Celebrating the Path-Breaking Research That Lead to Coronavirus Vaccines (adn.com) 134
The Washington Post tells the remarkable story of how both Moderna's vaccine and the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine relied on a specially designed spike protein partially created by America's Vaccine Research Center — along with messenger RNA, "a technology never before harnessed in an approved vaccine."
And also decades of path-breaking research: If, as expected in the next few weeks, regulators give those vaccines the green light, the technology and the precision approach to vaccine design could turn out to be the pandemic's silver linings: scientific breakthroughs that could begin to change the trajectory of the virus this winter and also pave the way for highly effective vaccines and treatments for other diseases. Vaccine development typically takes years, even decades. The progress of the last 11 months shifts the paradigm for what's possible, creating a new model for vaccine development and a toolset for a world that will have to fight more never-before-seen viruses in years to come.
But the pandemic wasn't a sudden eureka moment — it was a catalyst that helped ignite lines of research that had been moving forward for years, far outside the spotlight of a global crisis... Long before the pandemic, [Vaccine Research Center deputy director Barney] Graham worked with colleagues there and in academia to create a particularly accurate 3-D version of the spiky proteins that protrude from the surface of coronaviruses — an innovation that was rejected for publication by scientific journals five times because reviewers questioned its relevance. His laboratory partnered with one of the companies, Moderna, working to develop a fast and flexible vaccine technology, in the hope that science would be ready to respond when a pandemic appeared. "People hear about [vaccine progress] and think someone just thought about it that night. The amount of work — it's really a beautiful story of fundamental basic research,", said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases [of which the center is an intramural division]...
The leading coronavirus vaccine candidates in the United States began their development not in January when a mysterious pneumonia emerged in Wuhan, China, but decades ago — with starts and stops along the way.... Unlike fields that were sparked by a single powerful insight, [Ugur Sahin, chief executive of BioNTech] said that the recent success of messenger RNA vaccines is a story of countless improvements that turned an alluring biological idea into a beneficial technology. "This is a field which benefited from hundreds of inventions," said Sahin, who noted that when he started BioNTech in 2008, he cautioned investors that the technology would not yield a product for at least a decade. He kept his word: Until the coronavirus sped things along, BioNTech projected the launch of its first commercial project in 2023...
On Jan. 13, Moderna RNA scientist Melissa Moore came into work and found her team already busy translating the stabilized spike protein into their platform. The company could start making the vaccine almost right away because of its experience manufacturing experimental cancer vaccines, which involves taking tumor samples and developing personalized vaccines in 45 days.
The Post tries to convey how meaningful this moment is for the scientists involved. Years ago one BioNTech scientist had told their spouse, "I just want to live long enough that I can help the RNA go to the patient. I want to see...at least one person would be helped with this treatment."
And when the Vaccine Research Center's deputy director finally learned how effective the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was, "I just let it all go.
"I was sobbing, I guess, is the term."
And also decades of path-breaking research: If, as expected in the next few weeks, regulators give those vaccines the green light, the technology and the precision approach to vaccine design could turn out to be the pandemic's silver linings: scientific breakthroughs that could begin to change the trajectory of the virus this winter and also pave the way for highly effective vaccines and treatments for other diseases. Vaccine development typically takes years, even decades. The progress of the last 11 months shifts the paradigm for what's possible, creating a new model for vaccine development and a toolset for a world that will have to fight more never-before-seen viruses in years to come.
But the pandemic wasn't a sudden eureka moment — it was a catalyst that helped ignite lines of research that had been moving forward for years, far outside the spotlight of a global crisis... Long before the pandemic, [Vaccine Research Center deputy director Barney] Graham worked with colleagues there and in academia to create a particularly accurate 3-D version of the spiky proteins that protrude from the surface of coronaviruses — an innovation that was rejected for publication by scientific journals five times because reviewers questioned its relevance. His laboratory partnered with one of the companies, Moderna, working to develop a fast and flexible vaccine technology, in the hope that science would be ready to respond when a pandemic appeared. "People hear about [vaccine progress] and think someone just thought about it that night. The amount of work — it's really a beautiful story of fundamental basic research,", said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases [of which the center is an intramural division]...
The leading coronavirus vaccine candidates in the United States began their development not in January when a mysterious pneumonia emerged in Wuhan, China, but decades ago — with starts and stops along the way.... Unlike fields that were sparked by a single powerful insight, [Ugur Sahin, chief executive of BioNTech] said that the recent success of messenger RNA vaccines is a story of countless improvements that turned an alluring biological idea into a beneficial technology. "This is a field which benefited from hundreds of inventions," said Sahin, who noted that when he started BioNTech in 2008, he cautioned investors that the technology would not yield a product for at least a decade. He kept his word: Until the coronavirus sped things along, BioNTech projected the launch of its first commercial project in 2023...
