Nobel Prize Awarded To Covid Vaccine Pioneers (nytimes.com) 184
Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman, who together identified a chemical tweak to messenger RNA, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday. Their work enabled potent Covid vaccines to be made in less than a year, averting tens of millions of deaths and helping the world recover from the worst pandemic in a century. From a report: The approach to mRNA the two researchers developed has been used in Covid shots that have since been administered billions of times globally and has transformed vaccine technology, laying the foundation for inoculations that may one day protect against a number of deadly diseases like cancer. The slow and methodical research that made the Covid shots possible has now run up against a powerful anti-vaccine movement, especially in the United States. Skeptics have seized in part on the vaccines' rapid development -- among the most impressive feats of modern medical science -- to undermine the public's trust in them.
But the breakthroughs behind the shots unfolded little by little over decades, including at the University of Pennsylvania, where Dr. Weissman runs a lab. [...] The mRNA work was especially frustrating, she said, because it was met with indifference and a lack of funds. She said she was motivated by more than not being called a quitter; as the work progressed, she saw small signs that her project could lead to better vaccines. "You don't persevere and repeat and repeat just to say, 'I am not giving up,'" she said.
But the breakthroughs behind the shots unfolded little by little over decades, including at the University of Pennsylvania, where Dr. Weissman runs a lab. [...] The mRNA work was especially frustrating, she said, because it was met with indifference and a lack of funds. She said she was motivated by more than not being called a quitter; as the work progressed, she saw small signs that her project could lead to better vaccines. "You don't persevere and repeat and repeat just to say, 'I am not giving up,'" she said.
Popcorn anyone? (Score:2)
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KInd of very fresh news as well...
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Is that quack still trying to convince people that he invented mRNA vaccines?
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Oh, wait... https://patents.justia.com/inv... [justia.com]
Re:Popcorn anyone? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually his claims of creating mRNA and DNA vaccines are wildly exaggerated, and he makes them in venues like Joe Rogan's podcast where people don't know better.
The idea had been around for a decade or more before his work. Malone's contribution was small but important: he had the idea of using a liposome to deliver the mRNA, and demonstrated that this would worked in a tissue culture. But that's far, far from solving the obstacles to making this work as a *therapy*. The biggest problem by far was that while this delivery method worked *in vitro*, it didn't work *in vivo* because polynucleotides introduced this way triggered an immune system that would kill the transfected cell. Also, natural mRNA was not nearly stable enough to make a practical vaccine, having a half life on the order of *minutes* for mRNA strands of useful sizes.
So basically this RNA vaccine idea was a dead end as far as anyone knew. In fact the idea was considered so unpromising that there wasn't any funding for it. Karikó had to scrounge research assitant and adjunct professor positions so she could essentially work on the problem on the side while she performed menial academic and research duties.
What Karikó and Weissman did was figure out how to modify the mRNA to make the idea actually work in a living organism. This took many, many years of hard, unrecognized work. Then to top it off, they solved the mRNA stability problem -- at least to the point where it was possible to store and distribute a vaccine cryogentically.
As with all great scientific achievements there is an army of unsung contributors whose work made that achievement possible. Malone's *in vitro* RNA transfection work deserves a place in the story. But positioning himself in popular media as the "inventor" of mRNA vaccines was grossly dishonest. The committee chose the right recipients for this prize.
Re:Popcorn anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
This should be a "fun" discussion. I have my popcorn ready.
Ain't that the truth. Slashdot Anti Vaxxers and Trump lovers heads are asploding right now.
Nothing protects the real patriots like bleach injections, Not one person who took 100 ccs of intravenous Sodium Hypochlorite ever got Covid 19, the flu invented by Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi.
WAKE UP AMERICA!
Re: Popcorn anyone? (Score:5, Funny)
Don't forget those 100% effective vaxxes somehow failed to stop either symptoms or transmission of the flu. And their claimed efficacy declined within months to become negative. And side effects are still being discovered. Not to mention the worldwide prevalence of inexplicable massive clots only in the jabbed population. Such a success should be celebrated by every depop enthusiast.
