Paul Offit, M.D.: An expert perspective on COVID-19 vaccines

**Peter Attia** (0:11)
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Now, without further delay, here's today's episode.
I guess this week is Dr. Paul Offit. Paul's a pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases, and he's an expert on vaccines, immunology and virology. He's the director of the Vaccine Education Center and a professor of pediatrics in the division of infectious diseases at CHOP, the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He's also a professor of vaccinology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. And he's on the FDA committee for biologics evaluation and research vaccines and related biological products advisory committee. In other words, he's on the FDA committee that is overseeing the basically unprecedented scale with which vaccines are being put into a pipeline to be evaluated for COVID. He's also the co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine, as if all of the above were not enough.
I wanted to talk with Paul for a couple of months, but I wanted to wait until the time was right. And I kind of defined that as a moment when we had enough certainty in terms of what was going on with COVID vaccines, that we could speak about it in less abstractions and more straightforward terms with respect to likely releases and approvals of various vaccines. And so I'm really glad that actually we waited until this time, because I do think we're at that point where we have a pretty clear line of sight into the pipeline of a number of companies and also a number of strategies that are being employed. And that's basically what we go into. I mean, we certainly talk about Paul's background, which is fascinating and why he's sort of the perfect guy to have this discussion. But the meat of this discussion really focuses on delineating the four strategies with which one can pursue a vaccination against the virus that causes COVID.
And then we talk about basically who the major companies are in each of those categories, where they are in their life cycle, what that actually means, and what it implies as far as vaccination approval. We talk a lot about what the potential risks are in each of the categories and more broadly. And ultimately we talk about what 2021 could look like and what the unknowns are. So I learned a lot in this episode, actually more than I expected. I was just completely riveted by Paul's insights. And I think we all have a little bit of COVID fatigue at this point that's understandable. But I think anybody who's got questions about will a vaccine change my life? What should I expect next year? I think, and I hope at least most of your questions are going to be answered here. And I don't suspect this is the last time that Paul and I will speak. So without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Paul Offit.
Paul, thank you so much for making time to sit down with me today. I know that you are someone who a lot of people wanna talk with, especially now that people are really starting to come to grips with the fact that a vaccine for the coronavirus is going to be a very important part of the story.
I guess before we get that though, I think it's important for people to understand why your thoughts on the subject are important. In other words, you're not just someone like me who's been thinking about the coronavirus for less than a year, you're someone who has spent essentially a lifetime thinking about this type of a problem. There's a story about how you were a very young boy, you were hospitalized, and that experience at such a young age kind of shaped the way you thought about going into medicine and ultimately even being a pediatrician. Can you share a bit of that?

**Paul Offit** (4:20)
Sure, so I was born with clubbed feet, which means that my feet turned sort of inward and down. Typically, that's treated with casting, so I was casted in the first few hours of life, really. And then, so for months, I was casted, but it didn't seem to work. I mean, my feet seemed to straighten out, but at the age of five, my father decided that he didn't like the way that my heel didn't, oh, my right foot didn't hit the ground as well as he would have liked.