a cure as we'll ever find. And if everybody were to do this, I think that you know, the, the pandemic could foreseeably inshallah, tada, maybe you can finish within this year. That's the golden shot of the hope. So from my side, I want to finish off by saying, Dr. Cinnamon for spending your precious time with us. And I'll leave the conclusion to any concluding thoughts before we wrap up for today's q&a. Thank you, Chef Yasser, I was, this has been really an honor for me to be able to sit with you and talk with
you about this very, very important vaccination. I will tell you, I've been working the front line since this thing started. And I can tell you health care workers like myself, we're getting tired. It's it's really becoming hard. We call it the COVID bus like people just come in waves one after another checking into the ER. And it sometimes it just you just you just you pray you send there you kind of dumbfounded hoping that you know, at some point, we're going to get some relief. I mean, hospitals are full, emergency rooms are full. And you have to think of it this way. It's not just the COVID patients that I worry about. It's anybody who comes in for any kind of medical emergency,
appendicitis or anything. I mean, right now the resources are really strained and on the law, especially at my hospital, we've been able to accommodate ever everybody's been receiving really good care, but I know in a lot of places care has been compromised, you know. So, if, if the law has given us something, at least a glimmer of hope, I really urge you as as your brother and as a physician to consider do your research, but also consider getting this vaccine so that inshallah we can put this behind this and move on move on with life. So, Sakuma Xochimilco. Hey, we had a very interesting time. I hope inshallah that was a benefit and we ask a lot of soldiers that we are at
the beginning of the end of this pandemic and that life will return to normal. That was our q&a for today. Until next week, Kamala Harris and