Greg:
Hey. This is Greg here with board certified plastic surgeon, Dr. Bae, This time via video. I love this. I love this new look you got going on here, Dr. Bae.
Jonathan Kaplan:
Thanks. Appreciate you joining me. This is going to be our new vlog, Bae Break Example thing that we’re going to roll out and see how it goes. But I appreciate you working with me. We’ll hopefully work out all the kinks in this first pilot episode.
Greg:
Yeah. I’m super excited. And you can also sort of give me a consult to at times via video. You can tell me if I need a touch up here or there, when I do this.
Jonathan Kaplan:
Except that everybody else can see this video. So they’ll see the few imperfections you have, let’s be honest, the very few imperfections.
Greg:
But see? That’s okay. I can have them, because you can fix them.
Jonathan Kaplan:
That’s true. Fair enough. Fair enough. Point taken. Touche.
Three Vaccines
Greg:
All right. Well, I know what you do for a living is do things like this, help me look better, but you also know quite a bit about what everybody’s talking about. It’s the different vaccines for COVID. And we just had our latest one come out. Johnson & Johnson hit the Bay Area recently. But there are some differences and everybody wants to know between Johnson & Johnson, the Moderna, Pfizer. And some people have even suggested, “Ooh, do I want to get the Johnson & Johnson?” So fill us in and tell us what’s your best advices.
Jonathan Kaplan:
Yeah. So go through whatever website you can or whatever, Walgreens, Rite Aid. Do your best to kind of just sign up as soon as you can, as soon as your tier opens up. And don’t worry about which vaccine it is. They’re all life-saving vaccines. Yes, there are three that you hear about in the news, the Pfizer, the Moderna, the Johnson & Johnson. And yes, there is maybe higher effectiveness for Pfizer and Moderna, 94 1/2% versus 95%. Moderna’s 94.5%. Pfizer’s 95%. but don’t let that scare you, that Johnson & Johnson, the published report, [inaudible 00:01:57] from 66 to 71%, because it’s all about what they’re measuring there. The thing to keep in mind is while yes, maybe Pfizer and Moderna will keep you from getting a milder case, whereas that might get past the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, the thing that really keep in mind is that all three of them, after about two to three weeks after you’ve gotten any three of those vaccines, that you will not be hospitalized statistically speaking and you will not die if you catch COVID.
Jonathan Kaplan:
So that’s what’s really important, is that these are lifesaving vaccines that will keep you out of the hospital. Doesn’t matter what those percentages are that you may be hearing on the news. So please, whichever opportunity you get, whichever vaccine you get the opportunity to get, like I was saying, sign up, get that vaccine, go take that vaccine, the one that’s available to you tomorrow. Take it. Don’t say, “Oh, I’m going to wait for the Pfizer,” because you just never know when you’re going to get a chance to get that vaccine if you don’t take the chance when you have it.
Greg:
That’s true. And every day without a vaccine is a day that you could possibly encounter COVID. And so you don’t to have to go through that. And something you brought up and I just want to emphasize is I believe it’s 100% of the studies for all three nobody died, nobody went to the hospital under these vaccines. So it’s going to keep you from getting super sick, no matter which one you take.
Where we were just a year ago
Jonathan Kaplan:
Right. I mean, it’s so insane to think that we have three vaccines not even a year after the first shelter in place order was put in place in the United States, which happened to me in San Francisco. So that was March 16th, 2020. We’re not even to March 16th yet and we’ve got three fully-functional vaccines, that like you said and like I’ve said and which you can never reiterate it enough, it will keep you from dying and will keep you from getting hospitalized. Because that’s the thing, is if you say, “Oh, well, you know what? I want to wait for the Pfizer one,” well, let’s say that’s two weeks away and you go and you get a mild case or what you hope is a mild case of coronavirus, but then you get hospitalized and you get put on a ventilator, maybe you survive, great, but if you would have just gone with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is supposedly around 66%, you would have completely avoided the hospital, you would have avoided being on the ventilator. So it seems very obvious to me.
