Coronavirus Q&A with doctor at Mercy Hospital
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Updated: 4:16 PM CST Feb 1, 2021
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Updated: 4:16 PM CST Feb 1, 2021
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Thank you so much for being here with me. We have Dr Jason McKenney to answer some of the questions that have been sent in to our newsroom and through social media from our viewers. So, First, Doctor McKinney, if you could just introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your role at mercy. Sure. Uh, well, thanks for having me get my name's Jason McKinney. I'm a pulmonary critical care physician at Mercy Hospital here in Rogers. My job is primarily to take care of lung disease and critical illness for pretty much any reason that people may end up in the intensive care unit. As of lately, my group has played a large role in taking care of our more severely ill. You know, Cove in 19 patients here in the hospital. Um, I have some administrative roles at the hospital, Not not a whole lot, but I just kind of oversee a lot of the care and policies overall in the intensive care unit. And a lot of people right now have questions about the vaccine s Oh, that's kind of where we're going to get started. This question came to us, Sarah from Rogers she asks, How does the vaccine work inside your body? Okay, well, the two main vaccines that are on the market right now are the fighter vaccine and the modern A vaccine. And these are vaccines that we call the MMR vaccines. And what that means is, is that the this type of virus uses what's called R N A. As its genetic material, our genetic material. We use DNA. This virus uses RNA a little bit different, and what the virus does to us is that when the virus infects us, it injects its RNA into ourselves. And what our body does with RNA is it reads that are in a code and turns that are in a into different proteins. And when the virus does it to us, those those proteins all come together and make new virus, and it keeps doing it over and over again. And then it kills the cell and causes tissue damage. Well, what we do with the virus is that we've the scientists have taken a just the piece of Arna that encodes for a protein called the spike protein, and that's the protein that is on the virus that is responsible for its ability to latch onto ourselves and inject its material into ourselves. And they have been able to stabilize that RNA. And so they basically have it wrapped in an envelope, so to speak, and that is injected into our muscle cells that RNA is absorbed into our muscle cells. Now again, it's just RNA. It has no way of manipulating our DNA. It can't, you know. So it's not going toe. Manipulate your DNA code. It's not gonna do anything like that. It's just that if ourselves see Arna, they manufacture the proteins that RNA codes for. So our cells start reading that are in A and R muscle cells start manufacturing a bunch of spike protein, not the whole virus, just the spike protein, and that protein then gets it out into our system. And our immune system, then is doing constant surveillance of our whole body like it does all the time. And it sees this foreign protein. Our body knows what is protein as it identifies as what's normal, what's self and what's foreign, and it sees that spike protein is being foreign, and so then it attaches to it, and it then will generate antibodies that are unique for that spike protein, and that's what our body does when we're sick. So now we have antibodies despite protein and those antibodies air hanging out in our system. It's kind of stored in our memory database of our immune system, so to speak. So then, when we do get exposed to co vid than the viruses in our system, our body is reading the virus as foreign. But then it reads Part of that. It reads the spike protein, which is part of the virus, as foreign automatically knows that we have antibodies to that. And then, since our body has already manufactured and gone through that process of immunity, building up antibodies to that we have an antibody surge because it's sensing an invasion of the of the virus and our antibodies air able to go out, they bind to that spike protein on the virus, therefore neutralizing it and preventing it from causing severe damage. And that's how the again, how the Madonna vaccine works and how the fighter vaccine works. The near vaccine that's coming on the market soon. The Johnson and Johnson vaccine. It's a little bit different ideas kind of the same, but it's a little bit different. It uses a little bit of ah Mawr traditional vaccine approach that's been used in the past toe where again, it's still using the same thing. It's still using RNA, and they use weakened viruses that aren't coronavirus. It's adenovirus, which is a common type of virus that causes the common cold and other types of respiratory illnesses and people and their synthesized adenovirus molecules that are weakened. They're not able to continue replication in our body, but they are able to inject that's material into ourselves when it infects us. So basically what that vaccine does, it's giving us what's called attenuated adenovirus, and, uh, and that has Arna inside that virus. So then that virus is able to inject the RNA into ourselves. And then again, our body reads that RNA generates spike protein and in the same process happens that happens with the other ones, and we're gonna move on to our next question