I'm pretty surprised to still see some misinformation in some of the posts here.
I have a friend who has a PhD in molecular biology and she described the mRNA vaccines to me.
The mRNA is only a piece of the spike protein, and does not enter the cell's nucleus. It only interacts with the cytoplasm. Normally, if a cell had to deal with an actual SARS-CoV-2 virus, it would be dealing with the spike proteins and the entire virus, basically, a much higher dose, and it would also invade the actual cell.
She also described the ingredients of an mRNA vaccine, which were basically:
-mRNA (which is gone from the body in a few days)
-lipids
-salt and sugars
It's also worth noting that the mRNA does not interact with a person's actual DNA. I just don't see why there is so much concern out there. This is a potentially deadly virus. Look at the states with the highest amount of unvaccinated individuals in the US. They are running out of hospital beds [1]. This is not about taking our freedoms, this is about getting this under control.
I do agree with the other posters here that say that COVID will likely just become endemic. My understanding is that eventually it will probably be a common cold, once humans have enough antibodies for it.
I have never ever on HN seen an argument about DNA and mRNA, but then again I don't follow the conversation too much.
As it seems like you know someone with correct background on the subject, so I wanted to ask you something I've always wanted to know as a young,(late 20s) healthy person with no existing risky precondition in this pandemic:
Why should I take a vaccine, when it is now known that vaccinated people can still spread the virus, there's an almost neglible chance of side effect, and with no information about possible long-term side effect.
If the chance of me getting hospitalized is so low to begin with, what's the benefit of the vaccine to me.
It's an genuine question, as I soon have to travel (to a country that still force quarantine even with vaccine) and have vaccine session booked by next month.
With my limited info the risk vs benefits of vaccine seems to solely end on "we know too little about the vaccine".
Edit: thanks for all the thoughtful replies. It's a hard question to ask (without anonymity) these days so all the sincere replies are much appreciated. I'll read through the given links (and credibility of the link) when I wake up
The risk of suffering long-term damage from getting covid unvaccinated is way higher than the risk of any long-term side effects from the vaccine or getting Covid vaccinated. Even if the former is low, there's no downside to getting the vaccine anyways.
I can kind of understand if someone is avoiding the vaccine and also isolating themselves to protect against the virus, but I really just don't understand the risk-benefit analysis where the vaccine is too risky but catching Covid isn't.
Also, the risk of catching Covid unvaccinated may not be that low. But, the risk of any serious vaccine side-effects, or catching Covid vaccinated, is super low. IIRC Israel did a study and, the amount of breakthrough cases requiring hospitalization for under 40 was 0.3 per 100k, and the amount of people suffering myocarditis and other vaccine complications is in the double-digits, despite vaccinations being in the billions.
We know little about the vaccine, but we also know little about the effects of social media, random pollutants, etc. And that stuff is applied without your consent, and unlike the vaccine that stuff probably is harmful long-term.
I lack the background on biology, just a layperson take.
> Why should I take a vaccine, when it is now known that vaccinated people can still spread the virus, there's an almost neglible chance of side effect, and with no information about possible long-term side effect.
There's unknowns about the long-term effects of infection, too. Several viral infections result in prolonged symptoms or decades-later re-emergence.
Bottom line IMO - there's little/no treatment for the infection resulting from this virus. So the best solution medicine can offer is the vaccine. Safe vaccines have been designed and administered before, so I hope this is among the many safe vaccines. We know it's effective at mitigating symptoms and we know it's effective at reducing the spread.
I think taking the vaccine is the net least risk, but you're right that there's stuff that we just don't know.
> If the chance of me getting hospitalized is so low to begin with
I just don't think this is true. Again, look at the states in the US with the lowest levels of vaccination. They are running out of ICU beds due to the amount of cases.
I'm not sure where you're located. Maybe there's a low amount of cases there, but in general, the risk of being hospitalized (and maybe not having a bed to go to) is rather high. The delta variant is also affecting young people more than other variants before it. I personally think getting the COVID vaccine is a smart choice.
In terms of vaccinated people still spreading the virus, the idea with vaccination is to reduce the chance of being hospitalized. That still seems like a big benefit to me.
> when it is now known that vaccinated people can still spread the virus
Why wear your seatbelt if you can still die in a collision? Why bother with refrigeration when cold food can still rot?
You can't think of risk in terms of binaries; bad things are still possible with the best safety technologies, but that doesn't mean those technologies aren't worthwhile.
As an aside, the virus is actively changing over time, and delta variant is putting a lot more young people in the hospital.
This is a false dichotomy: low risk hospitalization vs unknown long term side effects of the vaccine. The correct choice is unknown long term side effects of COVID-19 vs unknown long term side effects of vaccine.
In other words: you will get your immunity either by becoming sick (and maybe get well known short term side effects of being sick, including hospitalization and death) or by getting vaccinated, with other set of short and long term known and unknown side effects. In the first case you will put more pressure to public health system (even by staying home and consuming self-prescripted basic drugs). Otherwise the choice is yours.
Let's put it another way: with Delta, the chances of you getting COVID are pretty high. If you do, the chances of you getting bad side effects may be low, but they're a few orders of magnitude higher than the vaccine.
1. even in your 20s, there's still risk to be sick in an unpleasant way
2. we've been using vaccines forever. I've been vaccinated maybe 10 times in my life. Why suddenly should I worry. RNA vaccines may be newer, but 100s of millions of people have been vaccinated, and side effects happen usually soon after the injection. You can also use the AZ vaccine which is more conventional.
3. you prevent other people from getting sick. Even though the vaccine doesn't totally prevent spreading the disease, it does to some extent.
4. Consensus about doctors is that ratio benefit/risk is favorable toward the vaccine for all age classes. I trust my family doctor with my health and follow his recommendation.
> when it is now known that vaccinated people can still spread the virus
Because just because you "can" doesn't mean that you're as likely to[1]:
> Fully vaccinated people with Delta variant breakthrough infections can spread the virus to others. However, vaccinated people appear to spread the virus for a shorter time […] This means fully vaccinated people will likely spread the virus for less time than unvaccinated people.
(—the CDC)
> If the chance of me getting hospitalized is so low to begin with, what's the benefit of the vaccine to me.
With what data exists, the chance of side-effects from the vaccine is many orders of magnitude less than the chances of any of suffering from COVID or even death from COVID.
I also don't think it is worth putting stock into fear of the unknown with this vaccine: scientists have developed vaccines before. If anything, the structure of this particular vaccine — an mRNA strand inside a lipid bubble — seems a lot safer and much less ad-hoc than what I understand of earlier vaccines; in fact, it seems like downright engineering, and to me, it is exciting that we've gotten tech for that at such a crucial time. My high-school level biology knowledge of how mRNA interacts with a cell makes me feel that part should be pretty safe; what side-effects the spike protein might have are, I suppose, an unknown, but without the virus, your chances of not getting infected, are, IMO, not good, and the virus will generate far more than just spike proteins, and in far greater numbers. We also know just as little about the long-term side effects of the virus, but thus far, the reports on side-effects from the virus are much worse than reports on side-effects from the vaccine.
