A Conversation with Dr. Byram Bridle

all right welcome to another episode of around the county with supervisor Jim Desmond I'm communications director for District Five we've got a fantastic guest here today uh Dr Byron Bridal uh associate professor of viral Immunology at the University of how do you pronounce that Byram well Guelph oh yes beautiful awesome for those listening let's just kind of start here doctor where give us your credentials I gave it briefly there but who are you what do you do yeah sure yeah so yeah I'm a faculty member an independent researcher at a university here in Canada and I my areas of expertise overlap with the fields of virology and Immunology and so these of course are very relevant to the uh covid-19 pandemic because both the the the problem is that the interface of of virology and Immunology uh and and in fact the covid-19 disease caused by the SARS coronavirus 2 a lot of the pathogenesis in fact uh in the severe cases is mediated by overly robust immune responses and then also I'm quite familiar with the um you know the primary solution we're all seeking which is first of all I should say it's it's not vaccination per se but rather uh developing immunity against this virus and uh and so in fact I've been commissioned by both the provincial and federal governments in Canada to develop covid-19 vaccines so I do have a pre-clinical research program it's focused on that I'm also doing a little bit of research where we're looking at uh trying to figure out intervention strategies for the overly robust cytokine storms that that occur uh in some people that get infected with this virus you know the way I I came upon you and there's a lot to delve into here but I I came across your article and I'll I'll read the title which kind of gives it away but you can kind of expand on it a year of covid-19 lockdowns is putting kids at risk of allergies asthma and autoimmune disease I guess I mean what do you mean by that I mean from the title yeah so this is this is interesting uh you know when the pandemic started and this is what I what I realized is you know we kept getting told that you know uh you know things were hopefully going to change in the relatively near future so so what happened in Canada for example is when Canada declared uh the pandemic we we were told we were going to go into a three-week lockdown and that was to allow our hospitals to um prepare uh and and and and and and not get overwhelmed with potential cases of severe cobit 19. um and and then once we so-called flattened the curve right this is a term we've been hearing all around the world all the time flattening the curve and what we mean by the curve is the you know if you graph the daily cases right um as the cases ramp up and then and then decrease we get these curves and so the whole idea was quotes flatten the curve which meant stop the increase that was happening early on the pandemic and the number of daily cases uh and and we were the goal was for us to do this for a few weeks and then we would get out of the lockdowns and that lockdown and learn to live with this virus and with other hospitals at that point being overwhelmed however now we're more than a year into this and we're still applying the same strategies um and so I wasn't concerned initially about this issue that you that you just raised you know in this lay article that I wrote um and what it deals with is it's dealing with issues related to the development of our immune systems and so as you can imagine I mean with a three-week lockdown for example um there's not a lot of development that goes on in a child's immune system right so again that's why I wasn't concerned but now that we have isolated our children severely isolated them from their natural environment and from interactions with other people I now have substantial concerns about what we've done to our children and the reason is this so in a nutshell when we're born our immune systems are not fully matured so many people be familiar for example with the development of the brain and the fact that when we're born there's all kinds of brain development that occurs after birth well the same is hop the same is true for many physiological systems including the immune system so what happens is when we're born there's lots of development of the immune system that has that has to continue well past birth in fact our immune systems are not fully matured until well into adolescence so really um until we're 18 years old you know so adults it's not until that time that we can be quite confident that our immune systems are fully matured now in terms of the development most of this development of the immune system uh occurs between birth and six years of age all right so that's that's the group that would be most affected but like I said because development does continue There could potentially be uh progressively less and less impact harmful impact on the development immune system but all the way up into adolescence so even teenagers could be impacted by this and potentially in a negative way and what we know as immunologists is there's the scientific principle and we refer to it as the hygiene hypothesis now that this phrase immunologists we we haven't decided on a new name for this we would like to change the name from the hygiene hypothesis simply because it is associated with negative outcomes on the immune system and we're not trying to say that hygiene in of itself isn't is negative uh what we what we really want to try and Achieve is targeted hygiene right meaning um hygiene that would help protect us from potential pathogens so microbes that would cause harm that would cause disease but not protect us from the non-harmful uh microbes that live in our environment because they are in fact very important for the development of immune system so this is this is the thing winter immune system when we're born our immune systems are completely naive right so uh when