here. This one is from Katie from Rogers. Does the vaccine prevent you from getting cove it, or does it reduce the chances of having a severe illness? If and when you do get Cove in 19. Now, if it's the latter, should you continue to wear masks? Help prevent the spread after you get the vaccine. Yeah, so that is an excellent question. Um, the, uh, the virus or the start, the vaccine to the virus is the way it studied. Is is its effectiveness at preventing severe disease. Being vaccinated does not mean that we can go running through a crowded places licking door knobs and and everything else. You know, we can't We can't be that free spirited yet. Okay? What it means is that when we get when we get vaccinated, it means that we have a 95% chance of not getting severe disease. It doesn't mean you're not going to get infected. May not even mean that you don't necessarily become symptomatic, but it prevents a lot of the severe symptoms. You know that. We see, you know, with co vid on bond. Honestly, most most more than likely, people will just become asymptomatic carriers. Okay, Uh, and that's important because even though you're vaccinated, it means that you still can get virus. You may still become Vira mc to the point of being able to be contagious. and you can still spread virus. And it might even be a little bit more dangerous sometimes, because you even more so you're not going to know. You likely won't even have any symptoms at all. Which would? This virus is already a problem. Okay? Eso it doesn't solve all of our problems. It doesn't. It doesn't change the fact that we still need to wear a mask. You know I'm vaccinated. Eso I'm I'm pretty safe. I feel pretty safe personally that I'm not going to get severe disease and I'm not as worried about it right now, but I know that I could still get the virus and then I could go be standing next to somebody in line that's not vaccinated. And I could still potentially give them the virus and and hurt them. And so I still need to be responsible and wear a mask and distance and do and do all those types of things. Her next question here is from Jessica. She says asks, How long are you immune? If it all once you recover from Cove it So this is, I guess, assuming that you have not had the vaccine and then she also has a couple of other questions, and I'll ask those this follow ups. But how long are you immune? As they've determined now? Sure, we think people are immune for at least three months. It's likely longer than that. But there have been a very few very few cases of people contracting co vid again with, uh, maybe within that within that three months. But for the most part, we we've seen, you know, the more cases after that three month timeframe and and even that's been pretty rare so far. So we know people are probably at least immune for three months. And how long after that? We don't know. Ah, so that's why the recommendations from If you're going to get vaccinated that, you know, after you've had co vid there's no magic answer is to win to get vaccinated. But we are recommending that you know, if people want Thio, wait, you know, for three months after they've been after they've been sick and then get the vaccine, that's probably a good time frame to work with. And do the new virus strains that air popping up to those have any effect on your immunity? Uh, huh? Well, the so there's a lot of that we don't know yet. And there's there's three predominant strains that they've identified so far. Uh, I think they're primarily being called the UK Strain, the South African and the Brazilian, and they're all a little bit a little bit different. Primarily what they're seeing is again back to that spike protein that we talked about Is that a Zvi Irises are a zey replicate. You know, they don't have all the same safety mechanisms that you know a higher level of organism has, so their genetic material does acquire some spontaneous mutations and errors. And when those spontaneous mutations and errors given an advantage, then it will keep propagating. And so these strains are the primarily differences that they're seeing is that that spike protein, which is what we look at for immunity, is changing just a little bit for right now way Think the UK strain, as far as what they're looking at, is probably one that where the current vaccine and current infection with traditional co vid is that immunity is probably lasting towards towards that strength. Okay, um, it likely for the other strains, usually, how how a lot of I think the speculation is that your immunity one if you've been infected or two, if you've been vaccinated, will likely be somewhat protective against the other strains. But I don't think they really know how much yet. Okay, and and as other strains, you know, develop which they will. That's just how this is how nature works. You know, it just is just going to wait and see if this if the current vaccine is going to protect you or not. And likely you'll see you know, over time that boosters to to this to the vaccine come out that have the other types of, um, code in it to help us make antibodies to the other variants of spike protein that's out there. It's not all that different from the flu vaccine that we manipulate the flu vaccine every year based off the types of flu virus that we're seeing out in the world, and that kind of answers a little bit of that question, she asks. This is Jessica again. Does the current vaccine protect against all strains? And so it seems as if there