Description

On this very special episode of Fresh Lens, we speak Dr. Shirin Kalyan of the University of British Columbia’s Department of Medicine. Dr. Kalyan is an expert in immunology and immunotherapy. 

In this episode, we discuss the COVID19 pandemic and the scientific foundations of Canada’s response to it. Dr. Kalyan is a fount of knowledge. Our wide-ranging conversation touches on:

• The different types of vaccines
• How mRNA vaccines differ from the past vaccines
• How the immune system recognizes different threats
• Whether reaching COVID-zero is still possible
• Whether the current policies being adopted in Canada make sense based on our best science 

You can find Dr. Kalyan on Twitter @tolling_bell.

Watch segments of Dr. Kalyan’s testimony for the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health here and here.

Some of the papers we have referenced in this episode are listed below.

https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2074

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.28.21264260v1

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v1

https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002198

https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-once-confers-much-greater-immunity-vaccine-vaccination-remains-vital