That's also just assessing it from the standpoint of "me", but part of the other reason I got the vaccine is that, while I might be young and healthy and might be able to give COVID a run for its money (though honestly, the idea of a respirator scares me far more than anything about the vaccine) I have people around me who are not so young or not so healthy; while I might live, I do not want to transmit a a virus that could be potentially lethal to them.
The good outweighs the bad. (Very clearly, IMO.) Yes, there are some unknowns, but nothing in life is certain.
The vaccine has an extremely low risk of side effects short term. There is no scientific reason to think there will be long term effects. What exactly are you concerned about? In terms of "we know too little about the vaccine", we know even less about "covid" itself.
The vaccine reduces the likelihood you will get severe covid and require hospitalization. It's like a 22x reduction in risk.
The vaccine reduces your infectious period if you do catch covid, this reduces R0 (R-naught) will help shorten the pandemic.
The delta variant is hospitalizing healthy and young people with no preexisting conditions. Future variants are likely to do so as well.
The amount of times I've seen text to the extent of "mRNA does not alter DNA" vastly exceeds the amount of text I've seen that claims mRNA does alter DNA. As far as I could see nobody in this thread is claiming such a thing, so I'm genuinely curious to know why you feel the need to point it out.
Everyone knows you can't predict what a treatment will do just by knowing its mechanism - if you could, clinical trials would never fail. Talking about the mechanism is the least effective way to explain how it's safe, because most people realize that well-controlled studies are the only true authority.
I have actually seen that claim elsewhere. The issue is, almost all of them know about reverse-transcription enzymes and use that as part of their argument, while the people attempting to debunk them have never touched on it, instead treating them as if they don't know the difference between DNA and RNA.
>The mRNA is only a piece of the spike protein, and does not enter the cell's nucleus. It only interacts with the cytoplasm.
>it would also invade the actual cell.
Before complaining about misinformation, you might want to freshen up on your basic microbiology.
I get that this has become more about the narrative than the facts, but this comment gets quite a few fundamentals very very wrong for it to be up top with the HN crowd.
You're right, and I agree about reviewing basic microbiology, thanks for that suggestion.
In terms of the quote about the spike protein, someone else thankfully corrected that (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28382167). In terms of the quote about invading the cell, I meant that the SARS-CoV-2 virus would also invade the cell nucleus (yes, saying just cell was not correct because the cytoplasm is part of the cell). Those two quotes were the two specific things that were incorrect about my post, that I'm aware of, and I'm happy that others corrected those.
I posted what I did to counter some of the more ridiculous claims I've seen made, not just on HN, but also elsewhere. I consider HN to be a great source of information and I wanted to contribute to that. My intention was to pass on information that I was happy to learn and which helped me understand what was in the mRNA vaccines and how they work (at least at a high level). I would hope that anyone would evaluate and research for themselves, whether they hear it on HN or elsewhere.
If you would care to elaborate any further, I'd be happy to listen, so that I can learn more myself.
these are the kind of small detail slip-ups that bother me about the commenters (everywhere, not just HN) that decide to try to educate people in broad-strokes and general overviews.
it's hopeful and altruistic to try to educate the ignorant, but politically-charged topics have a characteristic that when misrepresented -- even accidentally -- someone may use that foul-up to reduce the efficacy of the advice by injecting the shadow of doubt.
(to be clear, issues with data should be corrected by others; my issue is with the grandparent poster getting the small details wrong while Speaking From On High and quoting scientist friends)
This not only hurts the credibility of 'scientist friends' by proxy, but it also just creates another foot-hold for the already suspicious to continue being suspicious; something that is trying to be remedied by the whole speech in the first place.
Please, if you feel the need to educate on something politically charged like this, gather the facts first and triple-check -- otherwise you will likely harm your base motivating premise incidentally through loss-of-trust.
> Look at the states with the highest amount of unvaccinated individuals in the US. They are running out of hospital beds [1]. This is not about taking our freedoms, this is about getting this under control.
I can't see the article due to paywall, but based on how you're presenting I have to say: Due to the phrasing it isn't a straight lie, but it's definitely not true either and is meant to be misleading. Hospitals are not being overrun by covid patients, most of the capacity is being used by things from last year that people were putting off.
For example in the least vaccinated state, Idaho [0], most hospitals are running at around 50% capacity [1], and even then only around 10% of beds are covid-19 cases.
On top of this you have to remember that hospitals are for-profit institutions, and beds are counted not just by physical beds but by having nurses to attend to them. Empty beds cost the hospital money, so they try to run fairly full anyway. I remember reading 80-90% in the past, but have found a source [2] that says 60-70% is the average across all hospitals, and another that gets into the 80-90% range for only large hospitals [3].
That "80-90%" might have been a thing before COVID, but now more and more facilities are running at capacity.
Even in Washington (70+% with one shot) and Seattle (83% one dose, 77% complete series) a number of hospitals are full enough to be cancelling elective surgeries again.
I live in South Carolina, where the pandemic is especially bad now, and where vaccine uptake has been low. A friend told me that ambulances were being turned away at the front door of a local hospital.
It is true that there are many possible factors for this, that planning at that hospital might have been questionable and/or very profit-oriented. Also, I've read that a lot of medical staff have gotten fed up with the situation, and in some cases quit their jobs.
But matter the underlying causes, it's a scary picture.
From the article: As of Tuesday Aug. 24, six states—Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas—had less than 10% of ICU beds available according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
I'm happy to hear Idaho is fine. It doesn't sound like these other states are.
I see a lot of presumptions that Covid will "become like a common cold," but what separates this from dangerous wishful thinking?
Humanity suffered from smallpox for centuries before it was finally eradicated. It's not clear that it was becoming meaningfully less severe.
Dengue is endemic in tropical regions. A reinfection often leads to severe disease.
Yellow fever did not get better over time.
We vaccinated actual measles in children somewhere close to oblivion. Pockets of vaccine resistance still lead to localized outbreaks in the US. Measles is, according to most estimates, significantly more infectious that Delta, and yet we still managed to reach crowd immunity instead of throwing up our hands and relying on hopes and prayers.
Finally, HIV is perhaps our most recent experience with a viral epidemic. If we expect Covid to turn into a cold, maybe we should expect AIDS to turn into a cold first. It has a 40-year lead!
There are several arguments supporting the idea that covid will become like the common cold, it is not a generic "all viruses turn into the common cold".
We already have 4 endemic coronaviruses that cause common colds, and we suspect that they started as deadly pandemics too, which were historically reported as the flu. Many specialists suspect that the OC43 coronavirus caused the 1889 "Russian flu".
Covid seems to follow the same path: a disease that is mostly harmless to the young but potentially deadly to older adults with no acquired immunity. It is likely that in a generation or two, everyone will be infected at a very young age, building immunity and occasionally get breakthrough colds. Breakthrough cases already look a lot like colds.
COVID-19 already is like a common cold for the vast majority of younger patients. Over the long run most people will get infected as youths and build up immunity which protects them later in life. There will be no significant herd immunity effect, but fortunately the vaccines are very effective at preventing deaths.
