Beyond Spike Proteins: Researchers Suggest New Design for Longer Lasting Covid Vaccines: (thedailybeast.com) 106
"With new COVID variants and subvariants evolving faster and faster, each chipping away at the effectiveness of the leading vaccines, the hunt is on for a new kind of vaccine," reports the Daily Beast, "one that works equally well on current and future forms of the novel coronavirus.
"Now researchers at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland think they've found a new approach to vaccine design that could lead them to a long-lasting jab. As a bonus, it also might work on other coronaviruses, not just the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19." The NIH team reported its findings in a peer-reviewed study that appeared in the journal Cell Host & Microbe earlier this month.
The key to the NIH's potential vaccine design is a part of the virus called the "spine helix." It's a coil-shaped structure inside the spike protein, the part of the virus that helps it grab onto and infect our cells. Lots of current vaccines target the spike protein. But none of them specifically target the spine helix. And yet, there are good reasons to focus on that part of the pathogen. Whereas many regions of the spike protein tend to change a lot as the virus mutates, the spine helix doesn't.
That gives scientists "hope that an antibody targeting this region will be more durable and broadly effective," Joshua Tan, the lead scientist on the NIH team, told The Daily Beast....
A vaccine that binds the spine helix in SARS-CoV-2 should hold up for a long time. And it should also work on all the other coronaviruses that also include the spine helix — and there are dozens of them, including several such as SARS-CoV-1 and MERS that have already made the leap from animal populations and caused outbreaks in people....
Maybe a spine-helix jab is in our future. Or maybe not. Either way, it's encouraging that scientists are making incremental progress toward a more universal coronavirus vaccine. One that could work for many years on a wide array of related viruses.
"Now researchers at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland think they've found a new approach to vaccine design that could lead them to a long-lasting jab. As a bonus, it also might work on other coronaviruses, not just the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19." The NIH team reported its findings in a peer-reviewed study that appeared in the journal Cell Host & Microbe earlier this month.
The key to the NIH's potential vaccine design is a part of the virus called the "spine helix." It's a coil-shaped structure inside the spike protein, the part of the virus that helps it grab onto and infect our cells. Lots of current vaccines target the spike protein. But none of them specifically target the spine helix. And yet, there are good reasons to focus on that part of the pathogen. Whereas many regions of the spike protein tend to change a lot as the virus mutates, the spine helix doesn't.
That gives scientists "hope that an antibody targeting this region will be more durable and broadly effective," Joshua Tan, the lead scientist on the NIH team, told The Daily Beast....
A vaccine that binds the spine helix in SARS-CoV-2 should hold up for a long time. And it should also work on all the other coronaviruses that also include the spine helix — and there are dozens of them, including several such as SARS-CoV-1 and MERS that have already made the leap from animal populations and caused outbreaks in people....
Maybe a spine-helix jab is in our future. Or maybe not. Either way, it's encouraging that scientists are making incremental progress toward a more universal coronavirus vaccine. One that could work for many years on a wide array of related viruses.
In before fools? (Score:5, Informative)
If you rather risk it by getting the actual virus, which is only interested in replicating as much as possible, with its spike protein and all its other proteins, then go ahead. If you are afraid of the spike protein then you would really hate the virus. Deliberately infecting yourself for the purpose of immunization is Russian roulette. By any measure, virus infection kills more people than the vaccine. That is a fact.
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What, precisely, is your fear of circulating mRNA that encodes a protein with a greatly reduced capacity for harm compared to an actual viral infection?
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I humbly retract my snarky question.
Re:In before fools? (Score:5, Informative)
Retard
Oooh, good one, lol.
The methylpseudouridine that they put into the RNA as well as several other modifications make the spike production last for 40+ days in some cases.
Most I've found evidence for was a few days. Though if they could get 40 days out of it- they'd love that.
The use of pseudouridine is purposefully to reduce the rate at which the circulating mRNA degrades. The longer it persists, the more antibodies it can create, the longer the vaccine is efficacious.
It doesn't really qualify as mRNA anymore with how much it has been modified.
Wrong.
Do your cells transcribe it? Then it's mRNA.
Real mRNA would be destroyed on the order of a few hours which raises the question why anyone would bother with RNA in the first place.
This sentence is so bizarre.