On Jan. 13, Moderna RNA scientist Melissa Moore came into work and found her team already busy translating the stabilized spike protein into their platform. The company could start making the vaccine almost right away because of its experience manufacturing experimental cancer vaccines, which involves taking tumor samples and developing personalized vaccines in 45 days.
The Post tries to convey how meaningful this moment is for the scientists involved. Years ago one BioNTech scientist had told their spouse, "I just want to live long enough that I can help the RNA go to the patient. I want to see...at least one person would be helped with this treatment."
And when the Vaccine Research Center's deputy director finally learned how effective the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was, "I just let it all go.
"I was sobbing, I guess, is the term."
Unfortunately, new is frightening. (Score:5, Interesting)
The fact that this messenger RNA tech has never been used before is an important part of why many people are refusing it (and going to continue refusing it). They don't trust something this new, and think of themselves as the guinea pigs being asked to test it. They are well aware that it has already passed human trials, but they also know that these things can sometimes harm you many years later, so, they consider the entire first generation of users to be little more than an extended trial.
Maybe this is dumb. Maybe they are being completely ignorant. Maybe they just don't have the scientific knowledge they need to appreciate how safe this is, especially compared to the risks that COVID-19 exposure brings. None of that matters. In the minds of many, a disease is "natural" whereas this vaccine is "unnatural," and that is enough. Combine that with this "new technology" and you have a recipe for widespread rejection.
And all that is layered on top of the FUD spread by anti-vaxers about traditional vaccines.
The COVID plague is far from over. :(
Re: (Score:3)
but there is easy solution, this vaccine will be rolled out to certain groups first, like medical workers, and then probably to older. Sooo, you'll have plenty of time to see what happens to these "canary and guinea pig" folk... then if things are fine you get vaccinated. Note a handful of bad reactions per hundred thousands or millions is normal for any vaccine including the ones you've already had.
Re: Unfortunately, new is frightening. (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, maybe there are other risks long term. Maybe not. Maybe in 20 years another disease comes along and really hammers people who had this vaccine... maybe not. I'm personally the type of person who listens to the experts, and guess what the experts are saying? They're saying they don't know about long term effects. There's a fair number of people who will look at this and say that they'd rather take their chances with COVID-19. I don't agree with them, but I can't say that I blame them, and I'm not going to be an asshole and try to equate them to people who deny things like the MMR, TB, or Polio vaccines.
Re: (Score:1)
Maybe in 20 years another disease comes along and really hammers people who had this vaccine... maybe not.
Or maybe another disease comes along and really hammers people who didn't... or maybe when you inevitably contract Covid-19 you have long term problems that surface in 20 years. All these maybes.. what to do, what to do?
Re: (Score:2)
in 20 years vaccine tech will have advanced by mind boggling amount.
for 60 years of trying a coronavirus vaccine for humans never worked out and never was approved, now we have something rolled out in less than a year.
so stop worrying, just think of what your home PC was 20 years ago, but biotech has leaped ahead even further than integrated circuits for complexity, new principles, new inventions that were impossible.
Re: (Score:2)
suppose one in some ten thousands had adverse reaction to vaccine, you'd still be better off with those odds than taking chances with covid in adulthood.
Re: (Score:1)
For all you know, every single person that takes this vaccine will needs another one next year, and another one a year after that, just like the flu, which this fucking is.
You did know that this is the flu, yes? This is a type A influenza virus just like H1N1.
SO now, you are fucking claiming that this time we got it different, that THIS time it will work 100% no problems no reinjections... THIS time for sure, right? ev en though its NEVER
Re: (Score:2)
You have misconceptions.
This years flu is not identical to H1N1 of previous years, flu viruses wildly mutate. You don't get the same flu twice, a single mutation changes surface of virus and can make it evade antibody detection. But coronavirus has totally different structure, coronavirus hasn't mutated the outer jacket that vaccine makes body identify.
Vaccine being 90% effective is included in the "odds" I mention, if the vaccine isn't harmful then it's the smart bet. Not to mention being in community w
Re: (Score:2)
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-... [aa.com.tr]
https://www.natureasia.com/en/... [natureasia.com]
Re: (Score:1)
You're confident enough to get sweary and hand-wave a bunch of research from very smart people, despite being wrong.
1) Covid-19 is caused by a coronavirus, which is a completely different family of viruses to influenza. The are structurally different. Relatives of Covid-19 include SARS and MERS, not H1N1.
2) No-one is assuming 100% effectiveness or permanent ongoing protection.
Re: (Score:2)
If you have such a hard standpoint, you should probably read up what happened with the Polio vaccine in Africa.