Jonathan Kaplan:
The benefit also of this Johnson & Johnson vaccine is it is one shot. The other two are two shots. But they are looking to see if you get a… They’re doing another study of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, that if you get a second booster shot, kind of like what you’re doing with Pfizer and with Moderna, that that will actually get your levels up to where the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are. So they’re still studying that. But either way, if you can avoid being in the hospital, why take the chance and wait on another vaccine?
mRNA vs other technology
Jonathan Kaplan:
The other thing that’s really I find interesting about the different vaccines is people talk about, “Oh, well, I’m not sure about Pfizer and Moderna because their messenger RNA vaccines,” which nobody knows what that means. I don’t know why you all of a sudden they’re drawing a line in the sand that, “Oh no. No messenger RNA vaccines.” It’s just that that is a newer technology. Or excuse me, I should say it’s a technology that’s been around for 20 years. Just this is the first time it’s been used as a vaccine. And there was some concerns about fertility. All of that is unfounded. There’s no evidence of that.
Jonathan Kaplan:
So whether it’s a message RNA vaccine or whether it’s the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is a vector-based vaccine, you have to become an epidemiologist of virologist to understand any of this, but just believe that smarter people than all of us have done the research and these things are safe. The FDA has viewed these things as safe. And even though they just came out a few months ago, 100s of 1000s of people were included in the studies for all three vaccines and now millions of people have gotten these vaccines in the United States. So they are safe. They really are.
How to get your vaccine!
Greg:
All right. If you haven’t already, get online now, find all the websites, there’s several of them, where you can sign up to get in line to get your vaccine. You can’t just wait around and think you’re going to get a phone call from somebody. You’ve got to go online and be proactive. You can go to your doctor’s website. You can go to a lot of different other websites that you can search and Google, but it’s important to find out where your tier lies, get signed up and get your vaccine.
Jonathan Kaplan:
And what’s kind of cool, and this isn’t technically skipping the line, because obviously I would never encourage that, but if you go Google Dr. B, B as in boy, Dr. B vaccine, it’s a website.
Greg:
[crosstalk 00:06:15].
Jonathan Kaplan:
And maybe you’ve heard… You’re shaking your head. You’ve heard about it? Yeah.
Greg:
Yes.
Jonathan Kaplan:
It’s a website that will let you know if there’s a place where they’re going to have to throw away some vaccines at the end of the day that they don’t have enough people who scheduled or signed up and they’re going to have to throw them out anyway. And so you sign up for that. My boxing instructor, Magic Sean Hall, give him a shout on Instagram, he went last Thursday to the Oakland Coliseum and was able to get a vaccine because of the fact that he signed up on that website and they were going to throw it out. He’s definitely not in the right tier yet, but because they were going to throw it out, it’s totally legit. And he went and got it.
Greg:
Absolutely. The more shots we get in the arms, it doesn’t matter. We would much rather it get into an arm than get thrown away. So you can also show up the Moscone Center on a random Saturday, if they have extras, people don’t show up. That’s another thing. There are no-shows. So you could try it. You could try to show up somewhere. Be polite. And if they have it and it’s going to get thrown away, they will give it to you. Okay. Well, Dr. Bae, this is all great information. And if somebody maybe wants to see you for your real specialty, which is making us all look and feel better, I know you’ve done that for me and 1000s of others in the Bay Area, tell them how they can reach you.
Learn more
Jonathan Kaplan:
Yeah. It’s very easy. On Instagram or on Snapchat, they can message us, direct messages us, at realdrbae, R-E-A-L, D-R, B-A-E, not B-A-Y. And they can also go to our website, which is realdrbae.com. And we have a price estimator on there, a chat bot where you can check pricing, because I know that’s always… Ultimately, everybody’s question is how much does it cost? So we make it very easy for people to check pricing before they come in for the consultation, so nobody experiences any sticker shock.
Greg:
He can definitely help you get rid of that COVID-19 that you’ve gained, if that’s what you’re looking to do or-
Jonathan Kaplan:
[crosstalk 00:08:01] we all gained.
Greg:
Or any wrinkles, because you’ve been worried for a year and a half. Thank you so much, Dr. Bae. It’s been a pleasure.
Jonathan Kaplan:
Always a pleasure, Greg. Thanks so much for joining me.