could be some potential in developing boosters that could work to protect some of those other variants protect you from those other variants as you know more about that. Right? And I and I checked this as a reason is today, and I don't think anybody is willing. Thio commit fully to any of the strains yet, but they're speculation from What they've seen is that they think that it does provide some immunity to the UK variant, which we have seen in the United States. But not I think the jury is still out a little bit on the variance they've seen in the South African and the Brazil variant of which I don't think there's been. It's been identified in the U. S. Yet. Next question here from Deborah, Can people on blood thinners take the vaccine and they just in a larger question, what are some of the at risk conditions that someone may have that might preclude them from taking the vaccine? Or are there any sure Eso Yes, people on blood thinners can can take the vaccine. Uh, it's important that their vaccines be given in the right location, so they might want to be, you know, make sure that they have the trained which I think every place is doing that. But, you know, err on the side of maybe having it done in a setting where you're comfortable with who is giving it to you. But yes, we give intra muscular injections to people on blood thinners all the time. Um, not not a concern. You might use a little bit mawr and a side of injection, but but nothing dangerous. And so that's perfectly fine to dio faras conditions that would make it to where you should not get the vaccine. You know, if you are somebody that has had a severe allergic reaction to vaccines before primarily, you know, life threatening, you know, reactions like a severe And if lactic type reaction, then you might be somebody that might want to give it a second thought before before you get this vaccine, um, you know, or look at the products that are that are in it. If there's been certain shots that you've had that have given you a bad allergic reaction to where you want to make sure that you discussed it with your physician to say Okay, this is what I reacted thio in the past. Um, you know what shot should I get? And let's look at the ingredients that that it shot has, um, there's a little differences between the fires were shot and the modernist shot, but not much. So, really, That's that's really the only population that we would, you know, say to not, you know, potentially not get the vaccine. Other than that, patients that are on you know, immuno suppressants and those types of things. Uh, that's a common question that we get and again that you're not getting infected with the virus and eso you're not at risk of getting sick. Um, it's actually the opposite where, when you're on medications that suppress your immune system, we worry about all vaccines in those in those patients because they're on medications, that air suppressing their immune system. Yet we need their immune system toe work in order to give them a new antibody response to the to the vaccine. And so those patients that we always worry that we're still going to vaccinate you. But, you know, we might need to check your antibody level in the future as we check tigers, which is what we check the other vaccines where we look in someone's blood and see what kind of antibody level do you have to the different things we vaccinated you against to make sure you are protected, because your medication may have prevented your body from becoming immune. And I have another Deborah who reached out and asked, Um and this kind of goes along with that. She said if I was allergic to the hepatitis B vaccine, would it be safe to take the Covic vaccine? So it seems as if if you have had, like, you mentioned some type of allergic reaction, you'd wanna check with your doctor, I guess. First, Yeah, I think so. And I'm not as familiar with the hepatitis B vaccine, so I don't wanna give anybody any bad advice. I think you just need to look and see what you know what. You know what's in that vaccine and compared to this one. And and there's a lot of really talented, you know, allergy and immunologists in the community. And a lot of times when we have patients with very unique questions like that, their doctor may need to reach out toe one of those other specialists to ask them toe look and see if it's something that would be safe or not. And final question here, this is from Chad from Rogers asks, What are the side effects? And will you Seymour side effects from the first shot? Or the second when you take the vaccine that from my personal experience and from the people in the study, it's the second shot that you're gonna have more severe symptoms, too. Most people with the first shot, maybe a little bit of a sore arm. Pretty typical of a vaccine, no big deal. Second shot that you get it is usually a little bit worse. Me personally. Day after my second shot, low grade fever chills felt like all my joints hurt. It's pretty tired for the day. Um, nothing. I so still could go toe work. Took some Tylenol wasn't a big deal by the day after that, I felt fine, and it ranges from completely no symptoms. Two. I've had colleagues and get people in the 1000 people in the study. You know, you may even see fever of up to 103 104 for a brief period of time and a lot of flu like illnesses, but again uncomfortable but not dangerous, and usually you can medicate through it. And after a day or so most, I think everybody goes back to normal.