Side effects from COVID-19 vaccine ‘should’ happen: Doctor

The FDA has called Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine highly effective. Brigham and Women’s Hospital Emergency Medicine Physician Dr. Jeremy Faust joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss.

Video Transcript

ZACK GUZMAN: Back to the pandemic front itself, we've heard from Fed Chair Jerome Powell a number of times this year talking about the full recovery not going to be taking place until the nation can get a handle on that. In terms of the vaccine progress we've seen there, it sounds like Moderna is still on the right track to see emergency use authorization for its vaccine to follow Pfizer's EUA as well, potentially as early as the end of the week here, which is welcome news considering progress needs to continue to reach the public here with the beginning vaccine transmission here.

We've already seen those shots administered across the country this week, in terms of Pfizer's. But now, reports from the New York Times saying the Trump administration is working on building out more purchases of Pfizer's vaccine. Keep in mind between Pfizer and Moderna, only about 150 million people could be covered by those vaccines by the end of June. That's about half the nation there, but more would need to come through from some other providers, potentially, to reach the numbers that we want to see.

Joining us for more on that is our next guest here. Dr. Jeremy Faust is emergency medicine physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and he joins us once again here. Dr. Faust, good to be chatting with you again. I mean, when we walk through those numbers, we've seen the Trump administration want to push for more vaccines-- questions around maybe passing on potentially locking up more of Pfizer's vaccine ahead of all this. Where do you put us in this phase we're at right now and potentially maybe boosting getting more than half the nation by the end of June?

JEREMY FAUST: Hey, Zack-- good to be back. I think that the fact that the administration decided not to buy as much Pfizer vaccine as possible is a questionable one. I don't-- I'm not an economist, and I don't make business decisions. But my understanding of the whole concept behind Operation Warp Speed was to sort of hedge your bets and make sure that you had-- you didn't put all your eggs in one basket, but you bought as much as everything as you could.

And basically, the idea is, any money you spent today on a vaccine, even on spec, would pay dividends down the road because it's a life save. It's-- it's society getting back to normal. We can't, as-- as you said, we cannot recover this economy with a sick population or with people afraid to go out. And so the number one way to save lives and to save the economy is to beat this pandemic. And since it became abundantly clear that we would not be able to do so the way that, say, New Zealand is trying to do so with a complete suppression of the virus-- since that became clear that we couldn't do that here, the way out has been a vaccine, as far as I'm concerned.

So the fact that we now have a vaccine that's being offered is huge, huge news for lives and for livelihoods, but the fact that we, again, as you said, aren't going to have enough vaccine doses until later this spring or early summer is disappointing. But I think that, despite that, I think a lot of vaccinations will occur now that will actually make a difference.

AKIKO FUJITA: Dr. Faust, you're in Massachusetts. There, hospital capacity concern-- certainly a growing concern there, along with so many other states. Last I checked, you're around 72%, so not as bad as some other states. But when you look at the uptick, what you having to deal with in the hospital with more cases coming in while also trying to inoculate those emergency workers, how are you finding that balance right now? Can you give us a little more insight on-- on how it's playing out in your hospital?

JEREMY FAUST: In my region-- in my hospital, we have absolutely seen an uptick in cases. There was a period of time, especially this summer, when we really had a nice, long shelter in place or stay at home advisory here in Massachusetts, and our case loads were very low. Our mortality-- we never got rid of mortality from COVID-19 in Massachusetts, but we got low. And we actually didn't even have excess mortality, which is more deaths than usual just from all causes. We had tons of excess mortality in our first wave, our first surge, but we had no excess mortality all summer and fall.

And now, just now, the past week or two, maybe three, we're now seeing more deaths than we normally would see at this time of year again-- and frankly, more than we've seen in a long, long time. So we know that now we're not controlling the virus. And as you said, that-- that sort of spells that the hospitals will become more and more full.