we're in our mother's womb we have not been exposed typically to any kind of microbes it's a sterile environment so we don't start encountering the this you know the foreign microbial World until we're born and so these years especially as I mentioned from birth to age six these years are absolutely critical for the normal development of the immune system and one of the very important thing things that happens during that time is their immune system learns to differentiate between microbes that are dangerous and worth responding to and among those would be things like SARS coronavirus 2 and influenza virus Etc et cetera um but argument system also learns about uh to differentiate those from the non-dangerous microbes that we don't want to be responding to on a constant basis and so what I mean by that is you think about our bodies are covered inside and out with all kinds of microbes right that we use the term our microbiome and um so so we we often think about bacteria but we also have billions of viruses that are in and on our body right not all viruses in fact it's only a relatively few viruses that cause disease and you can and plus we're also constantly exposed to other things that are foreign in our environment right so our skin is constantly in contact with various chemicals we're inhaling dust pollens Etc depending on the time of year um the chemicals as well you know we sometimes inhale those and a lot of these things are the vast majority of these things are very innocuous and you can imagine if our immune system simply responded everything that was formed of the body our we would be and and a chronic state of extremely severe inflammation so severe would be able to survive right so so in order to prevent us from overreacting to things that aren't dangerous our immune system has to encounter our environment on a regular basis during these these critical developmental years so again not only our natural environment but also other people and and literally being exposed to safe microbiomes so a a great example of to demonstrate how you know we know that this is this is a real uh scientific principle is that there's there's two key observations uh that immunologists have made one is if you look between different countries so you look at low-income countries and if you look at middle-income countries like the United States and Canada in in North America for example and in other countries like ours we we have declared essentially an epidemic of immunological disorders that are associated with overactive responses and inappropriate responses to things that are not dangerous and so what these include are allergies which is when we over respond and appropriately respond again to things that aren't dangerous um and Asthma and that's similar the allergies again an appropriate response to something that uh that we inhale that's not dangerous and also autoimmune diseases where we actually inappropriately perceive our immune systems inappropriately perceive cells or molecules within our own body as being dangerous and so in low-income countries they have much lower incidence of these diseases than we do in North America and that's typically associated with the fact that we've you know over the past several decades become overly sanitized in in North America right so you think about the the increase in the use of of um hand sanitizers and adding antibacterial uh products to soaps etc etc um and another and so another interesting studies if you look within the country so if you look within the United States and you look at children who are raised in rural areas like Farms versus those who are raised in large Urban centers there is a very big difference in the incidence of allergies Asthma as and autoimmune diseases such that those children who are raised on farms have a much lower incidence on average and uh and again this is because those who raise on farms are in uh constant contact with the natural environment and and the microbial world right whereas those are growing up in urban centers are growing up in you know we could view them as man-made jungles in a sense right there's there's a much more limited exposure to the natural environment and so this is the issue never before in our history right in our lifetimes have we taken children for such a prolonged period of time and kept them so isolated from their natural environment so you think about it when the kids have been uh have had minimal engagement with with with with other people including members of their own families um we have removed we've uh stopped a lot of their activities right so Sports you know outdoor sports baseball soccer football Etc um and we're even and we're making them using hand sanitizers you know Ad nauseam and we're and we're even filtering the air that they breathe right and so this this is this could be a major concern and something that's that has gone flown under the radar and and has been really underappreciated during this pandemic my concern is that we may have um a generation of covid kids uh and and the the potential damage um we want we won't be able to fully understand and appreciate until years into the future right when these diseases start becoming apparent but I am afraid that we are going to have you know a group of children especially those that have been in this year plus long lockdown that are in that age range of from birth to age six who later on in life are going to have not not all of them right there's genetic predispositions Etc that govern this so not sure certainly not all of them will develop immunological disorders but there will be a much higher incidence I fear of immunological disorders so these kids will grow up and they'll and so is irreversible right and so we're almost certainly going to have more children that are going to be suffering for the rest of their lives with allergies asthma might not immune diseases as a consequence of this severe and prolonged lockdown wow