India's DNA COVID Vaccine is a World First -- More Are Coming (nature.com) 167
India has approved a new COVID vaccine that uses circular strands of DNA to prime the immune system against the virus SARS-CoV-2. Researchers have welcomed news of the first DNA vaccine for people to receive approval anywhere in the world, and say many other DNA vaccines may soon be hot on its heels. From a report: ZyCoV-D, which is administered into the skin without an injection, has been found to be 67% protective against symptomatic COVID-19 in clinical trials, and will likely start to be administered in India this month. Although the efficacy is not particularly high compared to that of many other COVID-19 vaccines, the fact that it is a DNA vaccine is significant, say researchers. It is proof of the principle that DNA vaccines work and can help in controlling the pandemic, says Peter Richmond, a paediatric immunologist at the University of Western Australia in Perth. "This is a really important step forward in the fight to defeat COVID-19 globally, because it demonstrates that we have another class of vaccines that we can use."
Close to a dozen DNA vaccines against COVID-19 are in clinical trials globally, and at least as many again are in earlier stages of development. DNA vaccines are also being developed for many other diseases. "If DNA vaccines prove to be successful, this is really the future of vaccinology" because they are easy to manufacture, says Shahid Jameel, a virologist at Ashoka University in Sonipat, India. The urgency of combating COVID-19 has fast-tracked the development of vaccines that use genetic technology, such as messenger RNA and DNA vaccines, says David Weiner, director of the Vaccine & Immunotherapy Center at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. RNA vaccines were quicker to show strong immune responses in clinical trials; they have now been delivered to hundreds of millions of people around the world. But DNA vaccines have a number of benefits, because they are easy to produce and the finished products are more stable than mRNA vaccines, which typically require storage at very low temperatures.
Close to a dozen DNA vaccines against COVID-19 are in clinical trials globally, and at least as many again are in earlier stages of development. DNA vaccines are also being developed for many other diseases. "If DNA vaccines prove to be successful, this is really the future of vaccinology" because they are easy to manufacture, says Shahid Jameel, a virologist at Ashoka University in Sonipat, India. The urgency of combating COVID-19 has fast-tracked the development of vaccines that use genetic technology, such as messenger RNA and DNA vaccines, says David Weiner, director of the Vaccine & Immunotherapy Center at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. RNA vaccines were quicker to show strong immune responses in clinical trials; they have now been delivered to hundreds of millions of people around the world. But DNA vaccines have a number of benefits, because they are easy to produce and the finished products are more stable than mRNA vaccines, which typically require storage at very low temperatures.
Covid will cure cancer (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a movie about that (Score:2)
except the hero blows himself up but lives in the fake news version.
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And yet, our society remains ever primed towards questioning the basic safety of novel approaches involving well-understood science, but ever-accepting of "alternative cures" involving very questionable substances with absolutely minimal scientific evidence of their effectiveness in such scenarios.
I literally hope the alt-right conspiracies start promoting embalming fluid as their next alternative cure. At least that way, those people will be pre
Re: Covid will cure cancer (Score:2)
Too late for some of us. Unless they can reverse the process.
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I'll stick with the apple flavored horse paste solution, thank you.
I’d be a bit wary if I were you, it’s such an effective anti parasitic that after ponying up and eating the paste some of the loudest people straight up disappeared.
Re:Covid will cure cancer (Score:5, Funny)
Did you know that EVERY SINGLE ONE of the soldiers that George Washington made get variolated against smallpox are now dead??? ALL of them.
Vaccines kill.
Do your own research.
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1. Time : Gorge Wasington died in 1799, I'm not shire how old the soldiers where when they got vaccinated, but lets say at least 18, lets's also ( for simplisities sake) say that they all git the jab he year he died. This would make them about 139 years old, what was yhe avarege age fire nakes in the us at that time?
2: Soldiers, due to there somewhat dangerous uccupation tend to die a bit yunger than the avarage, and esp back then when battlefield nedical care was
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I'm pretty certain it was a joke.
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Truth. The National Archives has a copy of an online post Washington himself made about it shortly after LaGuardia was retaken for anyone that doubts it. I've seen it with my own two eyes.
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Did you know that EVERY SINGLE ONE of the soldiers that George Washington made get variolated against smallpox are now dead??? ALL of them.
Even the founding fathers knew vaccines were a good plan.
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
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Because a "compilation of facebook screenshots" is how I science!
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Haha that post is actually satire.
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Ya, because if it is on Facebook, it must be twoooo.
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Safe and effective? Have you seen that one compilation of Facebook screenshots showing people taking the vaccine and then their obituaries?