And if you are on it, do the same about MMR and TB and sent us a link about it. (A I never have heard about a problem with both).
And as a scientific hint: the new (not so new as the article points out) mRNA vaccines: simply can not have such side effect. WTF, how stupid are people in our time now? Or is it just _uneducation_? As in lack of ever have learned anything that is relevant for your future
Re: (Score:3)
In fact the priority group may not want the vaccine too. In fact, a survey was done in France and only 80% of doctors and 55% of nurses want the vaccine for themselves (but 85% of both groups recommend it to others...). As for people over 65, only 72% want to get vaccine. These are the priority group. Among the 25-34 age group only 33% want to get the vaccine (the lowest). As expected, the higher the social status, the more willing people are to get the vaccine. Note that for some reason, the French has a h
Re: (Score:2)
but the first groups won't get choice, front line medical workers and caregivers will be required.
so, no problem. we get to let them be one last great massive trial for us.
Re: (Score:2)
but they also know that these things can sometimes harm you many years later, so, they consider the entire first generation of users to be little more than an extended trial.
Has there ever been a vaccine with negative effects that didn't show up to at least some degree in the initial trials?
Re: (Score:2)
the oral live polio vaccine that causes some to shed live viruses that infect others, or causes paralytic poliomyelitis (infection along nerves that destroy motor neurons) in about 3 per million cases. The injection vaccine doesn't do that.
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry, there is no difference between oral or injection. (Common sense: why would there?)
The Polio problems come from the fact that a huge deal of doses were produced wrong and did not contain weakened viruses but life viruses.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
Other case happened in Africa.
It is a difference if a proper vaccine has side effects versus the vaccine is not produced properly.
Re: (Score:2)
There is - the injection vaccine uses dead viruses and is administered in developed countries where people generally get a vaccine, The oral vaccine, on the other hand, is meant for undeveloped countries where the minority is actually vaccinated, so it contains a live, but weak virus that can spread to all the unvaccinated people and vaccinate them as well.
And no, it wasn't produced wrong, you are confusing a single event that happened in the fifties and with the dead vaccne that wasn't properly killed with
Re: (Score:3)
Has there ever been a vaccine with negative effects that didn't show up to at least some degree in the initial trials?
That's the thing some people are missing. Generally speaking, this sort of thing doesn't typically show up as problems 20 years later. It's not impossible, of course, but it's incredibly unlikely, according to those who know about such things.
There are no zero-risk choices here, but it's always a bit strange to me that people who are willing to risk Covid-19 would also be so terrified by a shot that's deliberately designed to be helpful and benign. I think it's simply part of how humans, in general, are
Re: (Score:2)
They're also the type of people who loudly protest abortions due to being pro-life, or at least that is their claim.
Re: (Score:3)
Everything new is scary.
Nobody likes change but babies with a full pampers.
I don't think that's the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
The real problem is that the vaccine hits you kinda hard. Not everybody, hell it's a small percentage, but it won't take much to scare people off, especially with the Russians amplifying the noise (which let's not kid ourselves, they're going to, because it's a cheap and easy way to attack us and we're in another cold war with them).
Re: (Score:2)
It's the same cold war. Putin came right out of the KGB. They just had to pause in the 90s to deal with their own internal political crises, the collapse of the union and all the ensuing problems in the post-Soviet states. Chechnya, Azerbaijan, and a half-dozen more wars/near-wars in states I forget the names of. Still going on to some extent, but now that power has been fairly consolidated back to the Kremlin, Putin has more space to swing his dick around.
In my year of being a corona-NEET I've spent some t
Re: (Score:2)
Ukraine? Seriously?
Ever been there? Because I have, several times. It is crumbling, same as Moldova. Literally, in fact - there is a risk of being killed by a rotten balcony when walking in many of their cities.
Estonia does ok, Latvia and Lithuania too, to some extent. That's about it.
Re: Unfortunately, new is frightening. (Score:1)
majority human coronoviruses asymptomatic (Score:2)
The mistrust in the medical industry was foreseeable and is understandable when organizations like the WHO and doctors like Dr. Fauci lied to the public and told them that wearing masks wasn't helpful.
Further, when confronted about it later, Dr. Fauci quote: "When it became clear that the infection could be spread by asymptomatic carriers who don't know they're infected, that made it very clear that we had to strongly recommend masks,". The problem with that reasoning is that MERS-CoV, SARS-CoV, H
Re: (Score:3)
It's not so much the medical people but the political ones. There were plans made under the Obama administration, to face a pandemic. But such plans where scrapped by the Trump one.
