Why Immunization Matters with Dr. Kawsar Talaat

Show Notes

With respiratory season approaching, it’s vital to protect against preventable illnesses like COVID-19, flu, RSV, and pneumonia. As debates over vaccination grow, hearing directly from experts is more important than ever.

Joining us today is Dr. Kawsar Talaat, Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins, WHO advisor, and Alliance Research Advisory Council member, to discuss why immunization matters, how to address hesitancy, and what to know this season.

Episode Transcript

Lindsay Clarke:

Hi, everyone. And welcome to This Is Growing Old, the podcast all about the common human experience of aging.

My name is Lindsay Clarke and I’m the COO and Senior Vice President of Health Education at the Alliance for Aging Research. I’ll be your host today.

With respiratory season just around the corner, we want to equip you with the resources you need to help protect against preventable illnesses like COVID-19, flu, RSV, and pneumonia. Vaccination has become a hot-button topic, which makes it more important than ever to hear directly from experts about your immunization options.

I’m thrilled to be joined today by Dr. Kawsar Talaat, Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, a member of the WHO Technical Advisory Group for Combination Vaccines and a member of our Research Advisory Council. Dr. Talaat’s experience spans infectious diseases, global health, vaccine trials for new vaccines, and existing vaccine safety.

Today we’ll dive into why immunization matters, how to address vaccine hesitancy, and what you should keep in mind this respiratory season. Dr. Talaat, welcome.

Dr. Kawsar Talaat:

Thank you very much, Lindsay. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Lindsay Clarke:

It’s always a pleasure to see you.

So I’m having a hard time believing it, but it is almost fall and that means it’s almost respiratory season. And many of us are thinking about vaccines. So can you tell us why is it so important for people to get vaccinated and especially older adults?

Dr. Kawsar Talaat:

So vaccines keep us healthy and prevent us from getting sick and for the respiratory virus vaccines, even if they don’t completely prevent us from getting sick, they make the illness less severe. Especially as we get older, our chances of having more severe disease that ends us up in the hospital is greater and so the vaccines will keep people healthier and out of the hospital. Regarding COVID also, vaccines do help prevent long COVID from happening, which can be very debilitating for the people who are suffering from it. So lots of reasons to get vaccinated.

Lindsay Clarke:

Do you mind talking about some of the more serious complications that can happen from some of these infectious diseases? I know you mentioned long COVID, but what are some of the other serious complications?

Dr. Kawsar Talaat:

So the most serious complication from respiratory illness, so this is true for COVID, this is true for RSV and for influenza is pneumonia, and that is an inflammation of the lungs where it makes it hard to breathe, makes it hard to get oxygen to your tissues. Sometimes people with pneumonia end up in the hospital, sometimes they can end up needing oxygen or even mechanical ventilation, so they’re put on a ventilator to help them breathe when they have it. And so the best way to stay healthy and to prevent that is to get vaccines against these infections.

Lindsay Clarke:

Can we just dig in a little bit more into why older adults are particularly vulnerable to those complications?

Dr. Kawsar Talaat:

So as we get older, our immune system ages with us and with that aging we mount a less vigorous response to infections such as viruses or bacteria. And so those infections can sometimes overwhelm our immune system and cause a more severe infection. And especially if we have other illnesses, lung disease, underlying lung disease or underlying heart disease, that puts at an increased risk of developing more severe illness with these infections. The other thing is if we have diabetes or kidney disease, that also affects our immune system and makes these infections more severe.

Lindsay Clarke:

I want to just underscore something that you said at the beginning of your first answer because I think it’s important people think about the complications. Obviously we want to prevent serious illness and lessen its duration, but also it can keep you from getting sick. It can keep you from spending as much time at home, away from work, away from your friends and family. So it’s not just about the serious complications, it’s also about staying healthy so we can still attend to our daily lives, so I just wanted to underscore that.

Dr. Kawsar Talaat:

Absolutely.

Lindsay Clarke:

So I think it’s not uncommon now that there’s some vaccine hesitancy and people have questions. So as a physician and an expert in infectious diseases, how do you address the importance of getting vaccines when you’re talking to someone who has a lot of questions and who’s feeling vaccine hesitant?

…I would much rather have a sore arm than end up in the hospital with influenza.

Dr. Kawsar Talaat:

It is important to know that vaccines are held to a much higher standard for safety than other medical products. We know that we give vaccines to healthy people from babies that are just born all the way through the life course. So because we’re giving it to healthy people to stay healthy, we want to make sure that the vaccines are as safe as possible. So when we develop vaccines, we test them in tens to hundreds of thousands of people in order to make sure that they’re safe and even after they’re licensed, we continue to follow the safety of vaccines all along. So it’s not that we say, “Well, this vaccine’s 20 years old, we’re not going to worry about safety anymore.” We continue to follow the safety of all vaccines no matter how long they’ve been given. And so vaccines are scrutinized in a way that other products are not.

The other thing to know is that when we do look at that, we look at all this data and we know that vaccines are given to millions or billions of people. We can see what even very rare events that happen after the vaccines, and we know that overwhelmingly the vaccines that we have are safe, they prevent disease, they keep people healthy, and that the more serious side effects are incredibly rare and the most common side effects are a sore arm. And I would much rather have a sore arm than end up in the hospital with influenza.

