Dr. Murtaza Akhter, Emergency Physician at the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix, joined Yahoo Finance Live to break down his thoughts on the COVID-19 vaccine and heart inflammation.

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: We want to continue the conversation around COVID with our doctor, Dr. Murtaza Akhter. He's an Emergency Physician at the University of Arizona's College of Medicine in Phoenix. And Dr. Akhter, it's great to have you here on Yahoo Finance. Let's start with the CDC emergency meeting that Angelie was initially talking about. The heart inflammation, it's occurring in a small number of people and adolescents here who received the shot. The data suggested that the majority of people who have experienced these symptoms have recovered, but I'm curious just to get your perspective on this and what can you tell us about this condition.

MURTAZA AKHTER: Yes, so heart inflammation, what we often think is it myocarditis. Now, that's one of the things they're investigating, is it true inflammation of the muscle lining around the heart. But the most important thing I think for your viewers to keep in mind, is that it's extremely rare. As a matter of fact, getting myocarditis from COVID itself is way more likely. And so this in and of itself wouldn't be a reason that I would be afraid of the vaccine. Remember there are a lot of people out there being, like, hey, listen the survival rate from COVID is like 99%, which leaves 1% mortality. It's actually maybe 1.7%. While the complication of this vaccine, in terms of heart inflammation, isn't 1.7%. It's not 0.17%. It's 0.017%. It's not 0.0017%. It's 0.00017%. So very, very rare. I'm glad they're looking into it. But again, it's a very rare complication. I wouldn't let this make me hesitant about the vaccine.

- Doctor, can you tell us about these new federal COVID rules. Some of them are exempting employers, basically, giving them immunity. What are the pros and cons of this process and the framework as you're seeing it?

MURTAZA AKHTER: Yeah, I know some of the labor people are a little bit upset about this. I think the logic behind the administration and Osha-- not that I was involved-- was that vaccines are so effective that to tell employers, you have to take extra measures in order to be able to protect your employees, presumably seemed unnecessary. Now, of course, everybody has to look out for himself or herself. I feel like I have a very sort of position where I'm able to tell people you need to wear a mask where I am. Because I'm in a hospital. I'm the supervising physician but somebody who's, I don't know, at the front lines of a grocery store and can't tell every person to wear a mask, and doesn't know where the person's vaccinate or not, I can imagine would have concerns.

But remember, if you've been vaccinated the chance of contracting disease are low and of contracting severe disease are extremely low. And so this is another reason they say get vaccinated, especially if you're going to be potentially exposed to other people in the workplace setting. If you're concerned about these guidelines or lack thereof from your employers, then the most important thing is to be vaccinated. And for some reason you can't be, which should be very rare-- there should be very few exceptions to this-- but if for some reason you can't be, then you have to wear really great masks to try to protect yourself. But, again, vaccination is the best protection you have against COVID.

JULIE HYMAN: Doctor, speaking of the importance of protecting yourself, I don't know if you saw these headlines but there was a big Bitcoin conference down in Miami last week and around 12,000 people attended. We've seen a number of attendees are now testing positive for COVID, obviously, who did not get the vaccine. Is it too early to hold large conferences like this?

MURTAZA AKHTER: Well, I'm in Miami right now and conferences have been being held here for a little while now. I remember when I got down here initially, I was like-- this is before the vaccine, just before the vaccine implementation-- I was like, what are you guys doing. Interestingly, after the vaccine, I feel like there hasn't been much of a change. I mean, the number of people I see masked is the same. It seemed too low before. Post-vaccination It seems really great that everybody's still masking up. Would I go to a big conference on Bitcoin-- cryptocurrency opinions aside-- I probably personally wouldn't, just because I wouldn't want to be in that large of a crowd for that type of a topic. But again, for people who are vaccinated, it's probably fairly safe.

The issue is you can't verify who's vaccinated and who's not. So if you analyze the people who are infected, just like I do in the hospital almost never are the people with severe disease the ones who got a vaccine. So there will be some people who are infected, even some vaccinated people get infected, but if you look at people who get sick enough to be hospitalized, it's basically never, almost never somebody who's been vaccinated. And so to some sense, conferences are probably OK, as long as everybody's vaccinated. The problem is we know not everybody is vaccinated. We're probably about half the population that's fully vaccinated, and 60% something has gotten a full shot. And the people going to this Bitcoin conference, aren't exactly the people who are the most vaccinated in the population. So that's the concern.

- Well, as the vaccination rollout continues and that effort continues, I just want to talk to you about Johnson & Johnson being forced to be-- I think 60 million doses of their vaccine had to be scrapped at the order of the FDA. Tells me maybe the process is working, that's a good note. But is there a downside to this, does this add to fears about the vaccination process?

MURTAZA AKHTER: Boy, that is an excellent question. As we know from previous data, people will take the data they want to support whatever argument they want. So on my end, I might like you say, hey, that's great that the FDA is looking at things and making sure we're getting the best drugs that are the most effective, and not risking us having complications. But people on the other side, I guess call it that, might say, listen, clearly there's an issue with the vaccines if they're being banned. You can't have it both ways. You can't say that the FDA isn't doing his job and I don't trust them, and then when the FDA actually blocks a drug or-- not blocks a drug but says let's pull back-- to then say, look, the drugs weren't worthwhile to begin with. I was right. It can't go both ways. Either you have trust in our regulatory institutions and what they say, or you don't. In this case, I think the mRNA vaccines are so excellent, Pfizer and Moderna, that honestly being told the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is going to be scrapped, hopefully, at least in America, shouldn't affect much of our population given how popular the other vaccines are and how effective they are.

JULIE HYMAN: Dr. Murtaza Akhter, we will let you go and enjoy your weekend in Miami. Thanks so much for taking the time. Emergency Physician at the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Phoenix.