the virus was declared eliminated<\/a> in the year 2000.<\/p>\nIt\u2019s a phenomenon that our next guest sees as the result of misinformation and mistrust \u2014 but also as a failure of public health.<\/p>\n
Bertram Jacobs has dedicated his life to vaccines. He and his team developed the vaccine that helped eradicate smallpox. He spent years working on a potential HIV vaccine and, today, his lab at Arizona State University\u2019s Biodesign Institute is focused on creating a better vaccine against mpox, or monkeypox, which saw a major worldwide outbreak a few years ago.<\/p>\n
So, what does he make of this resurgence of preventable viruses? The Show sat down with him in our studios recently to find out.<\/p>\n
Full conversation <\/p>\n
BERTRAM JACOBS:<\/b> Smallpox has been eradicated is the one virus that has been eradicated from the face of the Earth, as far as we know, is only present in two freezers anywhere in the world. One at the CDC in Atlanta and one at a place in Siberia, in Russia. Very few people have access to it, only registered people, very high security in both facilities.<\/p>\n
And so we\u2019ve been incredibly lucky that we had just an excellent, excellent vaccine \u2014 smallpox vaccine, a virus called vaccina virus \u2014 that allowed us to eradicate smallpox. We\u2019ve come close with polio. But, we\u2019re not there yet with polio.<\/p>\n
LAUREN GILGER: So when you go into a lab to deal with one of these very deadly viruses, what do you do to protect yourself?<\/b><\/p>\n
JACOBS: <\/b>So we have two ways primarily \u2014 I\u2019ll say three ways of protecting ourselves. One is everybody in my lab is vaccinated with a vaccine that will protect them from monkeypox. Everybody. We get vaccinated every three years. I got my vaccine two or three months ago. And so we are some of the most immune people to monkeypox, certainly in Arizona.<\/p>\n
But we also do all of our work at what we call Biosafety Level 3. There are four levels of biosafety. One is the lowest containment and four is the highest. And we work at Biosafety Level 3, both in the lab in cells and culture but also with animals as well, because you need to test vaccines on animals.<\/p>\n
GILGER: So you\u2019re wearing protective gear.<\/b><\/p>\n
JACOBS:<\/b> So there\u2019s the vaccination. There\u2019s what we call the building protection. And then we wear protective gear. Basically with some of our work, no skin is showing whatsoever. We wear what\u2019s called a PAPR (powered air purifying respirator) over our head that brings purified air in.<\/p>\n
We have lab coats that go from your wrist to your ankles. We have ankle protection. We do double gloves. It can take easily 5 to 10 minutes to gear up to go into one of these labs. And the problem is, if you forgot something, you got to take everything off, go back out, get what you forgot, put everything back on, and then go back in.<\/p>\n
GILGER: Which I\u2019m sure happens. So not your normal level of PPE, like you\u2019d see in a hospital.<\/b><\/p>\n
JACOBS:<\/b> No, no, not your normal PPE you\u2019d see in the hospitals. Very highly increased compared to that.<\/p>\n
GILGER: OK. So working with these microscopic viruses that are so deadly, how does that make you think about them?<\/b><\/p>\n
JACOBS:<\/b> Well, it makes you think very carefully about them. I remember a number of years ago when we first started working with HIV, I was actually doing lab work at the time. I don\u2019t do lab work anymore. These hands aren\u2019t steady enough anymore to do lab work. But I remember sitting in a biosafety cabinet, which is designed to keep everything that\u2019s in there in there and not come out at you.<\/p>\n
I had a vial of HIV in there. And I remember thinking that vial could kill me and a thousand other people.<\/p>\n
GILGER: My goodness.<\/b><\/p>\n
JACOBS: <\/b>And when I was doing that, there were days when my mind just wasn\u2019t ready to do the work. And I would say, \u201cI can\u2019t do the experiments today. I\u2019ve got to go out hiking.\u201d<\/p>\n
Literally, you have to concentrate on that vial like it\u2019s the only thing in the world. And if you can\u2019t concentrate on that vial, don\u2019t do the work.<\/p>\n
GILGER: Do you think viruses are alive, in a way?<\/b><\/p>\n
JACOBS:<\/b> Well I get that question a lot. So they\u2019re sort of a mixture of living and nonliving. Viruses only reproduce, which is an aspect of being alive is the ability to reproduce, when they get inside of one of our cells. So when they\u2019re inside one of our cells, I look at them as alive because they\u2019ve got the ability to reproduce.<\/p>\n
But you can take a virus and put it in a test tube, and it\u2019s like a chemical. So it\u2019s got this sort of duality is the way I think of it.<\/p>\n