You correctly note *why* uridine is substituted, and then use it to call into question why the vaccine should exist in the first place?
It's analogous to saying, "without adjuvants, vaccines aren't effective, which raises the question why anyone would bother with vaccines in the first place".
It makes no logical sense.
I think you might actually be really unintelligent.
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I think you might actually be really unintelligent.
He "did his own research" on Youtube and Facebook, two of the most widely respected scientific journals available.
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That definition of mRNA is much too general. E.g. if it doesn't have ribose then it's not RNA of any sort, regardless of whether the cells transcribe it.
Also, 40 days seems a bit excessive. 20 days should suffice. You don't want to use all all your immature immune cells, even though you are probably generating new ones all the time. (OTOH, in one study of people over 120, the variety of immune cells had been extremely reduced. So it sounds as if one CAN run out of them.)
Even without that there are 3 ma
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That definition of mRNA is much too general. E.g. if it doesn't have ribose then it's not RNA of any sort, regardless of whether the cells transcribe it.
Mmmh, if it wasn't obvious- I wasn't trying to imply that anything that is transcribed is mRNA
The implication is that any modified mRNA that is still transcribed is still an mRNA.
Also, 40 days seems a bit excessive. 20 days should suffice. You don't want to use all all your immature immune cells, even though you are probably generating new ones all the time. (OTOH, in one study of people over 120, the variety of immune cells had been extremely reduced. So it sounds as if one CAN run out of them.)
There's a limited amount of transcriptions possible with a vaccine dose.
It seems highly unlikely that our injections are coming anywhere close to overloading B cell learning capacity. But I'd love to see a study on it.
Therefor, you cannot say whether 40 days is excessive or not.
Your study is too broad. "Immune cell variety" d
Re:In before fools? (Score:5, Informative)
"Real mRNA" isn't usually destroyed within hours. First, the idea of modified RNA comes from observing what cells do to RNA to make them stay longer! That's how they. for example, discovered pseudouridine makes the RNA stick around. So "real RNA" is modified RNA. Dumbass. Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Second, ribosomes, which manufacture proteins, in cells are made up of RNA and those stick around for a long time thanks to its various modifications.
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Hi!
I have been wandering and you might know the answer. Why are not making the vaccine to target more than one protein of the virus? My intuition is that it will be more mutant resistant.
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Yes that would be ideal, but a LOT of factors go into designing a vaccine. A vaccine's job is to show the proteins of a virus early so that the immune system can prepare antibodies for it in advance. Vaccines have failed in the past due to various problems, like for example when you show the proteins to the immune system outside of the context of a virus (or even within, sometimes) the immune system can make antibodies for that simply merely attach to the virus protein but don't cause its function to be neg
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Thanks. That makes sense. My question now is why do not research this once we have a very concrete target (the COVID-19 virus)
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They are researching it; future generations of Covid vaccines might have it.
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Sorry my previous reply to you was a bit rambling .. alcohol can do that. Anyway, my points as to why they only made it for the spike protein are:
1. The spike protein is the biggest protein, and it is found on the outside of the virus so it is externally accessible, and it is known that antibodies binding to it have a higher chance of disrupting its function. The bigger a protein is, the more likely it has sites on it that antibodies can bind tightly (of course there are exceptions to that).
2. Most of the o
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an mRNA with pseudouridine replacing uridine is still fucking Ribonucleic Acid.
The body performs all kinds of modifications to RNAs for its various uses. There is no such fucking thing as "real" RNA, vs. "fake" RNA.
Feel free to educate [wikipedia.org] your ignorant ass.
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You would make the same argument if all the cytosines were replaced with strychnines.
Now that would be impressive.
Of course, if you replaced the cytosine with strychnine, it'd no longer be a ribonucleic acid, and that's ignoring the fact that strychnine wouldn't even bond with other nucleobases.
Meanwhile, back here in the land of actual physics and chemistry, pseudouridine is an isomer of uridine, which still binds as a uricil in nucleic acids.
Psuedouridine exists naturally in the body in RNA.
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Uh, who cares how long it normally lasts? If it lasted hours but destroyed the cell, you'd consider it "real mRNA"? We know that RNA with modifications can last a long time in the cell, and we know that it is safer for many people than getting actual Covid. The vaccine is made up of real mRNA, because it functions as messenger RNA. You can't say someone is not a real car driver because of what clothes they wear. They can drive a car, they are a car driver. Same thing with messenger RNA .. if it is similar e
Re:In before fools? (Score:5, Informative)
Be informed about the debate.