Where I work, we have this incredible surge capacity, so we can expand our ICU capacities, we can expand our-- our inpatient beds, and we've done that. If we did not have that ability, we would already be in deep trouble. So we are-- we're kind of ahead of it. But we can't really afford another huge surge-- and then also people's regular medical problems. One of the things that happened this spring was, we didn't have elective surgeries. Well, now we're scaling that back again.

People weren't coming in for other emergencies, or they weren't even happening-- but, now-- because, for example, car accidents just weren't occurring because nobody was driving. But now, we're seeing our usual level of care plus, now, COVID on the rise. And so that's what gives me pause for the next 8 to 12 weeks, is that we're coming into a time of year where the hospital is busy anyway, and now we're piling COVID onto it. And so it could be that-- that next week, I'm on with you and I'm telling you that we're full. At the moment, we're OK, but we're-- it's tenuous.

ZACK GUZMAN: Well, hopefully it stays, you know, not full. But when we talk about it, it's another question around some of the things that you've been raising. Obviously, the next couple of months are going to be key here, but once you get past those into the vaccine front, big questions about whether or not people are going to actually want to get the vaccine.

You've been pretty honest and outspoken about what to expect in terms of symptoms with your followers on Twitter. I recommend the follow, by the way, to our viewers out there, at @jeremyfaust on Twitter for a lot of this stuff. But when you've highlighted kind of those side effects and what to expect for people getting them, talk to me about expectations there in the willingness for Americans to line up and get this once it's available to more than just front line workers here.

Because as you've talked about, younger Americans may not have been the ones that have been stressed by the CDC, other health officials, saying, look, you know, do this for older populations, but you might not need to worry. Stats are kind of highlighting some pretty serious risks for even younger Americans now when it comes to getting coronavirus. Talk to me about what your expectations are, particularly when it comes to younger Americans to maybe be the ones that would want to come out and get themselves vaccinated once it's available.

JEREMY FAUST: It's really important. The younger population is the last group to be vaccinated-- people in the under 65, under 55-- and even 25 to 44, which is a group that I studied recently and we published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association. And my group, we found that there's actually this huge spike in mortality among young adults during the pandemic. And these are the people who are sort of last in line to get the vaccine.

So now, it's saying, look, A, this is more serious for people 25 to 44 than I ever realized before I started doing this work. And B, we're going to have to wait, unless you're a health care worker, to get the vaccine. So it's difficult to say, OK, we've come so far, and now we have a vaccine. Now, would you please wait for a few months and don't get it. But when you see the mortality figures, we had-- actually, July was the most recent data that we looked at. But July was the deadliest month in modern American history for adults age 25 to 40.

Like 16,000 adults in that age group died. And the typical would be like 11,000 or 12,000. We never see higher than that. So, we're 16,000-- and then, in the fall, it's been 15,000, 14,000, 15,000 again. So this is real. This is on the scale of opioid crisis. Is on the scale of-- if-- if motor vehicle collisions started spiking, if we had went back to a time without seat belts. I mean, the scale is really impressive. It's not just statistical anomalies. So that's-- that's the really big thing.

In terms of the side effects, yeah. The way I frame this is that it will cause side effects. The term that is being thrown around in the medical community is reactogenic, so it generates a reaction. And so it's meant to do that. It's meant-- and so we're sort of accepting the fact that we expect it to cause a fever, maybe in one in five, six patients-- headache, body aches. That's your body noticing that something's happening.

And the way I frame it is, not that it might happen, but it should probably happen. And if it doesn't happen, don't worry. The vaccine still is working for you, but it's expected to have side effects. And from the health care perspective-- for example, I'm going to hopefully be vaccinated in the next week or so. But I better not be signed up to work the next day, because we don't want to have you losing hospital capacity because doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals can't come to work. So there's a little bit of a timing issue as well. But overall, the top line is, people ask me, is the virus-- is the vaccine safe? How do you think about it? And I am convinced, across the board, that-- with almost no exceptions, there are a few-- but that getting the vaccine is far safer than getting the virus. It's not even a close call.