GILGER: Yeah. So you\u2019ve had successes and failures in this vaccine realm in your career, I know. Talk about the successes. Like what was it like to be able to create something that could prevent something so deadly? Did you feel it in the moment?<\/b><\/p>\n
JACOBS: <\/b>Certainly when I think about the possibilities of some of our work, it\u2019s really incredibly satisfying because I know the potential is there to save lives. For me, that\u2019s the most important thing. Can what we\u2019re doing have a positive effect on humanity, save lives, prevent disease, prevent people from suffering? That\u2019s the key to everything we do.<\/p>\n
GILGER: Talk about the process of trying to create a vaccine that is effective. Like, how would you describe it? Is it like a puzzle? Is it like a riddle?<\/b><\/p>\n
JACOBS:<\/b> Yeah, it\u2019s certainly like a puzzle. I love doing puzzles. I do puzzles at home when I\u2019m not at work, but it\u2019s a lot like a puzzle. The way I think about it is you get sort of pieces of information, and then at some point they all sort of click together and you say, \u201cAha! If I do this, I can make a better vaccine.\u201d<\/p>\n
And so it\u2019s a lot of sort of what I call basic research of just trying to understand how viruses work, how they cause disease, how they counteract our defenses. And once we know how viruses cause disease, how they counteract our defenses, then we can potentially build a better vaccine to protect against them. And that\u2019s sort of the strategy that we\u2019ve used for the last 40 years or so.<\/p>\n
![\"Bertram](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1756327872_255_\"\/)
<\/p>\n
Amber Victoria Singer\/KJZZ<\/p>\n
Bertram Jacobs in KJZZ’s studios in August 2025. <\/p>\n
GILGER: OK, so smallpox is no longer a virus we worry about, right? Lots of other diseases like that, like polio. We don\u2019t really worry about that anymore. But this is changing because we are starting to see other viruses that used to be viruses we didn\u2019t worry about coming back.<\/b><\/p>\n
Measles, right? We\u2019re seeing this happen. We\u2019re seeing cases of these diseases pop up because fewer and fewer people are accepting those vaccines.<\/b><\/p>\n
And I should say, when I say \u201cfewer,\u201d most people will still become vaccinated. But this is becoming a debate in a way that it didn\u2019t used to be.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
JACOBS: <\/b>Yeah. And when I think about this sort of debate, the way I look at it is by a risk benefit analysis. What are the risks? Because there are risks to everything. I\u2019m not here to say vaccines are risk-free. They have risks. But in the vast majority of cases, they provide so much benefit that as a society, we should be able to accept the risks.<\/p>\n
And to me, that\u2019s the way I look at it. And so for measles vaccine, the vaccine is incredibly safe. Is it perfectly safe? Of course not. Nothing is perfectly safe. But the risks are so minor compared to the benefits that are out there if everybody takes the vaccine that in my mind, it\u2019s well worth doing it, well worth everybody getting the vaccine.<\/p>\n
And I say everybody because with measles vaccine, we get what\u2019s known as herd immunity. So if you have one person who\u2019s not vaccinated, they can get sick. The virus then has a hard time finding anybody else to infect. And so that\u2019s the level of immunity we want for any virus.<\/p>\n
And we can get that. We have had that with measles and we\u2019re starting to lose that with measles.<\/p>\n
GILGER: Is that frustrating?<\/b><\/p>\n
JACOBS:<\/b> It\u2019s incredibly frustrating. I was thinking about that, because to think about it, you not only have to think about yourself, but you have to think about the rest of society. Maybe this isn\u2019t the right comparison. But we praise soldiers who go to Afghanistan or Iraq. They don\u2019t go there for themselves. They go there to help our society be better.<\/p>\n
Why don\u2019t we feel that way about people who get vaccinated? Somebody getting vaccinated is helping to protect everybody in our society.<\/p>\n
GILGER: So Bert, we\u2019ve seen vaccine skepticism grow so rapidly. And a lot of people will say there are a lot of reasons why. It could be social media. It\u2019s misinformation. It\u2019s influencers. It\u2019s RFK Jr., who\u2019s now our secretary of health, talking about vaccines in a different way and raising a lot of questions about them.<\/b><\/p>\n
I wonder watching this become a mainstream discussion, what that has felt like to you.<\/b><\/p>\n
JACOBS: <\/b>In some ways, this felt like a failure on my part. I feel like I should probably be out there getting more of this information out to people, and hopefully this interview will help with that. It\u2019s not just that I feel strongly about vaccines. <\/p>\n