What debate [genome.gov]? About what?
Oh, you mean people such as yourself who have no clue what they're talking about and refuse to listen to and understand facts. Got it.
Re:In before fools? (Score:5, Insightful)
"It's all big-pharma / government lies. They don't tell you about the vaccine-caused deaths or serious side-effects. I'd much rather listen to some rando on the internet rather than doctors and scientists. Here, let me pull this random bullshit 'fact' out of my ass that I heard from someone. I'm reasonably healthy, so I'm not afraid of it anyhow. Etc, etc..."
-a typical anti-Covid-vax person
I've long since given up on any rational arguments for these sorts of people. They've made up their mind, and shut it firmly behind them, all the while thinking they're so clever for "seeing" through all the lies and conspiracies.
Re:In before fools? (Score:5, Interesting)
A couple of them died, and all of them were very, very sick indeed.
They all stopped being anti-vaxx however.
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Apologies for the long post. This is therapeutic. I lost a lot of people in the last few years.
In order to maintain a civil society, we need to understand how otherwise normal people get turned into Disinformation Bots like the GP.
I happen to know him IRL, and AFAIK he and many in his circle are still in fact Ivermectin proponents. "Still" because it was a plausible treatment... at the start of the pandemic. But not now. There have been multiple large, well-designed, conclusive studies. Like HCQ, Ivermec
Re: In before fools? (Score:2)
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I happen to know him IRL, and AFAIK he and many in his circle are still in fact Ivermectin proponents. "Still" because it was a plausible treatment... at the start of the pandemic. But not now. There have been multiple large, well-designed, conclusive studies. Like HCQ, Ivermectin is at best a placebo, and often a toxin.
Ivermectin was never in any way a plausible treatment. Certainly not at the start of the pandemic. The ivermectin phase coincided with the Omicron wave.
The Ivermectin fad was based on one study that found it helped. The study was done in a section of the world where untreated parasitic infections were extremely common. The study actually found that if you have parasites and covid at the same, people will recover faster if you get rid of the parasites.
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Or she could have asked the doctor how much vitamin d, zinc and ivermectin to give the patient.
Uh, which doctor exactly?
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Haha, then explain how hundreds of millions have the vaccine floating around and haven't died. You guys predicted that the vaccines would cause mass extinction/depopulation and sterilization. Guess what your predictions turned out wrong. Remember, your logic was that the virus is safe because people were able to survive being infected. So how is it that vaccinated people are alive when the vaccine was supposed to murder them?
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Many people lived through smallpox, too, but the vaccine made a big difference. (And it wasn't perfectly effective. No vaccine is.)
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(And it wasn't perfectly effective. No vaccine is.)
Sadly, an argument some people offer for *not* getting vaccinated.
Re: In before fools? (Score:2)
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It's been almost two years, Bill. You promised me that there would be all sorts of side effects and mutations. And we all know that side effects and mutations produce superpowers.
I want the goddamn promised superpowers, Bill. By tomorrow.
Sincerely,
Guy still waiting after his fourth jab.
Re: In before fools? (Score:2)
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I was told I could talk to Bill Gates using the microchip, and it STILL does not work. I've rebooted it dozens of times. What a rip off.
Re:In before fools? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not a coincidence that side effects of vaccination essentially mirror that of COVID infection, just drastically reduced in prevalence and seriousness.
That being said, absent such a non-spike vaccine route- absolutely, vax the fuck up.
I'm triple boosted, and caught COVID a month back.
My lungs are still fucking trashed. Made it 2 years without catching the thing, and the statistics make it very clear that it drastically reduced my chances of complications. COVID, even in its current, far less virulent form, is still pretty fucking terrible.
Doc tells me I can expect to have this cough and laryngitis for up to 6 months.
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|I'm triple boosted, and caught COVID a month back.
Must be one of those break-through infections. COVID-19 has a 95% efficacy rates.*
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Must be one of those break-through infections.
Yup.
COVID-19 has a 95% efficacy rates.*
Nobody ever claimed that.
It is however ~425% more effective than air at keeping you from dying.