It is sad, but true; the vaccine does not guarantee, or even offer, Eternal Life on Earth.
I'll stick with the apple flavored horse paste solution, thank you.
A horse is a horse of course of course
And noone can talk to a horse of course
Unless of course that horse is the famous Mister Ed
Go right to the source and ask the horse
He'll give you the answer that you'll endorse
He's always on a steady course
Talk to Mister Ed
Before too many people shout It'll change my genes (Score:2)
We already have systems that look for DNA that is not in the nucleus of our cells and destroy it.
There also isn't a system in our body that imports DNA into the nucleus of our cells. Viruses that do that (such as chicken pox) have to make their own protein to do it.
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The fact that people are shouting it for RNA doesn't bode well for anything DNA based. Plus the "easy to manufacturer" isn't much of a selling point when a large number aren't even taking what's currently available.
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The main benefit on the "easy to manufacture" front is this doesn't need cryogenic storage, since DNA is more stable. So, don't need to keep it as cold while you're making it or shipping it.
It should help in all the places still clamoring for vaccines but can't get enough of them do the the difficult logistics of mRNA vaccines.
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a large number aren't even taking what's currently available.
This is a first-world problem.
In developing countries, there are still dire shortages of vaccines, and many, many people are willing to take them.
If we are going to beat this disease, we need worldwide herd immunity.
DNA vaccines are a good solution for developing countries because they are cheap and easy to transport.
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>"If we are going to beat this disease, we need worldwide herd immunity."
Define "beat this disease."
We will have worldwide herd immunity, regardless of what we do. What we do might speed it up, slow it down, or affect how many get sick or die in the process, however.
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We will have worldwide herd immunity, regardless of what we do.
That will only happen if the vaccination rate stays ahead of the mutation rate.
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>"That will only happen if the vaccination rate stays ahead of the mutation rate."
That is assuming that natural immunity has zero (or little) effectiveness against variants. And I don't believe that is true (I doubt you believe that either). If it were true, the human (and other species) would never have survived through the millennia.
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>"You do know that the vast majority of species have actually gone extinct and didn't survive."
Yes, from asteroids and volcanoes, and we think maybe also a cosmic ray burst. I have never heard anything about a world-wide species being made extinct from a pathogen.
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Considering this is the forum that never reads the summary of stories, your response isn't unusual. I'll make it simple even for you. The first is simply substituting plants for a bioreactor (you know what that is?). Important in the whole "make it cheaper and easier" which is the main article. The latter link is simple common sense. Take care of yourself and you'll do better.
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Sure, a DNA vaccine might not change change your genes, but it will give you great 5G reception!
The important bits. (Score:3)
DNA vaccines have a number of benefits, because they are easy to produce and the finished products are more stable than mRNA vaccines
ZyCoV-D contains circular strands of DNA known as plasmids, which encode the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, together with a promoter sequence for turning the gene on. Once the plasmids enter the nuclei of cells, they are converted into mRNA, which travels to the main body of the cell, the cytoplasm, and is translated into the spike protein itself. The body’s immune system then mounts a response against the protein, and produces tailored immune cells that can clear future infections. Plasmids typically degrade within weeks to months, but the immunity remains.
It sounds like these are really just a cheaper and more stable way of packaging mRNA vaccines... but I'm no biologist.
Re:The important bits. (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds like these are really just a cheaper and more stable way of packaging mRNA vaccines...
You are correct except for the word "just".
With 4 billion people still not vaccinated, a cheaper and more stable vaccine is profoundly important.
this is stupid (Score:4, Funny)
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Well, they're an RNA precursor.
If it produces an immune response, it's somewhere in the same chain of events. Of course. That's true all the vaccines.
Re: The important bits. (Score:2)
Yours is the last comment on this page and the only insightful ontopic comment. I wish I had mod points.
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Really? I wish I had the ability to command lightning bolts but I mean, mod points is cool too. ;)
Applied to the skin without an injection? (Score:5, Insightful)
Could we spray this vaccine over the next anti-vax protest to make the world a safer and lulzier place?
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Could we spray this vaccine over the next anti-vax protest to make the world a safer and lulzier place?
Spray? How about a clandestine nebulizer, I want to silently shed and infect the antivaxxers with the invisible cloud in my wake, it’s muh freedumb to not have to be held to account for my actions.
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Good idea, you could even protest alongside them with the nebulizer active, for the same right to spread biological agents everywhere you go! :D Just wear a mask for your own safety, and as a fun conversation-starter!
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There was a Star Trek: NG episode about the effect of a super immune system upon others.