When Nancy Pelosi and Barack Oblama gave "Doctor Death" Fauci his marching orders, they revived the Corpse of Famous Liberal Democrat Doctor Mengele for guidance on how to kill as many people as possible, as painfully as possible. Mengele and Fauci flew to Wuhan, and contacted the people who made up the global warming hoax, and came up with the non-existant Flu. There was never a covid 19 - Fauci released rabid bats with a special neurotoxin that Bill Clinton used to get dates, And administered whopping doses that made sheeple think there was a real problem.
This would have been a true end to the USA, had not God intervened, and sent the second Christ - Donald Trump (you can get the truth on Amazon_ https://www.amazon.com/Preside... [amazon.com]
Repent your untrumplike ways, and swear your allegiance to the second Christ. It is the only chance to save your eternal soul from the fires of hell. God and Jesus are watching, andf so is Donald. May they have mercy on your souls.
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Come on, you can make up better straw men than that. Claim that it's supposed to be 110% effective! Claim that it's supposed to bring people back to life!
That's the sort of nonsense I came here for :)
For anyone who cares... [nih.gov]... TL/DR, you can get negative efficacy results ina study due to a wide range of testing biases, which normally get washed out in the signal, but in the case of Omicron vs. peo
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The thing that kills me about that whole Mycarditis scare was the fact that the rate of people who got it is exactly the same between vaccinated and unvaccinated (Once you factor out people who get covid, which puts the rate *far* higher in the unvaccinated population).
It was a statistical non-event, but oh boy did that not stop some *terrible* epidemiological decision making out of certain juristictions.
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There is, by contrast, nothing even remotely subtle about the side effects of COVID infection on whole-population scales. Even the most common "significant" side effect of vaccination - myocarditits - is more common and much more severe from infection (infection myocarditis presents a typical (severe) pattern, while vaccination-related myocarditis has a short duration and almost universal full recovery).
The two largest studies I know of that looked at the issue of myocarditis disagree. While there is a headline that overall incidents are similar in the aggregate.. when you drill down by age group males under 40 have a substantially elevated risk from vaccination than they do infection.
~90 excess myocarditis events per million in men under 40 after second dose.
~16 excess myocarditis events per million in men under 40 with a positive covid test prior to vaccination.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
https://w [ahajournals.org]
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You do have to be careful when you go hunting for studies which support your position, because whatever that position is, you will find them.
So literature searches for *studies* are practically useless for supporting evidence-based decisions. What you need to do is look for systematic review papers, and in particular *recent* review papers are far more useful in situations like this. You also have to be very careful about the exact question being reviewed. For example most reviews I've found exclude case
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The two largest studies I know of that looked at the issue of myocarditis disagree. While there is a headline that overall incidents are similar in the aggregate.. when you drill down by age group males under 40 have a substantially elevated risk from vaccination than they do infection.
Ah, but do they compensate for vaccination status serving as a proxy for participation in sports? What about increased detection from increased attention?
Myocarditis rates are strongly correlated with participation in sports, because for some unknown reason, physical exertion makes it more likely for a virus to affect the heart and surrounding tissue.
In many places, vaccination was a gating factor for being able to play sports. Therefore, people who were not vaccinated wouldn't have that increased risk fr
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Come on, you can make up better straw men than that. Claim that it's supposed to be 110% effective!
Make 110.5926% effective. Made up numbers are more authoritative-sounding if they have more precision.
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Make 110.5926% effective. Made up numbers are more authoritative-sounding if they have more precision.
It goes up to 111% [wikipedia.org] effective.
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Re: Popcorn anyone? (Score:2)
It is effective - at treating worms.
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Re: Popcorn anyone? (Score:2)
I looked at the start of your url and already knew there was no point clicking on it.
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You should have clicked. (I am a little confused why they said "Even the CDC agrees." then posted a link to the NIH, but I digress.)