On an individual basis, it's not a hell of a lot (your chances of dying are already pretty small, unvaccinated) but when measured across entire populations, the difference is stark.
Breakthrough cases are ~15% of all cases.
Breakthrough hospitalizations are 8% of all hospitalizations.
Breakthrough deaths are 3% of all deaths.
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You've got a misunderstanding. In the initial Phase 3 trial of its vaccine, the Pfizer clinical data surpassed expectations with 95% efficacy. But "efficacy" in this regard means staving off the original (and deadliest) variant. The vaccine was determined to be "effective" if it prevented severe illness, hospitalization, and death, not just infection.
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| You've got a misunderstanding.
You've got a misunderstanding. COVID protects you from contracting the disease.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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It does, but it's less effective than a vaccination, and if I read the report correctly, effective for a shorter period of time.
There are lots of problems with this assertion, of course, the main one being that there are no good double-blind studies. But that was what at least one analysis of the data (sometime around last December I think) showed. I wasn't convinced by the statistics, but I could understand why they didn't have better ones. (Among other things, lots of people who won't get vaccinated, a
Then why even? (Score:1)
I'm triple boosted, and caught COVID a month back.
That's a great sales pitch for a vaccine! Get stuck by incompetent medical staff three times and get it anyway. Sounds awesome!
It is possible to not get vaccinated or Covid you know... especially at this point, RSV is way more an actual pressing concern. If you made it this far not being vaccinated or getting Covid, I really don't see the point of bothering with a vaccine (or booster) at this point unless you were in a very high risk category.
This new va
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That's a great sales pitch for a vaccine! Get stuck by incompetent medical staff three times and get it anyway. Sounds awesome!
I imagine if you're hopelessly ignorant, you'd probably think that. Does that describe you?
It is possible to not get vaccinated or Covid you know... especially at this point, RSV is way more an actual pressing concern. If you made it this far not being vaccinated or getting Covid, I really don't see the point of bothering with a vaccine (or booster) at this point unless you were in a very high risk category.
It is, indeed.
And no, RSV is not more an actual pressing concern.
The CFR of RSV is atomically small.
The point? The point is simple.
97% of all COVID deaths are unvaccinated individuals. 92% of all COVID hospitalizations are unvaccinated individuals. 75% of all COVID cases are unvaccinated individuals.
Breathrough infections happen, but they're overwhelmingly safer.
If you want to roll your dice with out, that's fi
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No, it describes you, do try and keep up.
I know you are, but what am I?
Super clever.
Since all you do is lie why should I, or anyone else, bother reading anything you say? We can all read the CDC website you know, who says [cdc.gov]:
No lie, those numbers are fluid.
The number I got were likely less up-to-date than the CDCs. Feel free to update 97% to 79%. It doesn't change the argument one single iota.
Literally one single paragraph above where you quoted is this:
The risk of in-hospital death has varied in the periods when the predominant circulating SARS-CoV-2 strains have differed. The Delta variant period (July–October 2021) had the highest crude mortality risk overall compared to during January–June 2022 when the predominant circulating strains were Omicron variants and subvariants.
Why do all of you science deniers have to be so scientifically ignorant, is what I want to know. Do you like take classes on how to ignore real world data? I just don't see how you can fail to keep up when it's so easy to find real data.
Science deniers?
You corrected a number that still made my point.
That makes one of us "using old information", and one of us "too stupid to realize they're wrong".
Guess which is which.
Maybe you should think of making a news years resolution to research before you speak.
I could definitely have looked for newer numb
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You come in here like a 6 year old and think you're so fucking cool.
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97% of all COVID deaths are unvaccinated individuals.
This is an unfair statement, and an abomination of statistics, considering most of the deaths were before a vaccine existed. /after/ the vaccine was introduced?
What is the percentage of deaths
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This is an unfair statement, and an abomination of statistics, considering most of the deaths were before a vaccine existed.
I'm guessing you're making an assumption somewhere.
What is the percentage of deaths /after/ the vaccine was introduced?
Ah, yup.
Actually, I meant current. My numbers were just old.
As it turns out (and was discussed below) that number is now only 79% in the Omicron era.
During delta, it was as high as 97%, depending on which vaccine you took.
Nobody is doing a comparison of pre-vaccine times.