Re: (Score:2)
It may be true that people lose trust due to inconsistencies but it seems to me that you are asking for impossible to meet standards of accuracy. At the beginning of a pandemic, a lot of information isn't so clear. There is unlikely to yet be a scientific consensus. On top of that, the people are undoubtedly stressed and will make mistakes. On top of that you have many different organizations with different levels of information. Saying that they lied is almost certainly an exaggeration if not an outright l
Re: (Score:3)
Never used before? That's just false. It hasn't been FDA approved because FDA approval is $2 billion for a sugar pill ... therefore nobody's bothered to try for FDA approval until now. However we HAVE used messenger RNA technology for decades in lab/experimental settings. Example-> https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... [nih.gov]
Re: (Score:3)
Reasonable people can have valid concerns about new technology. That is not the same as the vaccine hysteria that has been ongoing for a few decades without any valid science.
Here is something that concerned people can do to allay those fears: you are probably not in the first or second waves of vaccinations that will go to priority groups. This means that by the time you have a vaccine available to you, there would be many tens of millions ahead of you that already had it, and months would have passed. By
Humans really, really suck at calculating risk (Score:5, Insightful)
Humans generally are really, really bad at judging risks.
We're good at pattern recognition, particularly faces and words that are pronounced very sloppily. We're good at a lot of things. We just don't have any intuition for risk-based decisions. People routinely accept a risk that's 1/10,000 of dying in order to avoid a different 1/1,000,000 chance.
Covid has already killed roughly 1.4 million people or so this year.
It will keep killing people, if we're not vaccinated. That's not a theoretical maybe it could; that's our loved ones actually dead.
Sure there is some very small chance of some kind of significant aide effect from a vaccine. That "could* happen. Not being vaccinated has killed a million and a half. That *did* happen, and will continue to happen until we get vaccinated.
Re: (Score:2)
* A brand new vaccine - we are not sure if there are any unknown long term effects.
* Covid 19 - we are not sure if there are any unknown long term effects.
Oh, and the first option also means no death by Covid.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Unfortunately, new is frightening. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
A virus that has still managed to kill more than flu, despite most of the planet taking vigorous action to slow down it's spread? In the UK if has already killed more than 5x the normal annual flu toll despite lockdown for most of the time since late March, even a half assed lockdown still shows signs of suppressing colds & is expected to suppress flu?
Comparing normal, do nothing stats, with stats under active response to epidemics is pointless. Unless you're simply pushing bullshit.
Re: Unfortunately, new is frightening. (Score:1)
Re:Unfortunately, new is frightening. (Score:5, Informative)
...a corona virus that hasn't killed that much more than seasonal flue/influenza.
You're a fucking liar and you shouldn't be spreading disinformation that kills people. And, no I'm not sorry for calling you out, you son of a bitch. I'm just sick and tired of assholes like you spreading lies. Given that you can't even spell "flu" correctly, I don't know why anyone would listen to you, anyway. But to the extent they do, they're dumber for it. If there were justice in this world, you'd be the next to catch this and die, and I'm sure you'd be one of those patients that go screaming to their deaths that Covid is a hoax. But sadly, justice is in short supply these days.
Re: (Score:2)
I would wholeheartedly support placing anyone who ever said that covid-19 is no worse than the flu and that back of the vaccine waitlist. Live by your words.
Re: (Score:2)
You're a fucking liar and you shouldn't be spreading disinformation that kills people. And, no I'm not sorry for calling you out, you son of a bitch. I'm just sick and tired of assholes like you spreading lies. Given that you can't even spell "flu" correctly, I don't know why anyone would listen to you, anyway. But to the extent they do, they're dumber for it. If there were justice in this world, you'd be the next to catch this and die, and I'm sure you'd be one of those patients that go screaming to their deaths that Covid is a hoax. But sadly, justice is in short supply these days.
Technically speaking he is right. Influenza, or flu, is a terrible deadly disease. It killed hundreds of millions during history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] . I myself nearly died from it. Influenza shows us what the Covid-19 may become since it is also an awful airborne illness.
There are many other dangerous disease which kill millions each year, for example, tuberculosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
By the way, many measures and approaches, which are being tested due to the current Covid-1
Re: (Score:2)
Technically speaking he is wrong.
And os are you.
The Corona death rate is 37 times higher than to seasonal Flus, easy to google.
Idiot.
Re: (Score:2)
Technically speaking he is wrong.
...
The Corona death rate is 37 times higher than to seasonal Flus, easy to google.
...
I agree that Covid-19 has higher death rate currently. It is a new virus for which we do not have any immunity yet. However, the flu is also an extremely dangerous virus. And it keeps mutating.
In 1918 alone flu killed probably up to 100 million (!) people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] , when the world population was 1.8 billion, times less than now.