that doctor that this is fascinating uh I I really appreciate your perspective on this and and um you know I'm I'm a politician so I'm I'm trying to look to find balance balance between we fight the virus and balance between trying to to help the economy and and keep businesses and people employed so we don't have other unintended consequences um it's one of the things though I guess for balance is what would we've been told you know in as when we if we send our kids back to school or back to environments and for that zero to six age I remember my young ones they went to preschool and they every at least one or two kids there had a runny nose or a cough or something and it kind of they all caught it and so I can see how you're you know your uh your logic applies to hey you got to be exposed to this stuff if you want to be able to beat it later in life as well but the argument has always been okay if these kids go to school and grandma and grandpa live in the household or they go visit Grandma and Grandpa but then they could potentially um spread the disease so so there's kind of a balance okay if we let all the kids you know from zero to six go to preschool and everything else and then they what's kind of the balance there or what's what's the argument where there are now spreaders as opposed to so as opposed to them potentially having these immunological disorders later in life what's kind of that balance there I guess is keeping them from being spreaders versus saving their own uh immune system what what's your thoughts yeah that's a great question and so this in fact is is the the perception I would say it's largely a misperception that are that are healthy children could potentially serve as super spreaders uh the the reality is uh people who are not showing signs or symptoms of disease uh light likely aren't at much risk so um it was interesting in in Canada I I just saw a study that was published recently where they and we're starting this actually we're starting to do a lot of asymptomatic testing and we're offering that it's voluntary for children and teachers at schools uh but as this testing is being done so what they're doing is they're looking for you know at healthy individuals people have no sign of any kind of illness and then seeing you know if they have the virus the Stars chronovirus too if they're infected with it now there's a so first of all the interesting thing is uh a a tiny minority of people who are asymptomatic and being tested in these scenarios so so again in the context of a school setting are are testing negative uh they don't seem to have there's no evidence of the presence of the virus and and then arguably for those who are positive the the rate at which there they are positive uh doesn't change is not um significantly different from the false positive rate because there's some major issues with it with the testing that can be done for these especially a lot of the labs have um we use a test that's not known as uh PCR and it's designed to detect directly that the genetic material from this virus so that if it's found that means that that genetic material had to be in the person and this is actually an important thing here so first of all the test to try and increase the sensitivity to detect small quantities of most lobs have increased the number of Cycles used it's a test that yet where you have to run through that that incorporates Cycles in this and so a lot of a lot of the vastra of labs have increased the cycle numbers up to very high numbers and so consequence of that is we get this sort of artificial increase in the background signal and and it's going to lead to false positives right where we think we're detecting a signal but in fact it's it's not a true positive we're not actually detecting real viral genetic material and the other issue with this is there are there are uh scenarios where people will have that genetic material they'll have uh the viral genomes or a piece of the viral genome and their body but it's not we call replication competent uh virus particles meaning they're non-infectious so a great example I mean somebody's healthy and you know and we get infected with something and our immune system is able to effectively clear that virus and certainly among children this is this is quite quite common where they can readily clear the the virus with their immune system um rapidly enough that they don't even experience any signs or symptoms of disease right and the consequence of the immune system responding is that they will they will have protection conferred um but what happens what's interesting is one of the key mechanisms that our immune system uses to get rid of this virus is we have these cells we have three key cell types that are part of our immune system and they're designed to go we call them phagocytic cells as immunologists and the process is called cytosis but what is these cells go around the body and they'll gobble up the virus and when they once they eat the virus they'll destroy the virus but one of these a couple of these cell types are actually designed to hold on to those bits of the virus so that it can activate other parts of the immune system and these are the things that we're trying to activate when we give the vaccines the covid-19 vaccine so these would be the T cells you may have heard about the T cells and also when people hear about the vaccines have been hearing a lot about antibodies antibodies that can neutralize the virus but what this means is these phagocytic cells can actually carry pieces of the virus in the body and some of them are relatively long-lived so um often with these tests and asymptomatic individuals what we're actually detecting yes we are detecting if they're true positives we are detecting the viral genetic material but it's not it's non-infectious it's actually trapped in these phagocytic cells which are being uh uh taking this material and using it to activate other