I see a lot of presumptions that Covid will "become like a common cold,"
Could do, yeah. I'm no evolutionary biologist, but I guess that for this to happen, it needs to mutate in various directions, and the strains to feel selection pressure to become non-lethal to humans. Which I guess means that a lot of people need to die of more lethal strains faster than they spread it, and that way the surviving strains will become the dominant strains while the people-killing strains wipe themselves out by killing their hosts quickly.
This does not feel like a great solution; using human deaths as a way to select for the less lethal variants. Feels like that involves a lot of humans dying, which people have a strong bias against.
These "nano"-bubbles of fat were advertised as nano-particles. It was just this old doctor that wanted to be cool for once but it has become a grave mistake...
That said, I don't see the current concern in that regard. People believe they will be lied to when there are counter-indications for the efficiency, that side-effects won't be reported on, that they need to provide vaccination and medical passes. And to be honest, these fears are 100% valid. It is very likely there will be media blackouts about such issues. Especially if you know a bit about politics and how people build a profile. Safety sells better than sex in politics.
And the hysteria about misinformation isn't at all conductive for real scientific debate. On the contrary, it is far more disruptive than conspiracies of any form. The self-imposed defenders of science are fools in their approach to contain information.
While there are no cures yet, there was a political campaign against substances that helped, even if the benefit was small. This should be a scandal on its own.
> My understanding is that eventually it will probably be a common cold, once humans have enough antibodies for it.
This can’t be right. Antibodies fade: for other coronaviruses within 6-12 months. They aren’t a thing the body keeps around forever.
Lasting immunity would be from memory T cells or memory T cells, if their long run response worked well and the virus didn’t change enough between infections.
Actually we didn't get into antibodies and memory T cells when talking with my friend. I don't have a PhD in this, so I can't say either way.
I mostly just wanted to pass on the information from her regarding the ingredients and how the mRNA only interacts with the cytoplasm of the cell, and not the actual DNA. That's the important part.
I find that hard to believe, considering that these states didn't run out of hospital beds in any of the previous waves that also had higher incidence and far higher mortality.
I quote:
> "Another nine states have less than 20% of their ICU beds available."
This is still on the high end, by international standards. Optimal occupancy rate is estimated at 70-75%:
Running near capacity doesn't mean there isn't emergency capacity that can be made available, otherwise ICUs wouldn't be able to run above 100% capacity.
Whatever is causing the severe side-effects, it's probably not the MRNA or the spike protein. With Pfizer/Moderna vaccines, it's likely the lipid nanoparticles causing Myocarditis. With the J&J vaccine, it's likely the viral vector that is causing TTS.
Both technologies have never been widely deployed before. The fact that we could not predict and still do not understand these side-effects is quite concerning. It also puts into question the "COVID infection is like the vaccine only worse" narrative.
>it's likely the lipid nanoparticles causing Myocarditis
What's this based on? Given the occurrence of myocarditis in actual COVID infections at a higher rate than with the vaccines, it seems more likely to be an immune-mediated response, at least partly to the spike fragments included in the mRNA vaccines.
I've read that Myocarditis can happen with actual COVID cases as well [1]. To me that makes sense, considering that the mRNA-based vaccines generate a portion of the spike protein similar to the actual virus.
You are contradicting yourself. You say this is about getting things under control, but then you say there is no way of controlling things.
Because vaccinated people can still spread infections vaccinations, just like lockdowns, do not help ‘getting things under control’. They only delay progression of the pandemic.
You say ‘it will probably be a common cold, once humans have enough antibodies’. Humans do not get permanent antibodies from the vaccines. They get antibodies from getting infected. Lockdowns and vaccines only delay the inevitable.
The only argument there is is that vaccinated people get less seriously ill than unvaccinated people. But then it affects only themselves so it’s pretty hard to argue for schemes that force people to get vaccinated against their will.
You've made it abundantly clear here that you don't know what you're talking about, so you perhaps should just stop talking at all on the matter.
>Because vaccinated people can still spread infections vaccinations, just like lockdowns, do not help ‘getting things under control’. They only delay progression of the pandemic.
Delaying the progression DOES help get things under control.
>The only argument there is is that vaccinated people get less seriously ill
No it's not. Vaccinated people are less likely to get ill at all, get seriously ill, or spread the virus.
> Humans do not get permanent antibodies from the vaccines. They get antibodies from getting infected.
Weird, I've yet to get chicken pox/shingles, mumps, polio etc despite being vaccinated against them as a child. And I still catch the flu regularly despite having already had it.
That's because most people don't remember the basics from their Biology classes. I believe it's taught here in the US with the basics: DNA->RNA->Protein. The J&J vaccine does work with DNA I believe, so people may be confusing them?
Certain virus do in fact modify the DNA in cells[1].
From the article:
> Some types of virus, such as retroviruses, integrate their genetic material (including the new gene) into a chromosome in the human cell.
Therefore the claim that an injection of RNA could modify your DNA is possible. Whether the COVID injections do this is a different story, and seems unlikely.
> Therefore the claim that an injection of RNA could modify your DNA is possible.
Absolutely not. This is like saying water is a neurotoxin because a tiny subset of neurotoxins contain water. Or that almost any food can modify your dna, since mRNA, RNA and DNA are in any cells you eat.
No reverse transcriptase, no DNA integration. The vaccine leaves out any other parts of the virus besides the spike coding. That makes it SAFER in that respect than conventional or monoclonal vaccines, which include tons of other viral parts! You know what might do reverse transcription? Covid: https://www.pnas.org/content/118/21/e2105968118
Good thing the mrna vaccine leaves out all those parts that could be activating LINE1 retrotransposons!
I am fascinated to know what the effects are of over-vaccination. Is there some spillover effects where a highly-primed immune system begins to get into weird autoimmune reactions? Do weird plaques develop or a build-up of antibodies begin to form in random parts of the body, like in a blood dyscrasia? Or does nothing happen?
Chronic vaccine overdoses are so exotic, as access to vaccines had been historically so tightly controlled, and it’s unlikely that someone would routinely subject themselves to daily/weekly IM injections.
Edit: After seeing a few responses, I meant to say that my curiosity is for vaccine doses way over and above what might be comparable to current practices with annual vaccinations.
A lot of people get a flu shot every year so on the level of abstraction of "a vaccine" it's not that big of a problem. These vaccines are slightly more side effecty than the average flu shot (flu shots don't usually make you feel as bad for the day or two after the shot) so who knows.
I've never felt weird after a flu shot other than slight pain in my arm. Each shot of moderna knocked me the f out in horrible ways. My pfizerwife was fine.
It's not unusual to get very large numbers of lifetime doses of flu vaccines, and people frequently get quite a few doses of the tetanus vaccine. As far as I know, nothing goes wrong, although I've heard that side effects from tetanus vaccines are more likely if doses are administered too close together.
Annual flu jabs aren't exactly uncommon. Obviously the mechanism isn't quite the same but there's no real reason to expect a high chance of issues at that rate of revaccination.
I wouldn't exactly call a comparison between gene therapy "isn't quite the same".
