The Lab's CEO and Medical Director recently sat down for an online chat with users of the Ellsworth Public Library to talk vaccines and what is down the road for us all.

The presentation was hosted by the Library and moderated by Democratic State Representative Nicole Grohoski.  Both Jackson Laboratory CEO and President Edison Liu along with Jens Rueter, who is the lab’s medical director, gave everyone insight as to how recent vaccines were created and how they work.

To begin with, the two talked about how the scientific community dropped everything to come together and work relentlessly to produce the new COVID-19 vaccines.  They then went on to say how very different they are from traditional vaccines of the past, because they "use RNA molecules developed from sequencing the virus," according to a story in the Ellsworth American.  The new process apparently was the reason why the new vaccines were produced so quickly.

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The question was asked of the two that if a person who had been administered a vaccination for COVID-19 should still have to wear a mask and be socially distanced from others.

“For now, there’s some things we just simply don’t know. Letting our guards down would be a mistake,” Jens Rueter the Jackson Laboratory's Medical Director told his online audience.

CEO and President Edison Liu then added that because of many uncertain variables across the globe "what we’re going to be seeing is this virus coming back. I would argue that it’s inevitable.”

Last year, analysts from the Jackson Laboratory found that COVID-19 had arrived in Maine much sooner than everyone had previously thought, long before the first case was registered on March 12th, 2020.

 

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