components of the immune system that it's not replication competent viral particles that could infect somebody else and cause disease in somebody else so as Immunology as an Immunology they don't have a lot of concern about that and this is this is the issue but of course as you mentioned there's lots of debate right so uh going on right now in the scientific Community about this but the other the other perspective that I like to bring to this and I had um uh this this affected me really personally just recently so where where uh my youngest son had an uh a classmate who tested positive for the Stars coronavirus too and so immediately our public health unit issued a notice that uh we had to place our son into What's called the medical term is uh is isolated quarantine but the interesting thing is my wife and I were sitting at the dinner table we have two sons uh my older son who's 15 was also there and listening we're reading through all these rules and when we were done my older son asked a question why do we have to put uh Johnny is the name of my younger son right why do we have to point Johnny into solitary confinement and I laughed at first and I said oh no no solitary confinement is this terrible you know consequence for for some criminals right but then I thought about it and I actually differentiate the definition so just to understand because this plays on on on the question that Miles us right which is related to the the development of children's immune systems and the isolation so this is taking the isolation to an extreme so we were asked and this felt like in a sense as a parent like I was being asked to essentially abuse my my son because what we were asked to do was for 14 consecutive days lock him in his room and stay two meters away from the rest of the family and um and what what families in in Canada have been doing when receiving this order often is they will it'll literally be like when you see in a movie with with uh somebody who's been um sentenced to be put into solitary confinement where the parents will open the door have their child stand back at least two meters uh and slide their food in on a plate you know inside the room and then close the door and and these are young children and we actually even had a crazy uh example where a physician received one of these orders and and again they were told that they had to physically distance from their child and again it was mandated that the child be isolated and eat in a separate room and and there's no accommodations first of all for um children with special needs for example and in this case there was no accommodation made for the age because you imagine this child was due for two weeks to be isolated in a separate room from the parents including eating in a separate room as I just mentioned and this is a one-year-old child right that's not self-sufficient so so and there have been cases of parents being threatened with five thousand dollar fines if they don't comply so this is taking it to an extreme right so this is the kind of perspective that I'm taking as a scientist and now as a parent and looking at this and I've got kids in school and this is how I view it this is the reality as scientists we can debate uh you know potential risk of spread and risk of spread um to the older individuals especially or immunocompromised individuals because these are the high-risk demographics but if we think about it from a perspective of children for children the statistics now are are crystal clear the SARS chronovirus 2 is no more dangerous for our children than than the annual flu that's just the reality and in fact when it comes because one of the unique things that starts coronavirus 2 is in fact uh children especially young children seem to be particularly resistant to uh severe disease and potentially lethal disease so arguably the annual flu is more dangerous for them certainly there are more deaths in Young Americans and young Canadians very young Americans and Canadians each year from the flu then uh there has been from the SARS coronavirus too so so that's uh one thing we certainly don't Implement these procedures to protect those children right so um that's sort of a consequence of our chosen uh quality of life but so that just puts in perspective so from their perspective I can't differentiate the dangers of SARS chronovirus for them from the dangers rep that are represented by the annual flu virus for these children um and and then and then you look at it uh so with that in mind in essence it seems like what we're doing in in these you know debates we're having is we're using our our children as Shields then for adults and so I view it this way is we know the people that are high risk Stars chronovirus 2 definitely is much more dangerous for the elderly and people who immunocompromise um but really in my opinion we should then be focusing our protection around these you know this relatively limited demographic and so I guess so in essence I view it as we're dealing with an adult problem but we're using our children as Shields you know in the battle against this adult problem and and the children so you know then we can get into the question is it appropriate to do that with the children right they're not at risk from the virus the certainly all of the isolation policies and masking policies are not healthy for children I'm not an expert in Psychology for example but I can guarantee the there's mental health issues associated with with kids being isolated and having to mask for example so that's where I come from is I'm not worried about them being uh high-risk spreaders and a comp and again as we're on the safe side I would say what we need to do is because it would be a minority of families where uh very elderly individually grandparents are cohabitating with the children yes of course that there are a lot of families right as the case but it's a minority right and so again for the sake of the majority