When I talk to people who are vaccine hesitant, I say, “Talk to trusted experts. Don’t listen to talking heads on the internet.” They should talk to their doctors, understand what their risks are from these infections, what the potential benefit from the vaccines are, and get their doctor’s opinion if they’re concerned.

Lindsay Clarke:

That’s great, and you really, I think, jumped into our next question, which is the new administration has questioned some of the efficacy and safety of many proven vaccines, and that is inevitably fueling the rise in misinformation. So when it comes to who we should trust when we’re looking for answers on which vaccines we need, when we need them, who should get them, who doesn’t need them, how to protect our loved ones, who should we trust? Where do we go?

Dr. Kawsar Talaat:

You should trust your doctor and talk to your doctor about vaccines. Trusted health experts. I think the new administration has created a lot of confusion and sowed a lot of doubt about vaccines that unfortunately will result in people not getting vaccinated and more people in the hospital and more people suffering either chronic problems or dying from vaccine preventable diseases. But I would speak with your doctor, look at what professional societies are recommending, things like the Alliance for Aging Research, for example, and other societies that have the health of the population as a primary goal.

We are now recognizing the role that influenza, COVID, RSV have in causing cardiac events…

Lindsay Clarke:

So I feel like this next question’s unfair because I’m asking for one bit of advice, so if you need to give a few bits of advice, but what advice do you want our listeners to know ahead of this upcoming respiratory season?

Dr. Kawsar Talaat:

These viruses can really make your quality of life very bad. As we get older, our ability to bounce back from infections lessens, and every infection that we have decreases our functional capacity a little bit. And so by preventing severe illness, it keeps us as healthy as possible.

We are now recognizing the role that influenza, COVID, RSV have in causing cardiac events, so things like heart attacks and strokes. So the infections can trigger these, and one way to prevent them is by getting the vaccine. So making sure that you’re appropriately vaccinated against respiratory viruses. Everybody should get the flu vaccine. Everybody should get the COVID vaccine if they’re able to given the current restrictions, and people should talk to their doctors about whether the RSV vaccine is right for them or if they need to wait to get that vaccine until a little bit later. Also, people over the age of 50 with underlying health issues should also be getting the pneumonia vaccine as well if they haven’t already gotten it.

Lindsay Clarke:

That’s great. I think it’s interesting you mentioned the risk of cardiovascular events with a flu infection, and I believe that’s even in people who don’t otherwise have risks of cardiovascular disease. Is that right?

Dr. Kawsar Talaat:

Yes, that’s very true. Yeah.

Lindsay Clarke:

So it’s putting everyone at an increased risk and then depending on your age and your other risk factors, you might be at heightened risk.

Dr. Kawsar Talaat:

Yes.

Lindsay Clarke:

So sort of putting on your hopeful hat, looking ahead, what gives you hope for the future of healthcare?

…we are learning more, creating new vaccines, and people are taking them up and staying healthy longer.

Dr. Kawsar Talaat:

I think we are coming up with new vaccines for diseases that are causing significant problems in our older population. And the idea of vaccinating older adults to keep them healthy is becoming mainstream, whereas I think a few years ago it was far less discussed. So that makes me very hopeful. We are recognizing more and more the impact on quality of life these infections can have for older people and the fact that we are developing vaccines against them to help keep people healthy is quite wonderful. We didn’t have an RSV vaccine two years ago, so I think that that keeps me hopeful, the fact that we are learning more, creating new vaccines, and people are taking them up and staying healthy longer.

Lindsay Clarke:

I love it. Yeah. So switching gears, we have two questions that we ask of all of our podcast guests, and the first is when you were a kid, what did you imagine growing older would look like?

Dr. Kawsar Talaat:

I don’t know that kids really truly ever think about growing older. I think they think that they’re going to be young forever, but I sort of thought it would be something like Angela Lansbury, that that’s what growing up would be like and there’d be a lot of tea parties involved.

Lindsay Clarke:

Are there?

Dr. Kawsar Talaat:

No.

Lindsay Clarke:

Okay.

Dr. Kawsar Talaat:

No tea parties are involved. And that I would have time when I grew older to do exactly what I wanted and that nobody would be able to tell me to do anything. And that is also not true.

Lindsay Clarke:

Yeah, I was going to say I know the answer to that question. Well, we’ll focus on the tea parties then. So what do you enjoy most about growing older now?

Dr. Kawsar Talaat:

I think for me, the lack of angst. I remember being, there’s just a lot of angst when you’re young about making decisions that you think will change your life forever, and every decision is a life or death situation it seems like when you’re younger. And I think as we get older, we realize that there’s no one way to do things and there’s a lot more flexibility and a lot more room to make mistakes and you will get up and move on. And yeah, I think the lack of angst. As I see young people around me, I’m a professor, so I teach and I have kids, and it’s nice not to have the angst anymore.

Lindsay Clarke:

Yeah, that’s a great perspective. I wish we could have it when we were younger.

Well, Dr. Talaat, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your expertise with us. And thank you to everyone who’s listening to This is Growing old. Please check out agingresearch.org for more information about vaccination and healthy aging. Thanks to everyone for joining.

Dr. Kawsar Talaat:

Thank you very much, Lindsay.

Lindsay Clarke:

Thank you.