SASKATOON -- A series of tweets explaining how the COVID-19 vaccine works sent by a Saskatoon child psychiatrist have garnered more than 270,000 likes, millions of engagements and a nod from Star Trek actor George Takei who shared the thread with his 3.2 million followers.

Having experience with taking complex information and explaining it to children and teenagers, Dr. Madhav Sarda thought he would do his best to explain how the COVID-19 spreads and how the vaccine helps prevent it. He thought the Twitter thread would only be shared by friends and colleagues. 

“I think people deserve to know what’s happening when they take the vaccine,” Sarda told CTV News. 

Seventy-two hours after sharing his explanation using the science behind the vaccine under his profile, @WheatNOil, Sarda said his phone blew up with notifications, almost rendering his phone unusable.

“Most of the time I make Connor McDavid jokes and post hockey stats. (The vaccine thread) started to get picked up by some really big names and by Thursday night it was well over 10,000 and by Friday it exploded even more.”

Sarda's first tweet has collected more than 271,000 likes and four million engagements. He said it’s also been translated into a few different languages.

"I’ve had a few people in my real non-Twitter life ask me to explain how it works so I’m going to try my best here in this thread while I’m waiting for a patient to show," is how Sarda begins the series of tweets.

Sarda goes on to deploy some colourful language in his effort to simply explain how the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are designed to work, in particular when he refers to the portion of the coronavirus' structure which researchers focused on.

"That protein, by the way, is an important one for the virus. It uses that protein to get into your cells. That protein makes the virus more infectious. In short, that protein makes the virus more of an a--hole," Sarda says in one tweet.

Out of the millions who took notice of his messages, Sarda said he was most floored when Star Trek actor George Takei retweeted his post.

 

Ultimately, Sarda said his goal was to educate the public and provide truth to combat the whirlwind of misinformation circulating on social media. 

“I hope people get excited about science and get excited about the vaccine and try and find information about it, because it’s really cool and once you try and understand what it’s trying to do and what the virus is and what the vaccine does, I think it’s a lot easier to get this vaccine.” 

--With files from CTV News Saskatoon's Chad Leroux and Josh Lynn