Such diseases as influenza, tuberculosis, etc. exist for centuries, if not millenniums. And they killed endless millions of people, and they continue t
Re: (Score:2)
I can shrug off a flu or get vaccinated. Covid-19, on the other hand, will probably kill me.
Re: (Score:2)
I can shrug off a flu or get vaccinated. Covid-19, on the other hand, will probably kill me.
No doubt - Covid-19 does kill about 2% of infected individuals. It is a lot. It is an extremely dangerous respiratory infection.
However it would be wrong to dismiss the flu as a trivial inconvenience. Flu is called "the killer of elderly people". The flu virus is constantly mutating. The new flu vaccine is being produced each year while trying to guess the future virus mutation. So the flu vaccine cannot and is not guaranteed to be 100% effective.
At the same time the flu has established itself among H
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Who is paying you to lie? I just can't believe you are so sincerely stupid or proudly ignorant, so someone must be paying you to fake it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Now I'm leaning towards the other guy's perspective. Maybe you aren't doing it for money. Maybe you just like killing people. "Conversation" terminated.
Re: Unfortunately, new is frightening. (Score:3)
Re: Unfortunately, new is frightening. (Score:5, Insightful)
This situation ain't 'amateur night' level stuff. If there's really some wide-ranging conspiracy behind the pandemic, then we're 100% screwed anyway, because common citizens have no power or ability to do anything about it if there is, other than Civil War, literally taking up arms against the government; the actual enemies of the U.S. would have a literal field day, and throw a huge victory party for winning their cold war without ever firing a single shot. Nope! Doesn't pass the sniff test, Occams' Razor likewise says 'Nope!'. The governments of the Free World and more are just trying to get through this shit as fast as possible, meanwhile morons and chaos-creators are doing everything they can to make it last longer. Really makes me think some days that the answer to the Fermi Paradox is that any sentient species still ends up with enough throwback idiots that they manage to sabotage their own species right into oblivion.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
1. Nobody likes this situation or the restrictions necessary. I, for one, understand the necessity of all of it, but I sure as hell don't like it, and get very edgy being in public and having to deal with it; it's unnatural for us all to look like faceless robots. Makes me feel hostile. I only partially understand why, really. But I can tell you it comes from somewhere so deeply hardwired in my brain that I have to counter it with logic an
Re: (Score:2)
That one should also be modded up.
However I can cite one author (semantically linked to "authority") who at least partly disagrees with you. Just finished The Road to Unfreedom by Timothy Snyder. He gives a lot of credit to Putin for jujitsu against truth and journalism in a sophisticated lose-lose game. Not a zero-sum game, but actually a strategy of losing a little in a way that causes the enemies (the US and Europe) to lose much more. (At one point in the book he actually acknowledges China as the big
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Unfortunately, new is frightening. (Score:5, Insightful)
realize you are currently experiencing what is called "mass hysteria"
And you need to take a breath a realize that what you are experiencing is a conspiricy theory.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Unfortunately, new is frightening. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, I get it, that is your conspiricy theory.
Got any evidence?
Re:Unfortunately, new is frightening. (Score:5, Insightful)
So, no evidence then.
Typical conspiracy theory. When will you conspiratards ever learn?
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
Never. When someone infected with retardovirus develops full-blown Trumpism, it's terminal.
Re: (Score:2)
All we can hope is that the younger generations begin developing a resistance, which does appear to be happening. Too late, unfortunately, for many living now.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Really. Nice one.
Given, esp., that rakshasas are nasty Hindu/Buddhist demons who do not like humans, I think their response to you was dead on. Thanks for helping reduce the population of the planet by lying about the danger of C-19.
Re: (Score:3)
While you're taking out numbers for people who don't matter (to you), don't forget to take them out of the flu deaths too.
Re: (Score:2)
While you're taking out numbers for people who don't matter (to you), don't forget to take them out of the flu deaths too.
Was sarcasm. I guess I should've laid it on thicker.
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
Still pushing that bullshit?
Only a really are a sad person would keep promoting a retracted paper.
The author may not have retracted the paper, but the paper has no peer reviews and the publishers retracted it because it makes claims that are based on clearly false data.
I guess that's what living as a Trump supporter requires: a strong ability to avoid actual facts.
Re: (Score:1)
I always wonder if people writing responses like yours are foaming at the mouth, clawing at things, I get a picture in my head of some rabid thing having a spastic fit while trying to type?
But anyways I read your suggested 'takedown' and it had the usual play with the language style game going on which then of course debunked the strawman version of the original.
"Although total US death counts are remarkably consistent from year to year, US deaths increased by 20% during March-July 2020"
Which then m
Re: (Score:2)
For anyone who might consider that retracted paper, here is a detailed takedown: [factcheck.org]
Re:Unfortunately, new is frightening. (Score:5, Insightful)
By "not much more", you surely mean "at least 10x as much", right? And let's not forget those with lasting symptoms we still don't understand. Did you miss the story about how our hospitals are straining at max capacity right now?