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Dr. John Campbell just did a video on the efficacy of Vitamin D3 against respiratory viruses. With academic sources.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbUm5FyrHRk
The results are quite interesting and well worth considering.
Interesting (Score:1)
Dr. John Campbell just did a video on the efficacy of Vitamin D3 against respiratory viruses.
Maybe that's why on a recent trip I didn't catch RSV though my wife did (I take D supplements and she does not)... her RSV has been far worse than the COVID I caught a year earlier, or any case of COVID friends have had. That is why I'm raising it as a more immediate concern, because it's far more likely right now you will get a really nasty case of RSV.
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Dr. John Campbell just did a video
I don't think that he can be considered a reliable source. He posted several videos (with sources) that claimed ivermectin is effective against Covid.
He is not a research scientist or a medical doctor.
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There a lot more we could be doing. Far UV is very effective, and pretty cheap. Most of the cost is installation, but if we put a bit more effort in we can reduce that cost a lot.
We have pretty much given up, it seems. Drug companies keep pushing vaccines (not a bad thing) but beyond that little effort is made.
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A better plan would be to change patterns of air circulation to "from the ceiling to the floor, and out the door at ground level". UV is good if you're recirculating air, though. But it takes awhile to be effective (or, alternatively, it takes pretty intense UV).
That said, IIUC there IS a range of UV that's both fairly effective and imperceptible by humans (and also barely degrades plastics). But it requires exposure either over a period of time, or intense enough to generate noticeable heat. And unless
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222nm UV kills viruses, but can't penetrate the skin or outside of the eye, so is safe for humans. It doesn't need to be super intense to be effective in short periods either.
Other far UV is harmful to humans, so you have to make sure it doesn't shine on them. A light fixture mounted high on the wall, that only shines light out horizontally. Eliminates about 90% of circulating virus particles in a room. Needs a trained installer for safety reasons, failsafe built in.
You can buy them, surprised more employer
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Reports are that the sicker you got as a result of the vaccine, the less likely you are to actually get covid.
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Third jab though... A bizarre 18 hour high fever that went away like a switch had been flipped... felt terrible... then felt fine.
In retrospect- that's pretty much exactly what COVID was like for me, only it lasted longer, the fever was higher, and I cough so hard I think I may have cracked a couple ribs.
I was due for my 4th jab, but I was lazy. Wife got the 4th jab, and didn't get sick when I did. Lesson learned.
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I got so sick from my three shots that I am terrified of getting another one. I will though, if the time arises. 24 hours of misery.
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There were rather tasteless jokes about covid being the Boomer remover at the start of th
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Tards still fall for the retcon fantasy [cnet.com] of mRNA-based immunity in spite of all the evidence.
TLDR: keep taking multiple fraudulently approved boosters per year to prevent - err, slightly reduce - err, gamble on a possi
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Tell me you don't understand Biology and Virology, without telling me you don't understand Biology and Virology.
I see you've already gone first.
Re:Fools respond (Score:5, Insightful)
Pandemics start out by viruses jumping species, such as bird flu jumping from chickens to humans. The initial infectious strain is strongly lethal, but over time it evolves towards survivability in the host. The Spanish flu of 1918 is an example: the flu today is not especially dangerous and considered endemic, while in 1918 the case fatality rate was 5% to 10% depending on the strain and other conditions.
The 1918 epidemic strain wasn't estimated to be any more virulent than modern strains.
Rather, as it turns out, there were circumstances in 1918 that are less problematic today.
It's been well shown that Covid is fatal largely to that portion of the population that has co-morbidity, and in people with 4 or more co-morbidities the case fatality rate is very high. Furthermore, the probability of complications in children and young adults is astonishingly low.
This argument always makes me roll my eyes.
40% of the US population has a comorbidity.
There's a probability of complications from the vaccine, and the probability of complications from getting the virus, and you can't just compare those two values. You also have to take into account the size of the population getting the vaccine, and the size of the population that has co-morbidities.
Sure you can- you just demonstrated how.
The answer is of course obvious- the vaccine, even distributed universally, has such a low rate of life-threatening complications, that we haven't even been able to establish a real lethality rate for it, across 613 million administered vaccines in the US alone. Meanwhile, the virus sits at a body count of 1.09 million dead Americans.