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We should repackage this into a personal spray container that we carry around to protect ourselves when confronted by someone shouting in our faces about masks and vaccines, sort of like pepper spray, but with better outcomes for society.
Pretty sure using pepper/bear spray provides a better outcome for society. Furthermore, if you dose these people with vaccine w/o their knowledge and they then don't ever get sick, it will just reinforce their belief that they don't need vaccines ...
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Once Children 5-12 are vaccinated I am not going to wear masks to protect anti-vaxxers.
I am vaccinated so if I become infected and an asymptomatic carrier the only people at risk are anti-vaxxers.
I will not inconvenience myself to protect anti-vaxxers.
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You're also doing it to protect a small percentage of the population who can't be vaccinated for legitimate medical reasons. But even if not for them, your plan still wouldn't work because the anti-vaxxers would overwhelm the healthcare system and cause collateral damage that way. Plus they'd eventually bring a new, more dangerous variant into the world.
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There are still breakthrough infections and yes, people have died from those. Don't wear a mask at your own risk. Or don't wear one because if you get a breakthrough infection, you'll be wanting to spread it to as many others as possible.
Oh, there is now the mu-variant and we aren't sure how well vaccines work on it. Actually, there are also several other variants.
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I am vaccinated against measles. There are breakthrough infections in measles as well. I dont recall wearing a mask for the last 40 years to avoid measles.
Over a million people were clinically diagnosed with COVID in America in just the last week. [worldometers.info]
How many times did Measles prevalence get that high after we had vaccinations?
The answer is never, by the way. [historyofvaccines.org]
At this point in Covid people are just habituated to wearing masks. Its like a comfort blanket. Scientifically speaking its not justified if you are vaccinated.
At this point. There are still millions of infected people in America spreading COVID. When the prevalence is as low as Measles. Then you get to treat it like Measles.
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The solution in a sensible country yes.
When everyone has been vaccinated and the COVID prevalence is as low as Measles, sure.
Do you expect the people crying about having to wear a mask are going to be happy letting you inject things into them. They have too many FREEDUMBS to put up with that.
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>"At this point we are wearing masks just to protect children under 12 and anti-vaxxers."
We don't need to protect either. People who don't want to take the vaccine a free to spin the wheel, that is their choice. Children without severe underlying conditions are statistically not at risk regarding COVID-19, never have been. Those with such conditions have always been at risk for ANY type of infection; and pathogens are not going to disappear, ever.
Plus, non-N/K95 masks do little to stop COVID-19 spread
Re:Applied to the skin without an injection? (Score:5, Funny)
I'd just as soon spray them with actual covid since it's not a big deal and clearly a hoax.
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I'd just as soon spray them with actual covid since it's not a big deal and clearly a hoax.
And they prefer "natural immunity" anyways, so I say we give it to them all at once and get it over with in a few weeks. If they get really sick, we can put them in the sportsball stadium where they can all pray together. They will get the salvation their God wants them to have, guaranteed.
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In Texas, you get to shoot the virus with guns, don't even need a license or training now. Guns are a cure for anything in Texas.
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Could we spray this vaccine over the next anti-vax protest to make the world a safer and lulzier place?
Why would we do that? Why would we want these people to stay alive? Let them kill themselves. It raises the IQ of the nation while simultaneously reducing the population which in turn opens up jobs for other people as well as putting more homes up for sale.
It's a win, win, win, win situation all around if they gather in groups.
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There are jobs which intelligent people would be bored out of their minds to do. We need a certain amount of dumb people.
Isn't that what robots are for? To do the menial, repetitive tasks? Having large portions of this group die off would only increase the urgency to develop highly advanced robotics and automation.
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A lot of people are already obsolete, that hasn't stopped them for staying alive has it?
Re: Applied to the skin without an injection? (Score:2)
It uses a spring based mechanism to generate a high pressure spray which penetrates the skin without a needle.
Great for vaccine hesitancy (Score:2)
Yesterday I overheard a conversation between 2 individuals, one of whom said "I'm pregnant with a baby, and they want to inject me with a bunch of chemicals with who knows what in them!?" Putting aside the sheer stupidity of the comment, this may sidestep some of those people who don't like injections.
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No, it won't sidestep anything. Those kind of people will simply gin up new excuses. Hell, they don't even need to think them up themselves, they can just watch Fox or listen to right wingnut talk radio.
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>"it won't sidestep anything. Those kind of people will simply gin up new excuses."
It won't help with some people, but it will with others. As someone who gets injections all the time (allergy), it is amazing to me how irrationally afraid some people are of injections.