Look, no one is pretending this is the Black Death Mark II, but it's also quite a bit more serious than the flu. And the flu is bad enough, even though we have fairly effective vaccines widely available. Even if you're not at considerable risk yourself, it's still a lottery, randomly killing even healthy, young individuals. And for those with conditions or who are older, the risk is much higher, of course.
I'd be happy to take this vaccine as soon as it's available, as I feel the risk is minimal. This has been well tested, despite your claim to the contrary, and has been demonstrated to be safe and effective. No one can guarantee that it's risk free, of course, but I'll bet on an injection deliberately designed to protect us versus random mutations in a virus we're still coming to grips with. In short, I'll bet on bio-science.
Re:Unfortunately, new is frightening. (Score:4, Insightful)
Well tested, and has the news sources you listen to told you about the really really bad side-effects experienced by several of the subject of the bill gates backed vaccine?
What "really really bad side-effects"? How many is "several"? Which "bill gates backed" vaccine? Sources, please.
if it was 10x, we'd have 600k deaths in the US, yet we don't and even the 200k number is suspect due to the way they are reported.
The CDC says there were 34,200 deaths from influenza last year. Literally everyone says there are ~281K COVID deaths in the US. Where do your numbers come from? Sources, please.
And what kind of young individuals actually die from it? They're pretty much all those with rather serious comorbidities and since I'm not a 300-pound astma sufferer, I'm quite safe, and so are the rest of my extended family.
Well, bully for you. But what about the 132M US citizens that are overweight/obese? What about the 43M Americans with diabetes? What about the 95M Americans with hypertension?
I know, let's just tell all those people to suck it up, it's just a bad flu season.
Full of shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Taken from: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/... [cdc.gov].
During the 2019-2020 influenza season, CDC estimates that influenza was associated with 38 million illnesses, 18 million medical visits, 405,000 hospitalizations, and 22,000 deaths.
22,000 flu deaths last season.
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-da... [cdc.gov]
280,000 deaths now. Let me say that again. Two hundred and eighty thousand deaths. More people have died in a single day than did on 9/11. All because morons like you yell about MUH FREEDOMS and refuse to alter your lifestyle slightly.
Re:Full of shit (Score:4, Informative)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017%E2%80%932018_United_States_flu_season
61,000 estimated deaths.
It's almost as if it has a rather curious quality, a very mysterious one, called "variability".
Re: (Score:3)
Estimated deaths, you numbnut. You are comparing estimates (a. k. a. arse pulls) to confirmed numbers. There are only a few thousand confirmed flu deaths per year.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
Oh and by the way: twice as many as THAT die of heart disease. Get a grip. And yeah, losing your job and business because of the flu isn't "refusing to alter your lifestyle slightly". NOT EVERYONE IS AN IT GUY WHO CAN WORK FROM HOME.
Re: (Score:2)
Your intellect is astounding.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Full of shit (Score:2)
480,000 Americans die of smoking every year. Let me say that again. Four hundred and eighty thousand deaths. More people have died in a single day than did on 9/11. Every day, for the last 60 years. Let me say that again: every day.
Oh and by the way: twice as many as THAT die of heart disease. Get a grip. And yeah, losing your job and business because of the flu isn't "refusing to alter your lifestyle slightly". NOT EVERYONE IS AN IT GUY WHO CAN WORK FROM HOME.
1. Second hand smoke is bad, but it's not contagious, and certainly doesnâ(TM)t produce these outcomes from short exposure.
2. Weâ(TM)ve had "stop smoking" campaigns for literally decades now.
3. Smokers can't just smoke wherever they want anymore.
4. Doctors and the government say smoking is bad, and most people believe them. (Because it's true.)
5. It takes years of millions of people smoking to come to the situation we're in.
6. This all completely ignores the growing evidence of long term effects that aren't deadly. Strokes, lung damage, fatigue, erectile dysfunction, etc.
7. People that can't stay home because they need to work should be paid to stay home by the government. Essential workers should get a raise and/or hazard pay.
Re: (Score:2)
Dying to smoking is not infectious.
Dying to heart attacks is not infectious.
Both do not block your ICU unit in your local hospital.
Because: they are dead.
Moron very much?
Re: (Score:2)
675,000 people died in the US from the "Spanish Flu" 100 years ago, without modern medical systems. We're currently sitting at 290,000 deaths from COVID in this country, or about 42% of the worst pandemic to hit this country. Some are projecting that with hospitals becoming full, by the end of January, we could be hitting 500,000 dead from COVID and fully surpass the 1918 pandemic flu in deaths by summe
Re:Unfortunately, new is frightening. (Score:5, Informative)
The mRNA vaccine does not "change your mRNA code." That isn't how it works (and the statement doesn't even really make sense anyway).