The probability of complications from Covid are very low in the child/normal adult population. That population is so large, and the probability of complications are so low, that the number of bad outcomes from the virus is smaller than the number of bad outcomes from the vaccine. In those cases, the risk analysis suggests that it's less dangerous to get a mild strain Covid than to take the vaccine.
For a child, both complication probabilities are vanishingly small.
You however conveniently treat children as if they're an isolated population. I'm wondering if you're being maliciously misleading here, or really just haven't thought it through.
The second you take into account that an infected child will spread it to 5.08 other people on average, the mortality looks much worse. Which is why this is how actual epidemiologists do this.
Do you have a co-morbidity? By all means get the vaccine, it's your best shot and the risk analysis says it's your best choice.
What if your co-morbidity precludes you from getting the vaccine?
Are you a typical healthy child or adult? The risk analysis says that it's better to get the virus.
Unless you ignore the 0.05 people each infected child will kill.
Sounds like a small number, until you keep in mind there are 75,000,000 children to account for.
Hard to say why this analysis is called foolish. I suspect it's because people can't accept that they're wrong, and when proven wrong they resort to name-calling.
It's called foolish because it is an elementary analysis. It's not a serious one. What better word would you use?
Calling it ignorant is mean, I'm told.
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It is at best an oversimplification that viruses evolve to be less lethal. Killing a host is only bad strategy for a virus if it can't infect others first. In all our centuries with smallpox, it never stopped killing us.
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It's pure fucking nonsense.
I can only assume that it comes from an elementary understanding of evolution.
The Origin of Covid raises doubts (Score:2)
I am vaxed and the evidence does indeed seem strong that the vaccine is much safer than getting the disease.
However, There is also very strong evidence that SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab doing reckless Gain of Function experiments on bat coronaviruses in Wuhan. But more importantly, that evidence has been actively suppressed by some powerful virologists and science administrators. Until recently, it was not even possible to talk about the lab leak as a hypothesis without being called a racist conspiracy t
Re:Fools respond (Score:5, Insightful)
I am curious to know why the worldwide medical community is united in advocating for the vaccine if it is so obvious that the risks outweigh the benefits?
Are they simply incompetent, and need to hire you as their leader? Or maybe everyone of them is evil to the core leaving us unable to trust anything they say? Both possibilities seem unlikely to me.
I am willing to hear you out, if you have a plausible explanation.
Re:Fools respond (Score:5, Informative)
Believing vaccine risks outweigh their benefits probably mean you have consumed a lot of misinformation about both the risks and the benefits.
Vaccine risk is extremely low. Any death which occurs within 3 months of the vaccine is counted by VAERS, regardless of the cause. That number is currently 17,392, which gives a worst possible case of 0.0027% of all people who received the vaccine. But every death even if not possibly related is counted in that total. Actual investigation of side effects has found incidents of Myocarditis, TTS, GBS are extremely rare (measured in parts per million), and usually even the serious cases are rarely fatal if treated.
Source:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronaviru... [cdc.gov]
Benefits are substantial. It's been well established that the vaccines greatly reduce severity of the disease and change of death, especially if boosted within last several months. That's a huge benefit.
Source:
https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]
Anti-vax misinformation tries to say the vaccine has no benefit because you can still get COVID. Plenty of studies show recent vaccination does reduce the odds, so there probably is some benefit (only needs to be tiny to outweigh the extremely low risk) but the benefit of less severe disease when you do get it is a huge benefit.
What is dangerous is misinformation! The results are clear. Before vaccines, the densely populated states suffered badly and the more rural areas were much less affected. Now the situation is largely reversed, where populations more inclined to accept vaccination have lower per-capita death, and those following right-wing misinformation mostly have higher death rates despite having a natural advantage of less dense population to spread the virus.
Sources:
https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
https://www.texastribune.org/2... [texastribune.org]
https://www.nbcnews.com/health... [nbcnews.com]
https://www.pewresearch.org/po... [pewresearch.org]
You said you'd be willing to hear out any plausible explanation. I'm afraid the only plausible explanation is you're terribly misinformed about the risks and benefits. If you really are willing to hear (seems unlikely) just read a few of those sources for truthful information about the vaccine risks and benefits and the real world results of the misinformation you're probably consuming.
