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

It is in all likelihood that we will have a [COVID-19] vaccine that is rolling off the assembly line into the arms of Americans by early next year [2021], so a year and a quarter to make a vaccine with only having the virus in hand in January [2020]. That's remarkably fast. It's unimaginably fast.

I think in March of this year [2020], I did not think it was plausible that there would be a [COVID-19] vaccine on the market within a year. In fact, I probably would have used the word 'impossible' if you said to me in March, 'Can there be a vaccine in a year?'

If that's true that your immune system works better at a higher temperature, are there studies done showing the people who are given anti-fever medicines, like Tylenol or Ibuprofen, do they do worse? And the answer is, redundantly, yes. And in the world of vaccines, when people choose to treat fever with anti-fever medicines when they've gotten a vaccine, you have a lesser immune response.

This [SARS-CoV-2] is not a virus that just gets in, kills you, and gets out, or gets in, makes you sick, and gets out; there are longer term effects with this virus, and it should be taken seriously.

People less than 21 years of age in the United States make up about 26% of the population, yet they account for 0.08% of the [COVID-19] deaths.

There aren’t many things in medicine we can say with a higher degree of certainty, actually, than the MMR vaccine does not cause autism.

As a general rule, men tend to die and boys tend to die at a greater frequency than girls for most infectious disease. We are the weaker sex.

According to a study done by the Autism Science Foundation, about 85% of parents who have children with autism no longer believe that vaccines were the cause.