Here is some info. [sciencebasedmedicine.org]
Re: (Score:2)
versus a corona virus that hasn't killed that much more than seasonal flue/influenza.
Do you want to roll the dice on being one of the people with severe long-term effects?
Re: (Score:3)
I will try to take a nicer response, and realize that you might not have heard how this works. Nor understand what messenger RNA is and how it cannot rewrite your DNA.
It carries the code to make the protein that your body recognizes as though it was the virus. So, it gets in there. Has your cells make a fake spike and trains your body to fight it. It does not write backwards to DNA. mRNA has a short lifespan it does its job and goes away.
A little info on the various types of those funky acids. https [differencebetween.com]
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know if you are being ignorant or willfully spreading false information. Going on the assumption that you are just ignorant, take a look a the graph here
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
This is probably just about the most unbiased kind of information you can get - how many people have died this year compared to prior years. Somehow the spikes on the graph correlate well with the number of cases of Covid-19 (especially if you take into account rates of testing - in the beg
Cripes, thank you science (Score:5, Insightful)
So...it happened at Warp Speed? (Score:2)
Doh, Trump1
Re: (Score:2)
Can you expand on this? Such as by citing pre-Trump examples of a treatment — of anything — that went from "no one's even heard of this disease" to "available" in less than twelve months"? I'll wait....
Explain how Trump is responsible for any of this other than allocating money... Oh, and you want other examples? like maybe the speedy delivery of the vaccines in other countries like UK, Russia, etc.
Re: (Score:2)
Russia has already started the mass distribution of their Sputnik V vaccine yesterday.
UK is rolling out the German developed Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine this week.
Look it up if you care.
Re: (Score:1)
I, quite explicitly, asked you for a pre-Trump example of a treatment becoming available in less than 12 months. This is why I could not understand, what you were talking about — your citations are acceptable.
So, Boris Johnson is doing a good job too...
Silence (Score:1, Offtopic)
Meanwhile, the press, politicians and scientists all pat themselves for job well done. Accept it isn't because there are studies that show that MMR jab gives good immunity to COVID and people mainly only have bad outcomes because their vitamin D and zinc levels are low.
Solid evidence:
MMR jab gives some immunity, (the mumps part, which lasts 10 years)
https://mbio.asm.org/content/1... [asm.org]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Vitamin D, deficiency correlation with COVID severity
https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com]
https:// [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:2)
...people mainly only have bad outcomes because their vitamin D and zinc levels are low.
No doubt you have data that backs up this assertion too? Don't get me wrong, I'm not disputing the evidence in the papers you've presented! However the most that can be said from that is: Patients with deficiencies of vitamin D and zinc are more likely to experience severe symptoms, and worse outcomes, upon infection with Covid 19. You cannot, on the evidence you've presented, make the more general statement that "the main reason for bad outcomes is deficiencies in a patient's vitamin D and zinc levels".
As
Re: (Score:2)
Typical bloody internet big head, ignores evidence even when presented with it, think they know better.
Re: (Score:2)
Typical bloody internet big head, ignores evidence even when presented with it, think they know better.
Your hypocrisy is staggering.
Perhaps you'd like to review the other interventions mentioned in the video you link to. I'll reproduce them here, given you seem to have 'missed' them in your rush to overstate your case: "All hospitalized patients received as best available therapy the same standard care, (per hospital protocol), of a combination of hydroxychloroquine (400 mg every 12 h on the first day, and 200 mg every 12 h for the following 5 days), azithromycin (500 mg orally for 5 days..."
So, there's the
Re: (Score:2)
Are you stupid, If One group is given vitamin D and the other isn't and the group that is given vitamin D does vastly better then it's clear that the vitamin D is having a strong effect. The treatment that both groups are given doesn't change that.
How can you look at a 25-fold difference in a double blind trial and say that isn't hugely important?
Re: (Score:2)
Are you stupid,
No.
If One group is given vitamin D and the other isn't and the group that is given vitamin D does vastly better then it's clear that the vitamin D is having a strong effect. The treatment that both groups are given doesn't change that.
Agreed.
How can you look at a 25-fold difference in a double blind trial and say that isn't hugely important?
I didn't. In fact I specifically said "I have previously mentioned, and advocated for, taking vitamin D as a prophylactic."
Rather than trying to put words into my mouth, or arguing against something you imagined I meant, why not address your arguments to my specific, written, objections?
a realistic technologist ? (Score:2)
I'm shocked, shocked I tell you
"This is a field which benefited from hundreds of inventions," said Sahin, who noted that when he started BioNTech in 2008, he cautioned investors that the technology would not yield a product for at least a decade.