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But don't be complacent. The current vaccines are highly specific, and have an unpleasantly high rate of failure. We need better vaccines.
That said, we are extremely lucky to have the vaccines we've got. The evolution to avoid their protection was both predictable and predicted (with caveats...folks weren't certain the virus could evolve away from them and still be successful).
So far the vaccines not targeted to the spike protein, or with that as only a secondary target, haven't been that successful. Bu
Re:Fools respond (Score:5, Interesting)
You seem to have misunderstood my post. I was asking "Okian Warrior" to explain why the medical community is pro-vaccine, after his "it's so obvious" explanation of why vaccines are bad for healthy adults.
The information you posted supports the position I have always taken: vaccines are good. I wanted to see if he could explain why the worldwide medical community didn't already agree with him, that didn't sound like conspiracy theory nuttery.
"misinformation" (Score:2)
I'm not going to way in on the rest, my own views are complex and I have argued with people on the extremes of BOTH sides of the whole COVID mess, but you guys attacking the vaccine skeptics with the label "misinformation" fascinate me. You seem to have been so completely "informed" that you are paranoid about this illness and cannot even conceive of the idea that perhaps BOTH sides are buried in factoids instead of facts.
Consider:
[a] There are huge piles of stats floating around, but all are to some extent
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I am curious to know why the worldwide medical community is united in advocating for the vaccine if it is so obvious that the risks outweigh the benefits?
Are they simply incompetent, and need to hire you as their leader? Or maybe everyone of them is evil to the core leaving us unable to trust anything they say? Both possibilities seem unlikely to me.
I am willing to hear you out, if you have a plausible explanation.
It's all about the BENJAMINS baby !
Most medical professionals that I have encountered over the past 30 years are only in that work for the money.
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How does "working in order to be paid" lead us to "advising we take vaccines that are riskier than the disease they prevent?"
Doctors are busy people. They have plenty to get paid for without spreading outright lies. The same goes of all the other professionals that serve other roles in the medical industry: they don't need to lie in order to profit.
The cook at a restaurant may just be working for the money, but that doesn't mean he serves rocks instead of food. The lawyer might just be practicing law for
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Doctors are prone to panic just like everyone else.
Re:Fools respond (Score:5, Informative)
randomly. There is no law, statistical or otherwise, that dictates that a virus will evolve to be less severe rather than more, until a variant evolves which tends to kill its host more quickly that it can be transmitted. And that only applies when you have a virus with a single species of host. In you have a zoonotic reservoir that is less affected, the virus can happily live within that reservoir and only pop out now and then to screw with the unlucky. Hence ebola, or if you broaden out to non-viral pathogens, the black death.
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Well, people who are sick tend to avoid other people, thus reducing the spread. Also, the rest of us tend to avoid sick people, thus reducing the spread.
Symptomless and contagious is the best kind of virus. Like many types of HPV.
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Welcome back from your three year vacation to Mars. I have some news about human behavior to share with you that you may have missed...
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Natural selection does not seek to improve things indefinitely.
It's not really survival of the fittest, it's survival of everyone who's not unfit.
An evolutionary bio prof I knew described it as "survival of the good enough"
If evolution worked as parent implies, then human cancer rates wouldn't increase dramatically after breeding age.
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Viruses evolve to become less severe over time: a virus that kills the host has less chance to replicate than a virus that causes mild symptoms.
A respiratory virus is not like herpes, it doesn't have the luxury of not causing a severe infection to spread efficiently. It has to ensure that a large number of copies of itself are spewed out. The body isn't going to sit around with a high viral load without attacking it (side effect: fever & other symptoms), not unless the virus engineers some serious immune system modulation. Many viruses do end up killing their host at a high percentage. It's the price of efficient spreading that some hosts will
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Viruses evolve to become less severe over time: a virus that kills the host has less chance to replicate than a virus that causes mild symptoms.
Not true in the slightest. Selection doesn't tend automagically to maximum spread, it just needs to cross a threshold where replication is effective. You're right that if a virus is too aggressive it doesn't get a chance to spread, but as long as a virus is sufficiently contagious before killing the host, no selection criteria would eliminate it from the gene pool.
Unfortunately a virus that gives "mild symptoms" spreads about as well as a virus that kills it's host. It's much harder to spread a virus if you
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A vaccinated individual who becomes infected spreads less virus than an individual who is not vaccinated.
