Dr. Byram Bridle joining Christine Anderson Tour in Toronto Feb 21, 2023

We are excited to share that Dr. Byram Bridle is  joining Christine on her tour at the Eglington Grand Theatre in Toronto on Feb 21, 2023. I am an Associate Professor of Viral Immunology in the Department of Pathobiology at the University of Guelph. I specialize in vaccinology and am also leader of the Vaccine Task Force of the Canadian COVID Care Alliance’s Scientific and Medical Advisory Committee. My research program focuses on the development of vaccines to prevent infectious diseases and treat cancers, as well as studying the body’s immune response to viruses. I teach several courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels on the topics of immunology, virology, and cancer biology. The overall aim of my research efforts is to develop safe and effective new immunotherapies for people. Indeed, one of my previous cancer vaccine strategies progressed into four human clinical trials. I am also involved in training Canada’s next generation of multidisciplinary researchers, especially in vaccinology. I received funding from the Ontario Government (COVID-19 Rapid Research Fund, Ministry of Colleges and Universities) and the Government of Canada (Pandemic Response Challenge Program, National Research Council of Canada) to conduct pre-clinical research with vaccines against COVID-19. I also hold numerous grants in support of my cancer research and basic viral immunology research programs, including but not limited to the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Terry Fox Research Institute, Canadian Cancer Society, and Cancer Research Society. I have received numerous teaching and research awards including the prestigious Terry Fox Research Institute’s New Investigator Award and the Zoetis Award for Research Excellence. I have served as an expert witness for court cases related to the science of COVID-19, including vaccines. Since the COVID-19 pandemic was declared, I have been actively involved in providing fact-based, balanced, scientific answers to questions posed by the public to help them make fully informed decisions. This has included ~300 media engagements ranging from radio shows, published articles, and appearances on televised news programs, spanning the local to international scope. I have also been an invited keynote speaker at international conferences that focused on COVID-19 and have served as an invited member of numerous COVID-19-focused discussion panels. Vaccinology is a highly specialized sub-discipline of immunology. I am called upon as an expert in this specialized field to comment on the critical importance of high-quality, well-validated, robustly safety-tested vaccines and I routinely promote their use. I support the concept of vaccine mandates in well-defined scenarios. However, the definition of a vaccine had to be altered to allow the term to be applied to the current COVID-19 inoculations, which do not prevent infection, do not prevent disease (i.e, COVID-19), and do not stop transmission of SARS-CoV-2, which is the causative agent of COVID-19. In stark contrast, historically mandated vaccines, including the childhood series, provide robust, very long-lasting protective immunity. These vaccines confer near-sterilizing immunity, which means that people cannot contract the targeted disease, nor can they transmit the targeted pathogen to others. After receiving these true vaccines, individuals not only do not need to be isolated, masked, or practice physical distancing, they are actively encouraged to interact with others. Further, historically mandated vaccines were assessed for adverse events over long periods of time. The current COVID-19 inoculations had proper safety assessments ended after four months. Notably, the six-month update report provided by Pfizer showed that adverse events were higher in the vaccinated group as compared to the placebo-treated controls, and demonstrated only modest absolute effectiveness against the original variant of SARS-CoV-2. The vaccine failed to reduce COVID-related hospitalizations and deaths and is now outdated and irrelevant in the context of the currently circulating variants of SARS-CoV-2. Based on hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific publications, it is my professional opinion that the risk-benefit profile of SARS-CoV-2 inoculations currently being used around the world demands that mandates for these vaccines be rescinded to avoid exposing any more people, especially youth, to their enhanced risks.