The data is clear. We used to have incredible death rates due to infectious diseases in the 1800s, and now less than one in 20,000 people in the US dies of an infectious disease.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s incredible. It\u2019s amazing. But we have to keep it up. And by keeping it up, there are three things that I believe that the death rate has decreased so much. One is better sanitation, which we keep doing. One is better availability of antibiotics, and we may be running out of antibiotics due to antibiotic resistance. <\/p>\n
And the third leg of that is vaccines. And if we stop using vaccines, that death rate is going to start going up. Will it ever go up to where it was in the 1800s? No, but we are going to see people dying of diseases that could have been prevented. And to me, that really \u2014 I want to say crime, sin \u2014 it\u2019s something that we shouldn\u2019t allow to happen, that people should die of diseases that are preventable.<\/p>\n
GILGER: I wonder why you think this is happening, right? I listed a lot of reasons that are out there, but is it fair, in some ways? This is tied to mistrust in the medical system. And this is tied to mistrust in any kind of system in our society, any kind of institution. Is it a public health failure or is it a societal failure?<\/b><\/p>\n
JACOBS:<\/b> Boy, that\u2019s a tough question. Certainly it\u2019s a public health failure. And we saw that, I think, during COVID. The public health message wasn\u2019t as clear as it could be. The public health message changed from time to time.<\/p>\n
And part of that was that at the beginning of COVID, we were going on our best guesses. And that\u2019s going to change, The more you learn about it, you say, \u201cAh. That was a good idea. Let\u2019s do this.\u201d That\u2019s going to happen.<\/p>\n
And so there is a way that we in public health were not as effective in, providing the information to society in a way that society could say, \u201cAh. That makes sense to me. OK, I can do it.\u201d But again, I think, as you\u2019ve said, we\u2019ve seen in society skepticism for all authority. And, that\u2019s a scary thing.<\/p>\n
But there are people who\u2019ve made a life of looking at these things who really know the facts really well. And in some way we as a society need to take advantage of that. And I think we\u2019re not doing that as well as we used to.<\/p>\n
GILGER: You think we need some vaccine influencers out there, pro-vaccine influencers?<\/b><\/p>\n
JACOBS: <\/b>Certainly I think that would be a great idea.<\/p>\n
GILGER: So let me ask you what you think could turn the tide on this. Is it people watching children become sick and die of measles, as we\u2019re seeing in Texas? Or is it this becoming more ubiquitous again and people saying, \u201cWe don\u2019t want this? What happened?\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n
JACOBS:<\/b> Yeah, I hope it never gets to that, that it gets so ubiquitous that people say, \u201cWait a minute, what\u2019s going on here?\u201d I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s influencers, but I think we need to do a better job of talking about what it used to be like and what it\u2019s like now.<\/p>\n
Because none of us remember when smallpox used to go through a village and kill half of the people in the village. We have no experience with that.<\/p>\n
Are we ever going to get to that again? No. But are we going to have diseases that go through a country and kill millions of people? Well, we saw that with COVID. So I think we really need to look at the way it used to be and say, \u201cI never want to go back there again.\u201d<\/p>\n
GILGER: So if the most recent historical lesson there is from just a few years ago when we were hit by this massive pandemic, do you think our societal memories are so short that we\u2019ve forgotten?<\/b><\/p>\n
JACOBS:<\/b> I think our societal memory is short, and I think disinformation has given us all amnesia. We\u2019ve got to find ways to combat the disinformation with facts that we know from science.<\/p>\n
KJZZ’s The Show transcripts are created on deadline. This text is edited for length and clarity, and may not be in its final form. The authoritative record of KJZZ’s programming is the audio record.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Measles outbreaks are becoming more common as vaccine skepticism grows across the country. The Centers for Disease Control…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":180659,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,5643,1587,1589,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-180658","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-arizona","10":"tag-az","11":"tag-phoenix","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-united-states-of-america","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115102710946797384","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}