Your analysis above evaluates on the the risk to an individual whether the optimal course of action is to be vaccinated or not. You do not consider the effect of mass vaccination on the risk to the population as a whole.
Or, in more simple terms, "I (62 yo, healthy) may be better off catching the virus than taking the vaccine, but for me to take the vaccine gives a measure of protection to my mum (85 yo,
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Or, in more simple terms, "I (62 yo, healthy) may be better off catching the virus than taking the vaccine, but for me to take the vaccine gives a measure of protection to my mum (85 yo, COPD) and allowing myself to catch the virus puts her at risk. Bring the needle!"
You have a definite point, but you are missing other mistakes in the Grandparent's analysis. Firstly, most of the calculations on co-morbidities are done post fact, once you are infected. They find you are having problems, they check for co-morbidities, they identify a heart problem. You never knew you had a co-morbidity so you didn't take it into account when you chose whether to be vaccinated or not. Given that the vaccination is really really safe the chance that you have an unknown health problem that
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You have a definite point, but you are missing other mistakes in the Grandparent's analysis. Firstly, most of the calculations on co-morbidities are done post fact, once you are infected. They find you are having problems, they check for co-morbidities, they identify a heart problem. You never knew you had a co-morbidity so you didn't take it into account when you chose whether to be vaccinated or not. Given that the vaccination is really really safe the chance that you have an unknown health problem that will count as a co-morbidity is likely high enough to justify vaccination.
A good point.
My post was something of a gut reaction based on my own circumstances, not a fully thought-through response.
Re: Fools respond (Score:2)
Selective pressure (Score:3, Insightful)
A part of the spike (or any viral protein) that doesn't evolve much over time is one that is not the target of selective pressure.
The spike protein itself didn't evolve very much for the first year or so of the pandemic because almost no one in the world had any antibodies targeting it.
As soon as the virus infected a large enough portion of the population, suddenly there was selective pressure and the viruses that had mutations were the ones that prevailed.
Similarly, while there is no selective pressure *now* against whatever else they might target on covid, flu, whatever, training large numbers of people's immune systems to target that one part will...wait for it....apply selective pressure to it.
It might buy some time (or even a lot) if the barrier that's raised is high enough, but unless the very unlikely situation that this protein is an all-or-nothing for viral replication happens to be true, soon enough you'll see viruses escape that immunity too in some capacity.
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It's not that simple. Some things don't evolve because they aren't under selective pressure, and some don't evolve because they are, and have already reached a local peak of effectiveness. So any change away is selected against.
You can generally tell which any particular segment is by looking at the number of variants (and their proportion) in a population. If it's clustered at a tight peak, with possibly a very few variants, then it's under heavy selection pressure, and is at a local peak. If there's a
Re: Selective pressure (Score:2)
The covid spike was pretty stable...until it wasn't. In the absence of a predictive theory of biology, one can only examine responses to stimuli. If they are controlled stimuli, or at the very least quantified natural stimuli, the process is called "science." In the absence of stimuli against which to measure the optimality of something, it's just a guess...one that has yet to pan out in regard to covid.
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Once you start vaccinating against the spike protein, you induce a selective pressure against it. The question was "Just how necessary is this particular feature?". It was pretty necessary (i.e. there wasn't that much variation in the population), but once you start a strong pressure against it, alternate forms that didn't have much success previously, now have a better chance.
This was predictable and predicted. What wasn't predictable was how successful the alternatives would become.
Re: Selective pressure (Score:2)
What wasn't predictable was how successful the alternatives would become.
For the very fundamental reason that right now, and for the near future, we have no predictive theory of molecular biology.
Simulating a whole virus for 10 nanoseconds is barely a thing right now and it required time on a super computer. Unless I'm totally ignorant of it, there is no massive research program to dial in and calibrate these simulations against biological reality, let alone predict interactions between virus and cell machinery, estimate likely mutations, and simulate their effects on spread, vi
Experts (Score:2)
Why are inactived vaccines not considered? (Score:2)
There are several whole body inactived vaccines like Covaxin. Would not such vaccines would be more effective than those targeting just one part of the virus?
Re: Pass! (Score:2)
Still waiting on the FIRST covid vaccine (Score:1)
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