Flu shots contain inactivated/weakened flu virus (depending on the version), to the presence of which/antigens the body reacts by creating antibodies.
RNA vaccines are a different technology, which transfect (reprogram in IT speak) your own cells to produce spike proteins similar to the ones sars-cov-2 does (the consensus seems to be that this spike variant is, unlike the real one, harmless and is not free floating) which are then detected by the the body and antibodies are created.
The result is esentially the same, but the way you get there contains an extra step and it is this extra step that is the source of the vast majority of (rare) adverse reactions. Blood clots etc.
The ironic thing is that most people who are very strongly opinionated on this (both sides) have no idea what the actual difference is and blindly trust whatever either the government or a local anti-vax facebook group tells them.
Vaccination of the population affects how the virus mutate, that's why some scientist are pushing for more research on viral medicine and hospitalization therapy and not to force vaccinate the world.
It's still an evolving process so we will find out the numbers soon.
I'm not an expert, but my intuition is that it shouldn't be a big deal since vaccines are meant to start your body's response to a pathogen. I'm sure we build antibodies to all kind of weak baby viruses all the time throughout our lives without even knowing it.
Assuming it's only as effective as the original two-dose shot and prevents for the same duration, it seems like COVID will never go away. Assuming the current trend and a 9 month prevention, that pretty much aligns to what happened last year. So we'd need no new significant variants to develop or any outbreaks. Seems unlikely given that there are many countries with vaccination rates under 50%
Probably better to focus on the minimum number of vaccinations necessary to make hospitalization/death unlikely and move on from there. Preventing infection might be too high a bar to meet now.
[edit] this is in response to the earlier version of your post where you wonder if the virus will ever go away:
That I think is a given. Even if we had a bullet proof vaccine, you have such a large reserve of unvaccinated people across the world, plus animals, that the virus is endemic at this stage.
Which isn't a problem. If once vaccinated the virus is mostly harmless, then it is just one more of the many endemic diseases we live with without worrying about.
I am not a virologist, but based on my reading, in 100 years COVID will still be with us. At worst it will be the flu, and at best it will be just another strain of a cold.
COVID has the very helpful quality of being least impactful on the very young. As new children are born they will be exposed to COVID multiple times over their lives, to the point when they are at ages we now consider vulnerable, they likely will have developed as much resistance as one can have.
Note that even not vaccinated, the ultra large majority of people either are asymptomatic or don't get anything worst than a flu (which doesn't mean covid = flu in general)
We seem to have forgotten that the original concern with the virus was the fact that it saturated intensive care units in hospitals, and thus prevented people from getting proper care.
We might also see the first batch of medicines appear in 2022, if we can successfully prevent ICU visits with effective medicines for starters, that would mean a lot to healthcare professionals worldwide.
>Which isn't a problem. If once vaccinated the virus is mostly harmless, then it is just one more of the many endemic diseases we live with without worrying about.
It's a problem if you're one of the many people who, for whatever reason, can't be safely vaccinated.
> as effective as the original two-dose shot and prevents for the same duration
We're giving boosters of a vaccine developed against the Beta variant. That's better than nothing. But it's inefficient against Delta.
Pfizer/BioNTech are working on a Delta-specific booster [1]. If we can get approvals rolling faster without compromising safety, it might mean being able to release variant-specific boosters earlier in their transmission cycle.
> If we can get approvals rolling faster without compromising safety, it might mean being able to release variant-specific boosters earlier in their transmission cycle.
This is basically it. We'd need an approval process similar to what exists for flu shots today. I'm not versed on what that process is, but if that can happen with covid, it'll be the biggest batch of red tape cut.
The question is how useful variant-specific boosters are at this point in time, though. As I understand it there are two things working against them. Firstly, one of the main ways Delta seems to beat vaccination is by replicating more efficiency before the immune system can respond, and tailoring the vaccine more specifically to it won't really help with that. Secondly, a booster for a very similar variant might just boost the existing immune response for the previous variant rather than creating new, more specific antibodies ("original antigenic sin") - this is apparently one factor limiting the effectiveness of flu vaccines.
As to whether the current batch of mRNA vaccines are "inefficient" against delta, the science is far from settled.
There are no changes to the mRNA vaccines composition in the booster. Moderna has been testing a lower "dosage" of the booster at 50 mcg vs. 100mcg for the current vaccine, but other than that it's the same stuff it's always been.
It's why I'm more interested in companies that can treat the symptoms effectively than only the vaccines right now. IMO the only way this ever truly gets better is if the effects can be mitigated quickly.
Whoever figures that out is going to make a lot of money.
"CBD and its metabolite, 7-OH-CBD, but not congeneric cannabinoids, potently block SARS-CoV-2 replication in lung epithelial cells. CBD induces interferon expression and up-regulates its antiviral signaling pathway. A cohort of human patients previously taking CBD had significantly lower SARSCoV-2 infection incidence of up to an order of magnitude relative to matched pairs or the general population. This study highlights CBD, and its active metabolite, 7-OH-CBD, as potential preventative agents and therapeutic treatments for SARS-CoV-2 at early stages of infection."
It's been figured out, but we're waiting on Pfizer to bring it's protease inhibitor to market before we acknowledge existing, out of patent medications that do the same thing.
Good luck with that in 2021, someone is already making a lot of money, and ostensibly weaponizing big tech into preventing anyone from even talking about alternatives.
I wonder if this is really the case. It seems like the original vaccines trained everyone's immune system on the spike protein specifically because this is exposed and highly conserved by the virus, such that it's hard to change and still leave an effective virus. Delta, however, found such a mutation that made it more virulent and it escaped.
If we vaccinate against the modified spike, it's not clear how many more mutations exist like Delta. Maybe we can still get ahead of it, but I don't think anyone knows yet.
I do wonder if we'll see reformulated boosters against Delta's spikes, though.
I wonder how accurately we can run mutation simulations updated based on best current data to correct the best guess optimization function(s). It would be a breakthrough if we can predict the likeliest mutation. I'm aware of the enormous number of variables making this tremendously difficult...
> Is there any reason not to increase vaccine production rates so we have the capacity to vaccinate the world population faster than every 9 months?
Capital constraints. Most specifically, human capital. mRNA production methods, including for critical precursors, are complicated. There is a limited number of people who can build and monitor the productions systems.
nope - as you allude to, ideally we could spit out these vaccines and just give people 6-month boosters until everyone is vaccinated and we're good.
I believe the issue is that too many people fail to get vaccinated so it's challenging. Requiring boosters might also convert small numbers of people who got a vaccine one to not get it subsequent times.
I have little understanding of this but someone who actually works on vaccines told me this theory: Your body upon coming in contact with the vaccine starts to product antibodies (the first shot). This is generally enough for a normal immune system to fight the disease if in the future the body was to come in contact with the virus. The second shot is for hyper immunity after 4 weeks. What it does is that it basically tells your body make a lot more antibodies now and the second shot is actually a booster shot. So every time you take a shot afterwards (like in the middle of a pandemic) your body produces an abundance of antibodies and will likely fend off the virus much more easily than if there was no booster dose of any kind and just a vaccine shot. This is important because simply protecting your body from the virus is not enough since you could be carrying the virus and spreading it with mild infection which will not be a problem for you but will not protect others and so the hyperimmunity is important for preventing spread during a wave. I won’t be surprised if this one is a yearly dose as you need to be hyperimmune to not show symptoms and spread.