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COVID-19 not cure for stupid (Score:2)
Re:What's the obsession with vaccines? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you look at Table 2 in your citation, you will see that for all of the studies reviewed in this paper, the quality of evidence was graded either "low" or "very low". And these studies were conducted in Bangladesh, India, Nigeria, Bulgaria, Turkey, etc, where the rate of parasite infections is very high. So, when they claim ivermectin lowered mortality, was it because they were cured of COVID or cured of worms?
Preventing disease is better than getting disease. The dose of ivermectin which is being used for COVID is 100 times the dose that's been judged safe for humans. Ivermectin users are already starting to clog emergency rooms.
https://www.fox13now.com/news/... [fox13now.com]
https://www.cbs42.com/news/hea... [cbs42.com]
https://www.usatoday.com/story... [usatoday.com]
I'm wondering if people who won't take the vaccine because they mistrust Big Pharma realize that ivermectin is made by Merck.
Also, I just realized I'm arguing with a Slashdot user named "TastyClit" who just made his account two days ago, so never mind.
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Maybe, the countries of origin had something to do with the (perception of) the quality of evidence?
Is it? Obviously, not always — we don't make plagu
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OK, now look up Bulgaria! lol
It's a former Soviet Block place that has not experienced war or social upheaval. The people are poor, but the quality of science education is very high, and their access to health care is also very high. They have a higher literacy rate than the US.
Did you know that Bulgaria is where most of the companies that oversee European drug experiments are located? No, of course not.
https://data.worldbank.org/ind... [worldbank.org]
But who would I be to argue with a slashdot user who sees himself as the
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You're right about Bulgaria. It's a poor country but the health care and science education are both very good.
How to protect free speech? (Score:2)
You're propagating the troll's main message in the Subject, which largely negates the accuracy of any information you provide.
So here's my new (but derivative) solution approach. We can't have the government outlawing free speech, so we want to keep the government people out of it. We'll set it up so the enforcement of the new anti-anti-vaxer law is handled by private citizens who can earn bounties by shutting down any websites that propagate the anti-vax BS. We don't even have to worry about how they do it
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Also, I just realized I'm arguing with a Slashdot user named "TastyClit" who just made his account two days ago, so never mind.
I am now going to create a user called "BlandClit" and inform people about how vaccines are safe, masks are effective and how we shouldn't take horsewormer, even if we have worms (erm... there's plenty of proven people wormers for that).
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sure, eating a dewormer for a coronavirus ought to be effective.
Hahaha, no it isn't. More stupidity from anti-vaxxers, Funny those using it are clogging ER in some states like Oklahoma. Covid Vaccines won't do something like that but in over 1 in ten million cases.
Re:What's the obsession with vaccines? (Score:4, Insightful)
Everyone better grab a shovel, its getting pretty deep.
"Overflowing ER" really is a fake story (Score:2)
The actual hospital disputed this story [rollingstone.com] — which the fake "journalists" didn't bother to check:
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The hospital closures have really sucked and created squeezes in some places, and getting elective surgery isn't easy because of this.
https://www.khou.com/article/n... [khou.com]
That's Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Republican, asking for elective procedures to be postponed, bringing healthcare workers in from other states, increasing the number of infusion centers, because hospital capacity is strained.
The "overdosing" fake (Score:3)
The last nail in your argument's proverbial coffin [gab.com]
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Nope. No one was making claim about "Sallisaw location" and "NHS Sequoyah" about treating such overdoses, and that includes Dr. McElyea. The claim was about rural hospitals.
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I do encourage all anti-vax idiots to off themselves with horse pills that only have any association with COVID19 due to a retracted study pushed by snake oil salesmen such as Donald Trump.
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I heard a rumor that radium water works even better than ivermectin.
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Technically, he a grifter, and not a very accomplished one at that.
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The third booster should be taken after 8 months of full vaccination. Most Americans are not eligible until next year as that country only reached 50% vaccination in adults back in May.
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So two more months for me. Looking forward to it. And really hoping for protesters there...
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Flu vaccines are produced in response to mutations and variants. Why are you surprised that COVID-19 has mutated, a global pandemic that received a piss poor public health response and was allowed to spread to the majority of the human population.
Choice is now long COVID and the social problems an unhealthy workforce creates or restrictions on your perceived liberty. Not getting exposed is off the table. Having this over in 2021 is off the table. Consider SARSCoV2 endemic to Earth.
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>"Having this over in 2021 is off the table."