Either way, some quotes from their link: "Ivermectin has been shown to inhibit replication of SARS-CoV-2 in cell cultures. However, pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic studies suggest that achieving the plasma concentrations necessary for the antiviral efficacy detected in vitro would require administration of doses up to 100-fold higher than those approved for use in humans
What about Trump? (Score:2)
Doesn't he get recognition for coming up with the idea for the vaccine /s
Re:What about Trump? (Score:5, Informative)
He should get credit for Operation Warp Speed which did help accomplish the goal of getting the vaccines developed and through trials very quickly.
He keeps trying to take his justly deserved credit for it but his supporters just boo him when he talks about it.
Re:What about Trump? (Score:5, Interesting)
Trump's own words on the topic: "I said I really don’t want to talk about it because, as a Republican, it’s not a great thing to talk about because for some reason, it’s just not." https://www.thedailybeast.com/... [thedailybeast.com]
My gripe is that he knows exactly why he can't talk about it, but he can't say it out loud if he wants to keep a large portion of his supporters.
Re:What about Trump? (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly I don't think he does, I think he is genuinely confused by the anti-vax sentiment, especially when he wanted so badly for it to be "The Trump Vaccine".
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Honestly I don't think he does, I think he is genuinely confused by the anti-vax sentiment, especially when he wanted so badly for it to be "The Trump Vaccine".
He wants everything he's involved with to have his on it -- but then he complains when all these indictments say "v. Donald J. Trump" ... Sigh, you just can't win with this guy. :-)
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wait a minute . . . are you saying that I didn't have to get this tattoo to get the vaccine? Can I get it removed now?
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Another bright idea: How about if Trump can only have Rudy Giuliani to defend him in court?
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A Trump vaccine? That sounds like a splendid idea. Imagine that after one or too harmless injections, tens of millions of people could suddenly become indifferent to Trump's antics. Wouldn't that be great?
There already is a Trump vaccine, unfortunately, it's only 50% effective.
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Trump's own words on the topic: "I said I really don’t want to talk about it because, as a Republican, it’s not a great thing to talk about because for some reason, it’s just not." https://www.thedailybeast.com/... [thedailybeast.com]
My gripe is that he knows exactly why he can't talk about it, but he can't say it out loud if he wants to keep a large portion of his supporters.
And yet I think he was largely right when he said he could shoot someone in broad daylight on fifth avenue and not lose his supporters.
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Re:What about Trump? (Score:4, Informative)
Trump deserves some credit for accelerating the deployment (in US st least), but he does not match the criteria for the Nobel prize. "Leadership" is explicitly excluded from the prize. "The Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine is awarded for discovery of major importance in life science or medicine. Discoveries that have changed the scientific paradigm and are of great benefit for humankind are awarded the prize, whereas life time achievements or scientific leadership cannot be considered for the Nobel Prize." https://www.nobelprize.org/nom... [nobelprize.org]
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Oh yeah for sure, I wasn't suggesting he should get a Nobel Prize (although he would love that)
Re:What about Trump? (Score:5, Informative)
No, he got a Nobel Prize basically for not being George W. Bush.
And, understandably, he was rather embarrassed about it.
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Didn't Obama get a Nobel Prize just for getting elected?
Don't confuse the Nobel Peace Prize with any other Nobel Prize. The former has throughout all of its history been used as a political virtue signalling tool and has nothing to do with science.
Sure Trump deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. So do you. It's meaningless, and even Obama agreed when he accepted the prize saying he sees this prize as given to him not for any accomplishment, but rather as a call to action.
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He gets no credit for following advisors who told him that virus would sink his re-election if he wasn't seen as doing something about it. Number One Rule for the former alleged president: he does nothing unless it is for himself.
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I think Presidents do get some credit for following advisors, that's kind of their job to take the input of information given to them and make decisions on it.
In this case it was a fortunate set of aligned incentives; Trump wanted the pandemic over ASAP so the economy would recover in time for elections and anyone with any knowledge rightly said a vaccine is the path towards that. In this case record speed still wasn't fast enough to hit election time though. I remember during the beginning of the pandemi
Re:What about Trump? (Score:5, Interesting)
"Operation Warp Speed" should acknowledge that most of the research was done during the Obama administration in response to a contained SARS outbreak, and that if Trump had not eliminated funding there likely would have been a tested vaccine ready to go from the beginning.