There's more to immunity than the antibodies generated as a short term response to infection or vaccination. Memory cell activity is more important to long term immunity.
Another benefit is cell memory. If you see the vaccines kids get, almost all are multiple shots. Including 3-4 shots for Hep-B. It's nothing new. The reason is body takes repeat threat more seriously and builds the cell memory. So even when the antibody is gone the cell memory tells body to act quickly and what to do.
In fairness, I think it's been just as frustrating to the health officials setting out those targets— between non-compliance with the initial guidelines (both due to idiocy, and due to governments dragging their heels on the income/rent supports that would have allowed poor people to actually stay home), and then the appearance of the delta variant just as vaccination campaigns were getting seriously under way, I'm sure it has very much felt like fighting a battle against moving goalposts.
I think we tend to under-acknowledge that the "return to normal" line is also a moving goalpost. I'm typing this comment out from a cross-country trip; when I return, I can eat in a restaurant or work from the office or even dance in a crowded nightclub if I want to. There's still mask mandates here and there, but I think there's a strong argument for the perspective that vaccines already did work and we already are back to normal in almost every way that government policy can achieve.
There is no such thing as safety, only varying degrees of risk. Everyone has a different risk tolerance. Failure to explicitly quantify acceptable risks leads to people making invalid assumptions and talking past each other.
This is very true - I remember a colleague getting slapped down by the FDA when he said his company's FDA-approved drug was "safe". "There is no 'safe' drug", he was told, "only acceptable risk-benefit tradeoffs".
In addition, what is acceptable on a national level (e.g. 50 deaths from vaccination side effects) may not be acceptable on a individual basis (e.g. you die from a vaccine side effect).
Just like people dismiss the risk of Covid until it kills a family member, the flip side is people dismiss the risk of vaccination until it kills a family member.
If you think that's fun, imagine the steady state being like flu - monitoring Covid variants, then trying to predict which ones will be the next "wave".
Some years you'll get it right and put a big damper on spread and some years you'll pick the wrong variant leaving most people unprotected.
That's one reason why flu deaths in the US fluctuate annually (in addition to the severity of the flu). A few years back the vaccine basically did nothing.
I'm starting to feel that when people protest things they disagree with that it has less to do with the actual issue than with a desire to voice a contrary opinion in general.
I suspect that the opposition—even anger sometimes—is a lot less about vaccines, or abortion than some other unmet need that finds expression though this kind of opposition.
And I also think that even discussing these issues with the intent to persuade is futile and giving the protesters exactly what they are seeking.
I think it's deeply ironic that an army of well intentioned people fan out on the internet to 'educate' people who are against X actually end up giving the protesters what they actually want, free therapy for some sort of frustrated need to be heard.¹
Even funnier is that both sides are playing out this psychodrama while being completely ignorant of the actual motivations behind their behaviour.
1. Or maybe the need to exercise the power expressed by holding an entire state or country hostage via a virus...?
It is reactionary for the most part and certainly the animosity towards those advertising vaccines is more important than the vaccine itself.
The people more actively trying to educate others are in it for their own form of therapy. Their fear lets them ride the soothing assurance of authoritarianism. They are safe if everyone is one the right level. I wouldn't call that well intentioned for the most part.
I fear irrationality isn't vaccine-able. It is a serious disease and people should take care. It is actually quite a privilege if you could get a free vaccine, other people might be glad about that.
On the other hand, people that got the disease just plainly shouldn't take it and business requiring me to be vaccinate and identify myself can search for other customers. People have to accept that others are less fearful than themselves.
Congratulations, you have discovered reactionary politics. When people feel like society is not going right and that they're missing something that abstractly they had at some point in the past, you get mindsets like these.
I would love to see more research on whether a different/better vaccine could provide stronger or longer lasting immunity. There are a whole lot of mechanisms by which a vaccine might produce immunity (antibodies, memory B cells that can produce antibodies if needed, various forms of T cells, and probably mechanisms that haven't been discovered or understood yet.) It seems that most research on immunity focuses on antibodies in blood, and I think this is just because they are relatively easy to measure.
I haven't seen anything suggesting that mRNA vaccines are especially good as compared to other vaccines. mRNA vaccines were quick to develop given all the past work that had been done, but that isn't the same thing as being good once developed and mass-produced. Novavax's subunit vaccine did extremely well in trials, and it's mostly old technology.
Are there useful studies of the efficacy of the J&J and AZ vaccines over time? Those are newish technology, too.
I’m curious if we have data wrt to safety and approval process length. How fast (in terms of trial - size and duration) - can we go on approvals without compromising safety? Maybe a progressive approval is best. Approve for x% of population for next n months then study the data and lift limits. What if it was dangerous that we went from 0-100 with the current round of vaccines?
Readit News
I have a friend who has a PhD in molecular biology and she described the mRNA vaccines to me.
The mRNA is only a piece of the spike protein, and does not enter the cell's nucleus. It only interacts with the cytoplasm. Normally, if a cell had to deal with an actual SARS-CoV-2 virus, it would be dealing with the spike proteins and the entire virus, basically, a much higher dose, and it would also invade the actual cell.
She also described the ingredients of an mRNA vaccine, which were basically:
-mRNA (which is gone from the body in a few days)
-lipids
-salt and sugars
It's also worth noting that the mRNA does not interact with a person's actual DNA. I just don't see why there is so much concern out there. This is a potentially deadly virus. Look at the states with the highest amount of unvaccinated individuals in the US. They are running out of hospital beds [1]. This is not about taking our freedoms, this is about getting this under control.
I do agree with the other posters here that say that COVID will likely just become endemic. My understanding is that eventually it will probably be a common cold, once humans have enough antibodies for it.
[1] https://fortune.com/2021/08/25/states-icu-beds-covid-cases-d...
As it seems like you know someone with correct background on the subject, so I wanted to ask you something I've always wanted to know as a young,(late 20s) healthy person with no existing risky precondition in this pandemic:
Why should I take a vaccine, when it is now known that vaccinated people can still spread the virus, there's an almost neglible chance of side effect, and with no information about possible long-term side effect. If the chance of me getting hospitalized is so low to begin with, what's the benefit of the vaccine to me.
It's an genuine question, as I soon have to travel (to a country that still force quarantine even with vaccine) and have vaccine session booked by next month.
With my limited info the risk vs benefits of vaccine seems to solely end on "we know too little about the vaccine".
Edit: thanks for all the thoughtful replies. It's a hard question to ask (without anonymity) these days so all the sincere replies are much appreciated. I'll read through the given links (and credibility of the link) when I wake up
I can kind of understand if someone is avoiding the vaccine and also isolating themselves to protect against the virus, but I really just don't understand the risk-benefit analysis where the vaccine is too risky but catching Covid isn't.