It was never on the table except in some fantasy dream. As long as there is any amount of travel across the world, there will be reintroduction and mutation, regardless of how many or quickly people are vaccinated in one area. Artificial herd immunity takes considerable time and resources, and corona viruses do mutate regularly.
Pathogens like Polio mutate much more slowly.
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Alberta declared it over. No more restrictions, no more quarantines, no more contact tracing and no more testing. Have to concentrate on the flu and such instead.
They did change their tune today as they're leading the nation in cases.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Albe... [duckduckgo.com]
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>"Alberta declared it over. No more restrictions, no more quarantines, no more contact tracing and no more testing. Have to concentrate on the flu and such instead."
Meh. Masks are about 10% effective in the real-world and social distancing doesn't do much of anything with COVID-19. The young are at almost no risk of injury or death. Shutting things down doesn't help much either. The only thing that really works is vaccination. At this point, about 80% are vaccinated and/or have natural immunity in t
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Yea, well the ICU personal don't agree as they burn out. The people not getting elective surgery also don't agree.
There's also a lot more young people showing up in ICU and long Covid seems to affect all age groups and also those who barely had any symptoms.
As for masks, social distancing and restrictions on crowds including the number of people in restaurants etc sure seem to have helped here in BC in the areas with low vaccinations. You can clearly see it in the case numbers graphs where when restrictions
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Well if you have antibodies that can attach to a particular spike proteins, then mainly only mutations with a different spike protein are going to breakthrough. While most mutations, because they have an identical spike, are going to still be covered similarly. And in the real world, the one we live in, there is some immune response between different variants and antibodies are somewhat effective against small changes to the spike protein, and large changes renders the spike non-viable.
Sadly for idiots that
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laughable horseshit. sorry. but I'm laughing because a troll is trying to wind me up.
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You have now a vaccine subscription for life; The booster doesn't work, e.g. Israel, but now they own you!
Of course. Now that we've experienced the improved 5G reception, they're going to have to continue providing us updates for life, or we'll riot.
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They're far more effective than other treatments at preventing the spread of Covid. It's true that they're not perfect protection.
The numbers matter, we need to reduce r to something less than one to kill off Covid. That's incredibly hard, especially with the Delta mutation.
So we need to use the most effective things possible so that fewer people have Covid, so that it doesn't threaten vulnerable populations so much.
The brother of a friend of mine died recently. It sucks. We need to put a stop to this d
Re:What's the obsession with vaccines? (Score:5, Informative)
I wonder what the solution is to get the "I Did My Own Research!" people to understand that just because something was published doesn't make that thing correct.
There have been a lot of things published about Ivermectin. Mostly small, poorly controlled, and or low-effect studies, plus at least two large high effect (i.e. metastudy-skewing) studies that later turned out to be frauds - literally made-up data for studies that never occurred. At the same time, there have been a number of large, well controlled studies from respected groups, and they showed no effect whatsoever
To a person in the field, the hallmarks of a meaningless / junk study or warning signs of fraud are pretty obvious (one of the frauds literally reported 0% dropout rates / 100% response rates across thousands of participants at four hospitals and yielded a precisely 90,0000000% rate of infection in the "control" group and a precisely 0,0000000% rate of infection in the experimental group in their charts made in Excel and published in a predatory journal, just to name a couple of the of many red flags). But to the "I did my own research!" crowd, it's "this article that someone shared with me says what I want to hear, therefore it must be true!"
There is no conspiracy to hide Ivermectin. The simple fact is that experts are recommending against it because an expert reading of the net corpus of the literature shows that it has no impact. I know that's not the answer that you wanted to hear, but it's the reality that we live in.
Re: What's the obsession with vaccines? (Score:2)
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Circle of Mamas?
I also have news for you buddy. Right now Fox is the MSM. https://www.forbes.com/sites/m... [forbes.com]
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But they're the Silent Majority therefore they can't be the... main stream. LOL
Re: What's the obsession with vaccines? (Score:2)
People seem to have a strange obsession with not dying.
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What ever happened to looking at all the options on the table?
Indeed. And a set of options with a cardinality of one is easy to test exhaustively.
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The mRNA vaccine technology has been in development for over 10 years. It isn't an experiment. And it works damn well, better than any of the other options. However, you are free go acquire Covid and take your chances with the other options if you so desire. We won't mind.
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Why are vaccines being pushed so hard?
... to end the pandemic quickly because it's killing people.
New countermeasure for anti-vax propaganda (Score:2)
How about if we get a new law where the government is NOT involved in suppressing free speech? To keep it away from the courts, we only provide bounties for bounty hunters who file civil lawsuits against websites that spread anti-vax propaganda.