I think it might be better for us to start thinking about refocusing our resources both financial and human resources so that we can better protect and and uh the individuals who are at risk so for example if there are grandparents who are living in right we we help those families find Solutions you know maybe find alternative even if it's temporary you know housing somewhere else for them so they can't be relatively isolated from the children should they go back to school if they if they are genuinely concerned with the potential risk of those children bringing SARS chronovirus 2 back to their home all right thank you uh I definitely agree with you that uh you know we are potentially using our children as Shields as opposed to let letting them get on with their lives and develop their own immune systems one of the things we're kind of running out of time but one of the things you said in the beginning was it's really not the goal to get everyone vaccinated the goal is to get to immunity so so what I mean could you kind of expand on that and then we're gonna have to wrap this up but uh you said that beginning so I'm just curious you know uh I'm a Layman what does that really mean yeah so so first of all I should point out uh as we're talking about this and so this I should have pointed out when miles asked me what is my what is my background what are my credentials so before I talk about this because this overlaps with the vaccine issues I I want to point within the context of my research program my entire career has been devoted to the development of vaccines I developed vaccines both for uh preventing infectious diseases and treating cancers actually uh and I also teach immunology and I teach the benefits of vaccines um although with that said I I would say vaccines that have been well vetted by the scientific community that have proven to be safe and effective now so this is this is why I mentioned that the goal here is really uh immunity so because that's what we want to achieve right the the ultimate goal that every country is trying to achieve is the so-called herd immunity which is a concept that not everybody needs to be immune to stop the spread of the virus but most of us have to be immune and there's two ways to accomplish that so that's why I say it's that's the goal is to acquire immunity among as many people as we can but that doesn't necessarily equate just with vaccinating everybody because there's two ways to achieve it there's the natural acquisition immunity so anytime we get infected with a pathogen and or a potential pathogen and that's why I want to say potential pathogen because in fact like I said especially in children it seems like this isn't even a pathogen with some of them right they we know that some individuals can get infected and clear that virus and never show signs or symptoms of illness right so Stars chronovirus 2 doesn't necessarily equal covet 19. covid-19 is a disease Cyrus chronovirus 2 is a virus so so again in those cases where the people don't even get disease and clear the virus they're probably mounting natural you know immune responses that are clearly very protective against this virus we also know that those even if people get sick for example with mild or moderate disease any and those with severe disease who recover um well have mounted immune responses against the virus and the growing body of peer-reviewed published scientific evidence tells us that the these are naturally acquired immune responses are long-lived and they are so when people initially people thought they might be short-lived but that was based on looking at antibodies antibodies are proteins and they'll disappear from circulation fairly quickly what confers uh the purpose of a vaccine and and the benefit of of having cleared a virus naturally is we call imological memory and these memory cells are long lasting and the memory B cells are the ones that can produce antibodies quickly if they ever see the virus again so so it's long lasting and protects people need to protect people very well from reinfection there's been a lot of Highly publicized cases globally of people getting reinfected but and and the grand scheme of things that with the millions of people that have been infected it's an incredibly tiny number of cases that we have documented for reinfection so it's really nice one of the problems I guess I'm just kind of seeing with that the way I have to deal with things is we know how many people are getting vaccinated we don't know how know how many people are have natural acquisition is that what you said yeah it's actually acquired immunity yeah that's that we have the exact same problem in Canada we have been terrible at monitoring this uh and what I wanted so this is this is very important though because in both countries we're dealing with a real limitation in vaccine doses right and trying to figure out who to prioritize deliver the vaccines to so this is this is why I wish we had been monitoring this so I want to tell you there's a researcher in uh British Columbia here in Canada so located in Vancouver British Columbia so for you this would be just a little bit north of Seattle Washington no all right and and so they've developed a test in my opinion it's the most sensitive and um uh broadly applicable tests for evidence of immunity against SARS chronovirus II and they just published this study peer-reviewed paper and a very uh high impact scientific journal and it was very interesting so they use this because a lot of the tests that we use to look for evidence of immunity looks for antibodies against this white protein now there's two issues with that that test tends to not be quite very sensitive and those antibodies as they mentioned tend to disappear fairly quickly so what this researcher has done is designed one that looks at responses against multiple components of the virus the benefit of it is is it can detect responses uh that last much