Also, the risk of catching Covid unvaccinated may not be that low. But, the risk of any serious vaccine side-effects, or catching Covid vaccinated, is super low. IIRC Israel did a study and, the amount of breakthrough cases requiring hospitalization for under 40 was 0.3 per 100k, and the amount of people suffering myocarditis and other vaccine complications is in the double-digits, despite vaccinations being in the billions.
We know little about the vaccine, but we also know little about the effects of social media, random pollutants, etc. And that stuff is applied without your consent, and unlike the vaccine that stuff probably is harmful long-term.
> Why should I take a vaccine, when it is now known that vaccinated people can still spread the virus, there's an almost neglible chance of side effect, and with no information about possible long-term side effect.
There's unknowns about the long-term effects of infection, too. Several viral infections result in prolonged symptoms or decades-later re-emergence.
Bottom line IMO - there's little/no treatment for the infection resulting from this virus. So the best solution medicine can offer is the vaccine. Safe vaccines have been designed and administered before, so I hope this is among the many safe vaccines. We know it's effective at mitigating symptoms and we know it's effective at reducing the spread.
I think taking the vaccine is the net least risk, but you're right that there's stuff that we just don't know.
I just don't think this is true. Again, look at the states in the US with the lowest levels of vaccination. They are running out of ICU beds due to the amount of cases.
I'm not sure where you're located. Maybe there's a low amount of cases there, but in general, the risk of being hospitalized (and maybe not having a bed to go to) is rather high. The delta variant is also affecting young people more than other variants before it. I personally think getting the COVID vaccine is a smart choice.
In terms of vaccinated people still spreading the virus, the idea with vaccination is to reduce the chance of being hospitalized. That still seems like a big benefit to me.
Why wear your seatbelt if you can still die in a collision? Why bother with refrigeration when cold food can still rot?
You can't think of risk in terms of binaries; bad things are still possible with the best safety technologies, but that doesn't mean those technologies aren't worthwhile.
As an aside, the virus is actively changing over time, and delta variant is putting a lot more young people in the hospital.
In other words: you will get your immunity either by becoming sick (and maybe get well known short term side effects of being sick, including hospitalization and death) or by getting vaccinated, with other set of short and long term known and unknown side effects. In the first case you will put more pressure to public health system (even by staying home and consuming self-prescripted basic drugs). Otherwise the choice is yours.
1. You have a 0.0001% risk of death, and a 0.001% risk of hospitalization, and will maybe spread covid to 5-8 people. Long term effects unknown.
2. You have a 0.00001% risk of death, and a 0.0001% risk of hospitalization, and will maybe spread covid to 1-2 people. Long term effects unknown.
Which choice would you take?
(note the 2nd option is a conservative estimate of the effects of the vaccine, and the odds are probably less than what I wrote)
I imagine this is not binary but you are likely to be less sick and less contagious.
In this case, why not take the vaccine?
> when it is now known that vaccinated people can still spread the virus
Because just because you "can" doesn't mean that you're as likely to[1]:
> Fully vaccinated people with Delta variant breakthrough infections can spread the virus to others. However, vaccinated people appear to spread the virus for a shorter time […] This means fully vaccinated people will likely spread the virus for less time than unvaccinated people.
(—the CDC)
> If the chance of me getting hospitalized is so low to begin with, what's the benefit of the vaccine to me.
With what data exists, the chance of side-effects from the vaccine is many orders of magnitude less than the chances of any of suffering from COVID or even death from COVID.
[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/variants/delta-var...
I also don't think it is worth putting stock into fear of the unknown with this vaccine: scientists have developed vaccines before. If anything, the structure of this particular vaccine — an mRNA strand inside a lipid bubble — seems a lot safer and much less ad-hoc than what I understand of earlier vaccines; in fact, it seems like downright engineering, and to me, it is exciting that we've gotten tech for that at such a crucial time. My high-school level biology knowledge of how mRNA interacts with a cell makes me feel that part should be pretty safe; what side-effects the spike protein might have are, I suppose, an unknown, but without the virus, your chances of not getting infected, are, IMO, not good, and the virus will generate far more than just spike proteins, and in far greater numbers. We also know just as little about the long-term side effects of the virus, but thus far, the reports on side-effects from the virus are much worse than reports on side-effects from the vaccine.
That's also just assessing it from the standpoint of "me", but part of the other reason I got the vaccine is that, while I might be young and healthy and might be able to give COVID a run for its money (though honestly, the idea of a respirator scares me far more than anything about the vaccine) I have people around me who are not so young or not so healthy; while I might live, I do not want to transmit a a virus that could be potentially lethal to them.
The good outweighs the bad. (Very clearly, IMO.) Yes, there are some unknowns, but nothing in life is certain.
The vaccine reduces the likelihood you will get severe covid and require hospitalization. It's like a 22x reduction in risk.
The vaccine reduces your infectious period if you do catch covid, this reduces R0 (R-naught) will help shorten the pandemic.
The delta variant is hospitalizing healthy and young people with no preexisting conditions. Future variants are likely to do so as well.
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SARS-CoV-2 RNA reverse-transcribed and integrated into the human genome
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33330870/
I haven't seen it in this thread either, but it's been a very common [false] talking point in the conspiracy/anti-vax circles.
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>it would also invade the actual cell.
Before complaining about misinformation, you might want to freshen up on your basic microbiology.
I get that this has become more about the narrative than the facts, but this comment gets quite a few fundamentals very very wrong for it to be up top with the HN crowd.
In terms of the quote about the spike protein, someone else thankfully corrected that (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28382167). In terms of the quote about invading the cell, I meant that the SARS-CoV-2 virus would also invade the cell nucleus (yes, saying just cell was not correct because the cytoplasm is part of the cell). Those two quotes were the two specific things that were incorrect about my post, that I'm aware of, and I'm happy that others corrected those.
I posted what I did to counter some of the more ridiculous claims I've seen made, not just on HN, but also elsewhere. I consider HN to be a great source of information and I wanted to contribute to that. My intention was to pass on information that I was happy to learn and which helped me understand what was in the mRNA vaccines and how they work (at least at a high level). I would hope that anyone would evaluate and research for themselves, whether they hear it on HN or elsewhere.
If you would care to elaborate any further, I'd be happy to listen, so that I can learn more myself.
The mRNA produces a piece of the spike protein once inside the cell, it’s not the protein itself.
it's hopeful and altruistic to try to educate the ignorant, but politically-charged topics have a characteristic that when misrepresented -- even accidentally -- someone may use that foul-up to reduce the efficacy of the advice by injecting the shadow of doubt.
(to be clear, issues with data should be corrected by others; my issue is with the grandparent poster getting the small details wrong while Speaking From On High and quoting scientist friends)
This not only hurts the credibility of 'scientist friends' by proxy, but it also just creates another foot-hold for the already suspicious to continue being suspicious; something that is trying to be remedied by the whole speech in the first place.
Please, if you feel the need to educate on something politically charged like this, gather the facts first and triple-check -- otherwise you will likely harm your base motivating premise incidentally through loss-of-trust.
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> [1] https://fortune.com/2021/08/25/states-icu-beds-covid-cases-d...