He didn't just string people along for a decade (plus), he actually had a realistic idea of when a practical product might be ready. That demonstrates that he had a truly amazing understanding of the technology both the capablilities and the difficulties. It's h
Lead (Score:3)
Celebrating the Path-Breaking Research That Lead to Coronavirus Vaccines
It’s “Led”, not “Lead”.
Pfizer/BioNTech Vaccine: Lots of Side-effects (Score:3, Informative)
"The most frequent adverse reactions in participants 16 years of age and older were pain at the injection site (> 80%), fatigue (> 60%), headache (> 50%), myalgia (> 30%), chills (> 30%), arthralgia (> 20%) and pyrexia (> 10%) and were usually mild or moderate in intensity and resolved within a few days after vaccination. If required, symptomatic treatment with analgesic and/or anti-pyretic medicinal products (e.g. paracetamol-containing products) may be used."
https://assets.publishing.serv... [service.gov.uk]
Re: (Score:2)
Interestingly I read on science blog that they think the side effects are from the lipid nano-capsules, not the actual immune response. Apparently they did tests with injecting just the lipid capsules and got the same side effect profile.
I'm sure they will get on top of this as it will be work that will be useful for all future vaccines/treatments that use mRNA technology, but for now it's really not a big deal.
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds just like the symptoms of the flu vaccine. Nothing unusual for a vaccine.
Re: (Score:2)
If you do not have any of the mentioned side effects:
you can be rest assured, the vaccine did not work on you!
Seriously, is it so hard to grasp what a vaccine is and how it works?
Re: (Score:2)
This is typical of the medical community (Score:5, Interesting)
If you have been around medical people any length of time this is typical of their approach to problems. Form a scrum, work really hard for a little while, declare success, then move on. But the actual problem is rarely solved, they have just made themselves look good with a temporary solution, they have covered their asses (which is important to them because getting sued happens a lot). There has also been a fundamental tension between medicine and politics for a very long time. Medicine has a lot of influence and power over people, while politicians crave the same. When there is conflict between the groups, as often occurs, the medical people always back down, because the politicians control the funding (witness the CDC _just_giving_up_ when Trump starts criticizing them. No protests, no public statements, no resignations, no fiery speeches, they just. gave. up.) The medical people will plead for more funding for pandemic preparedness, but beyond statements in medical journals and a few press releases they will not try to change the priorities of the NIH or NSF, which have historically been run by a bunch of privileged old men with rigid ideologies derived from their mentors in the nineteen hundreds. The current leadership looks a little more diverse:
https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/... [nih.gov]
Even worse, a bunch of other old men in Congress who have no medical expertise are also deciding their priorities through funding allocations and laws.
They are celebrating their success before they have won (the vaccines are not proven to work until they have actually worked for billions of people, for a long time), and after decades of fucking up: "an innovation that was rejected for publication by scientific journals five times because reviewers questioned its relevance." It is historically a boys club that has been making noise about a possible pandemic for decades, but why have they been warning -us-? They are the ones who should have been doing something all this time, and instead they let the NSF direct funding to fads instead of doing the important, basic work needed to truly solve humanities problems. This was their job in society. Learn about how research is done. There are no big overarching plans to solve basic problems. Instead there are politicians and doctors who have bullied their way to the top on the backs of others and who are making the funding decisions, often based on fads. If your research does not fit the current fads you do not get funded. Even worse, there are few guiding principles for research; it is left up to individual researchers to decide what they want to work on. Research decisions are made by social consensus, your advisor tells you whether you are likely to get your degree according to your choice of problem. Big problems are difficult so resarchers choose easier problems. It is almost impossible to work for 20 years on a problem which you may never solve and build a career. Usually, once a student has their degree they never work on that same problem ever again. The process was so painful they just want to get away from it, and they also adopt the same overbearing dictator-like attitude their mentors foisted on them onto their subordinates. They learned what they were taught well!
You want to know why people distrust science and may not take the vaccine? Every person who has tried to navigate a skin problem is faced with thousands of skin care products, most of which do not work, and many of which cause more skin problems (e.g., benzoil peroxide which dries out the skin, where is the big research effort into ending acne? Where is the big research effort into fixing the problems drinking alcohol causes? Behavior modification does not work unless you are going to start
Wait - based on *who's* work? (Score:3)
Ah, I see, the Vaccine Research Center, part of NIAID, which is part of the NIH.
Paid for by tax dollars, and doing basic research which Big Pharma DOES NOT DO, because it doesn't increase ROI next quarter.
Take your "government can't do anything", libertidiots, and show it where the sun don't shine.
Re: (Score:2)