longer than just the spike specific protein or antibody response the other thing is it can differentiate between immunity conferred by the vaccines versus naturally acquired immunity because not only does it assess immunity to spike protein which is what our vaccines are targeting but also all the other components and what he found this is very very important this is very important for the issue that you know you're facing he randomly tested a large number of adults in in our province of British Columbia uh apparently healthy adults and found that between 50 and 60 percent of them remarkably had evidence of naturally acquired immunity to the virus now this is important because if you think about it like you're in a better situation we are in Canada we've bragged that we have on a per capita basis the highest number of vaccine doses on order but in the US right now you have a higher number at hand than we do in Canada right so we're we're really short and if that's true if that's true we're trying to we're trying to push the Canadian government to start this testing right because if you have two individuals and you test them and one has evidence of not required immunity and the data should suggest that in of itself is going to be quite protective and the other individual has no evidence of immunity then the other why you know instead of quotes wasting the vaccine the person that's already immune we should be giving it to the people who aren't and if it turns out that as few as 40 percent you know maybe the 50 percent don't have immunity at the moment right then then that means we have half as many people that we need to Target right now to achieve this third immunity another great question is you know people say well how could there be 50 you know 40 50 to 60 percent of people already naturally immune when we've been implementing all these procedures well it's simply because the physical distancing that we've been enacting the two meters and the you know the masking um I can tell you as a virologist it just simply is not effective at preventing the spread of this virus and that's exactly what this data demonstrates right um I can't emphasize it enough the virus is one micron and diameter we now know this this virus gets out of the lungs through aerosols which are the fine water particles that come out of the uh the lungs those water particles the very largest ones will be about 60 microns so if you have a 60 Micron water particle coated with this what coated with the virus the maximum diameter is going to go to 62 microns now this is very surprising and very very important again based on published data where people look at all kinds of these uh we call them low-cost masks right so I use the surgical mask 3-ply and of course many people use a cloth mask well a study was done with all kinds of these mass and it turns out that the pore sizes in these Mass ones that are very tightly woven the smallest is 80 microns but the largest pore sizes in these Ma and some of these masses is 500 microns so like I said so even if you take the smallest pore size it's 80 microns these water largest water particles covered in the virus are 62 microns so these things actually don't stop the spread of the virus plus the these aerosols can travel up to 30 meters through the air and and if people are wondering what we mean by these aerosols right you and I have glasses it's like if I want to clean my glasses what do I do I take them off I exhale on it I get that nice uh fogging of the glasses which gives me a little bit of liquid to clean them right that's the aerosol when I do that that's the aerosol that's coming out of my lungs if you're going into the air and now depending where you are in the United States right through normal Canada we go in the winter time it's very cold and when we breathe we can see our breath that's the aerosols condensing in the cold air right and when you understand this then you understand that all of this quotes physical distancing and mass wearing um hasn't been stopping the spread of the virus and so I would argue in the United States just like in Canada you probably have a much higher level of naturally acquired immunity than you would ever appreciate until you actually start doing the testing well that is a good note to I think end on I appreciate your common sense your logic your you know and your Layman's I appreciate it as a as you know I'm a Aviator by you know in a career I was an airline pilot for 33 years and so this is not up my alley at all but you explained it in such a way that makes sense and and I think a lot of people agree with so Miles you want to kind of wrap it up here yeah well doctor I just appreciate you coming on and and so if people want to learn more find out where where can they go oh well uh if they look up my name um my my name will come up associate with the University of Guelph website and it has all my contact information yeah people are are to feel free to call me or email me and and yeah I do want to I I do want to emphasize what Jeff mentioned there so indeed you know this is a good news message right because when we're trying to achieve this immunity and everybody's worried about the shortage of vaccines I think it's very positive you know a very good message to to understand that we may actually be because of the the year of thinking we were keeping ourselves from spreading the virus among one another we may actually be much closer to that uh goal of herd and Immunity than we ever imagined and so we might not need to vaccinate as many people as we think in order to reach that goal that would be great news doctor I appreciate you coming on and uh and keep up the good work thank you and thank you for the opportunity and take care

Channel: Supervisor Jim Desmond

Views: 145,585

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Id: f1WLkbd6RZY

Length: 35min 28sec (2128 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 13 2021