I can't see the article due to paywall, but based on how you're presenting I have to say: Due to the phrasing it isn't a straight lie, but it's definitely not true either and is meant to be misleading. Hospitals are not being overrun by covid patients, most of the capacity is being used by things from last year that people were putting off.
For example in the least vaccinated state, Idaho [0], most hospitals are running at around 50% capacity [1], and even then only around 10% of beds are covid-19 cases.
On top of this you have to remember that hospitals are for-profit institutions, and beds are counted not just by physical beds but by having nurses to attend to them. Empty beds cost the hospital money, so they try to run fairly full anyway. I remember reading 80-90% in the past, but have found a source [2] that says 60-70% is the average across all hospitals, and another that gets into the 80-90% range for only large hospitals [3].
[0] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2021-07-27/...
[1] https://data.commercialappeal.com/covid-19-hospital-capacity...
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/185904/hospital-occupanc...
[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4191350/
Even in Washington (70+% with one shot) and Seattle (83% one dose, 77% complete series) a number of hospitals are full enough to be cancelling elective surgeries again.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/coronavirus-covid-19/vaccine-trac...
It is true that there are many possible factors for this, that planning at that hospital might have been questionable and/or very profit-oriented. Also, I've read that a lot of medical staff have gotten fed up with the situation, and in some cases quit their jobs.
But matter the underlying causes, it's a scary picture.
I'm happy to hear Idaho is fine. It doesn't sound like these other states are.
Humanity suffered from smallpox for centuries before it was finally eradicated. It's not clear that it was becoming meaningfully less severe.
Dengue is endemic in tropical regions. A reinfection often leads to severe disease.
Yellow fever did not get better over time.
We vaccinated actual measles in children somewhere close to oblivion. Pockets of vaccine resistance still lead to localized outbreaks in the US. Measles is, according to most estimates, significantly more infectious that Delta, and yet we still managed to reach crowd immunity instead of throwing up our hands and relying on hopes and prayers.
Finally, HIV is perhaps our most recent experience with a viral epidemic. If we expect Covid to turn into a cold, maybe we should expect AIDS to turn into a cold first. It has a 40-year lead!
We already have 4 endemic coronaviruses that cause common colds, and we suspect that they started as deadly pandemics too, which were historically reported as the flu. Many specialists suspect that the OC43 coronavirus caused the 1889 "Russian flu".
Covid seems to follow the same path: a disease that is mostly harmless to the young but potentially deadly to older adults with no acquired immunity. It is likely that in a generation or two, everyone will be infected at a very young age, building immunity and occasionally get breakthrough colds. Breakthrough cases already look a lot like colds.
https://sfamjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/175...
Could do, yeah. I'm no evolutionary biologist, but I guess that for this to happen, it needs to mutate in various directions, and the strains to feel selection pressure to become non-lethal to humans. Which I guess means that a lot of people need to die of more lethal strains faster than they spread it, and that way the surviving strains will become the dominant strains while the people-killing strains wipe themselves out by killing their hosts quickly.
This does not feel like a great solution; using human deaths as a way to select for the less lethal variants. Feels like that involves a lot of humans dying, which people have a strong bias against.
These "nano"-bubbles of fat were advertised as nano-particles. It was just this old doctor that wanted to be cool for once but it has become a grave mistake...
That said, I don't see the current concern in that regard. People believe they will be lied to when there are counter-indications for the efficiency, that side-effects won't be reported on, that they need to provide vaccination and medical passes. And to be honest, these fears are 100% valid. It is very likely there will be media blackouts about such issues. Especially if you know a bit about politics and how people build a profile. Safety sells better than sex in politics.
And the hysteria about misinformation isn't at all conductive for real scientific debate. On the contrary, it is far more disruptive than conspiracies of any form. The self-imposed defenders of science are fools in their approach to contain information.
While there are no cures yet, there was a political campaign against substances that helped, even if the benefit was small. This should be a scandal on its own.
This can’t be right. Antibodies fade: for other coronaviruses within 6-12 months. They aren’t a thing the body keeps around forever.
Lasting immunity would be from memory T cells or memory T cells, if their long run response worked well and the virus didn’t change enough between infections.
I mostly just wanted to pass on the information from her regarding the ingredients and how the mRNA only interacts with the cytoplasm of the cell, and not the actual DNA. That's the important part.
I find that hard to believe, considering that these states didn't run out of hospital beds in any of the previous waves that also had higher incidence and far higher mortality.
I quote:
> "Another nine states have less than 20% of their ICU beds available."
This is still on the high end, by international standards. Optimal occupancy rate is estimated at 70-75%:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24373914/
Running near capacity doesn't mean there isn't emergency capacity that can be made available, otherwise ICUs wouldn't be able to run above 100% capacity.
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Both technologies have never been widely deployed before. The fact that we could not predict and still do not understand these side-effects is quite concerning. It also puts into question the "COVID infection is like the vaccine only worse" narrative.
What's this based on? Given the occurrence of myocarditis in actual COVID infections at a higher rate than with the vaccines, it seems more likely to be an immune-mediated response, at least partly to the spike fragments included in the mRNA vaccines.
[1] https://www.clinicaltrialsarena.com/comment/myocarditis-covi...
Because vaccinated people can still spread infections vaccinations, just like lockdowns, do not help ‘getting things under control’. They only delay progression of the pandemic.
You say ‘it will probably be a common cold, once humans have enough antibodies’. Humans do not get permanent antibodies from the vaccines. They get antibodies from getting infected. Lockdowns and vaccines only delay the inevitable.
The only argument there is is that vaccinated people get less seriously ill than unvaccinated people. But then it affects only themselves so it’s pretty hard to argue for schemes that force people to get vaccinated against their will.
>Because vaccinated people can still spread infections vaccinations, just like lockdowns, do not help ‘getting things under control’. They only delay progression of the pandemic.
Delaying the progression DOES help get things under control.
>The only argument there is is that vaccinated people get less seriously ill
No it's not. Vaccinated people are less likely to get ill at all, get seriously ill, or spread the virus.
Weird, I've yet to get chicken pox/shingles, mumps, polio etc despite being vaccinated against them as a child. And I still catch the flu regularly despite having already had it.
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and with the AZ vaccine, due to the vector chosen, supposedly it (spike protein) does enter the nucleus. Oops.
(note I'm not suggesting the AZ vaccine causes any alteration of our DNA)
AstraZeneca’s vaccine uses adenovirus-vectored technology, which is different [1].
[1] https://www.prevention.com/health/a35118263/astrazeneca-vs-p...
https://pdb101.rcsb.org/sci-art/goodsell-gallery/sars-cov-2-...
Check the rest of the site, he does awesome watercolor illustrations of microbiology. Including of the SARS-CoV-2 virus itself ( https://pdb101.rcsb.org/sci-art/goodsell-gallery/sars-cov-2-... )
From the article:
> Some types of virus, such as retroviruses, integrate their genetic material (including the new gene) into a chromosome in the human cell.
Therefore the claim that an injection of RNA could modify your DNA is possible. Whether the COVID injections do this is a different story, and seems unlikely.
[1] https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/understanding/therapy/proce...
Absolutely not. This is like saying water is a neurotoxin because a tiny subset of neurotoxins contain water. Or that almost any food can modify your dna, since mRNA, RNA and DNA are in any cells you eat.
reverse transcription doesn't just happen. Retroviruses work because they carry reverse transcriptase: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_transcriptase
No reverse transcriptase, no DNA integration. The vaccine leaves out any other parts of the virus besides the spike coding. That makes it SAFER in that respect than conventional or monoclonal vaccines, which include tons of other viral parts! You know what might do reverse transcription? Covid: https://www.pnas.org/content/118/21/e2105968118
Good thing the mrna vaccine leaves out all those parts that could be activating LINE1 retrotransposons!
SARS-CoV-2 RNA reverse-transcribed and integrated into the human genome
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33330870/
Continues with anecdote of conversation with anonymous molecular biology PhD.
-
Isn't that the optimal breeding ground for misinformation?
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Chronic vaccine overdoses are so exotic, as access to vaccines had been historically so tightly controlled, and it’s unlikely that someone would routinely subject themselves to daily/weekly IM injections.
Edit: After seeing a few responses, I meant to say that my curiosity is for vaccine doses way over and above what might be comparable to current practices with annual vaccinations.
Flu shots contain inactivated/weakened flu virus (depending on the version), to the presence of which/antigens the body reacts by creating antibodies.
RNA vaccines are a different technology, which transfect (reprogram in IT speak) your own cells to produce spike proteins similar to the ones sars-cov-2 does (the consensus seems to be that this spike variant is, unlike the real one, harmless and is not free floating) which are then detected by the the body and antibodies are created.
The result is esentially the same, but the way you get there contains an extra step and it is this extra step that is the source of the vast majority of (rare) adverse reactions. Blood clots etc.
The ironic thing is that most people who are very strongly opinionated on this (both sides) have no idea what the actual difference is and blindly trust whatever either the government or a local anti-vax facebook group tells them.
It's still an evolving process so we will find out the numbers soon.
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> build-up of antibodies begin to form in random parts of the body
Real curious: do these things exist in the first place ? Plaques of what ? Where in the body ?
I've never heard of antibody build up and google neither apparently
(1) https://dermnetnz.org/topics/skin-manifestations-of-haematol...
Probably better to focus on the minimum number of vaccinations necessary to make hospitalization/death unlikely and move on from there. Preventing infection might be too high a bar to meet now.
That I think is a given. Even if we had a bullet proof vaccine, you have such a large reserve of unvaccinated people across the world, plus animals, that the virus is endemic at this stage.
Which isn't a problem. If once vaccinated the virus is mostly harmless, then it is just one more of the many endemic diseases we live with without worrying about.
COVID has the very helpful quality of being least impactful on the very young. As new children are born they will be exposed to COVID multiple times over their lives, to the point when they are at ages we now consider vulnerable, they likely will have developed as much resistance as one can have.
Note that even not vaccinated, the ultra large majority of people either are asymptomatic or don't get anything worst than a flu (which doesn't mean covid = flu in general)
We seem to have forgotten that the original concern with the virus was the fact that it saturated intensive care units in hospitals, and thus prevented people from getting proper care.
It's a problem if you're one of the many people who, for whatever reason, can't be safely vaccinated.
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We're giving boosters of a vaccine developed against the Beta variant. That's better than nothing. But it's inefficient against Delta.
Pfizer/BioNTech are working on a Delta-specific booster [1]. If we can get approvals rolling faster without compromising safety, it might mean being able to release variant-specific boosters earlier in their transmission cycle.
[1] https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-det...
This is basically it. We'd need an approval process similar to what exists for flu shots today. I'm not versed on what that process is, but if that can happen with covid, it'll be the biggest batch of red tape cut.
There are no changes to the mRNA vaccines composition in the booster. Moderna has been testing a lower "dosage" of the booster at 50 mcg vs. 100mcg for the current vaccine, but other than that it's the same stuff it's always been.
Whoever figures that out is going to make a lot of money.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7987002/
I am not saying anything, JUST SAYIN'
If we vaccinate against the modified spike, it's not clear how many more mutations exist like Delta. Maybe we can still get ahead of it, but I don't think anyone knows yet.
I do wonder if we'll see reformulated boosters against Delta's spikes, though.
Capital constraints. Most specifically, human capital. mRNA production methods, including for critical precursors, are complicated. There is a limited number of people who can build and monitor the productions systems.
I believe the issue is that too many people fail to get vaccinated so it's challenging. Requiring boosters might also convert small numbers of people who got a vaccine one to not get it subsequent times.
Intellectual property rights.
It's not a "good" reason. But it's a reality that needs to be overcome.
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...
https://www.democracynow.org/2021/6/22/headlines/south_afric...
Germany doesn't want the Pfizer vaccine made freely: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...
and by some co-incidence, this is good for German money: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-economy-biontech-...
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Government supports or not, you do realize everyone can't stay home?
In addition, what is acceptable on a national level (e.g. 50 deaths from vaccination side effects) may not be acceptable on a individual basis (e.g. you die from a vaccine side effect).
Just like people dismiss the risk of Covid until it kills a family member, the flip side is people dismiss the risk of vaccination until it kills a family member.
To be this far in vaccination at this point is huge progress. Achieving desktop Linux and nuclear fusion have been ongoing projects for far longer.
Some years you'll get it right and put a big damper on spread and some years you'll pick the wrong variant leaving most people unprotected.
That's one reason why flu deaths in the US fluctuate annually (in addition to the severity of the flu). A few years back the vaccine basically did nothing.
I suspect that the opposition—even anger sometimes—is a lot less about vaccines, or abortion than some other unmet need that finds expression though this kind of opposition.
And I also think that even discussing these issues with the intent to persuade is futile and giving the protesters exactly what they are seeking.
I think it's deeply ironic that an army of well intentioned people fan out on the internet to 'educate' people who are against X actually end up giving the protesters what they actually want, free therapy for some sort of frustrated need to be heard.¹
Even funnier is that both sides are playing out this psychodrama while being completely ignorant of the actual motivations behind their behaviour.
1. Or maybe the need to exercise the power expressed by holding an entire state or country hostage via a virus...?
The people more actively trying to educate others are in it for their own form of therapy. Their fear lets them ride the soothing assurance of authoritarianism. They are safe if everyone is one the right level. I wouldn't call that well intentioned for the most part.
I fear irrationality isn't vaccine-able. It is a serious disease and people should take care. It is actually quite a privilege if you could get a free vaccine, other people might be glad about that.
On the other hand, people that got the disease just plainly shouldn't take it and business requiring me to be vaccinate and identify myself can search for other customers. People have to accept that others are less fearful than themselves.
I haven't seen anything suggesting that mRNA vaccines are especially good as compared to other vaccines. mRNA vaccines were quick to develop given all the past work that had been done, but that isn't the same thing as being good once developed and mass-produced. Novavax's subunit vaccine did extremely well in trials, and it's mostly old technology.
Are there useful studies of the efficacy of the J&J and AZ vaccines over time? Those are newish technology, too.