Re:What about Trump? (Score:4, Insightful)
Also BioNTec is a German company.
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and that if Trump had not eliminated funding there likely would have been a tested vaccine ready to go from the beginning
Unlikely. The two have nothing to do with each other. Trump for all his faults didn't cut R&D funding, he cut funding for a response unit, which is largely a detection, analysis, and policy setting unit. Now sure that could likely accelerated the USA response in policy and directed funding... but given how Trump demonstrably ignored all expert advice it is questionable if that unit would have had any impact at all under his leadership.
For all the faults in the world, the world got vaccines out insanely
mRNA will be cure for most cancers in 30 years (Score:5, Funny)
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The credit should go to the adviser that came up with the name 'Operation Warp Speed'. Trump thought the name was cool, and mostly left the project alone.
Compare and contrast that with how his administration handled PPE ramp-up, with Kushner using allocations for even more grifting, state governments literally bringing in armed guards to protect their shipments, and suppliers begging for contracts to be allocated so they could spin up production.
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Humm, actually, the largest financial push for the development and testing of the MRNA vaccines came from the German government. Didn't stop both the UK and US government of the time from claiming it was their doing, though.
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Can't edit my post, but I thought I would add a little more context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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For something like this though they're somewhat inseparable. Good policy helps enable good science, there was a story yesterday about new cancer "moonshot" treatments and those are being funded by the new ARPA-H initiative from the Biden admin. That's good policy getting put behind advancing science.
Operation Warp Speed was good policy and good science came out of it, if it doesn't get politicized does it happen as quickly?
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That's kind of how it goes for presidents. You get to claim credit for things you just rubber stamped or even had no control over at all (gas prices), but on the other hand you get the blame for those as well (gas prices).
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Doesn't he get recognition for coming up with the idea for the vaccine
Why would Trump get recognition? The technology was being developed for decades before "Operation Warp Speed."
Pfizer did not take any federal money to develop the vaccine (although they did sign lucrative contracts for selling the completed vaccine to the federal government). Moderna, J&J, and one other company did get some federal development money (although it was not clear if private investors were ready to jump in if that federal money wasn't available).
Trump's bizarre messaging about the vaccin
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Pfizer took the money as a down payment for the deployment, but it was just accounting tricks to say they didn't accept money. A lot of companies took the money and ran with it, as did Pfizer, at the same time before the vaccine was even developed. Pfizer didn't return the money after Moderna and other solutions got superior results.
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Vaccines are historically not profitable, so the only way to really get companies to invest in vaccines is to ensure there is a market for them. In thi
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Pfizer did get "some" federal money, Just it was from another federal government. It received 375 million Euro from the German government to accelerate the development and production capacity of the vaccine. Because apparently even with the European model of pharmaceutical development it is possible to fund research without having to sell insulin at 200 to 300 dollars per dose.
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President's get to ride on uncontrollable circumstances, yes. If Clinton was elected does it also get done in a similar timeframe? Probably, but she wasn't in the chair when Covid hit so we'll never know. Another way to look at the job I suppose for a lot of things is "just don't fuck it up" and for an administration that to me just kept fucking up the obvious is maybe why this one stands out.
Re:What about Trump? (Score:4, Funny)
Doesn't he get recognition for coming up with the idea for the vaccine /s
He already got all the other Nobel prizes - he knows more about - and people are saying you know, it's like a real bit of knowledge, You see - no one on earth knows more about - he's the acknowledged expert by people who know about such things. And Nancy Pelosi, I men, you know what I mean, I won all 50 states be a landslide, never before happened But the people, real patriots, not RINOS - they know.
Now what were we talking about?
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Anti-vaxers say... (Score:2)
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Mmmm... pickle.
Re:Anti-vaxers say... (Score:5, Informative)
Thomas Midgley Jr. [timharford.com]? No, he did not [wikipedia.org].
Neither did Clair Paterson [wikipedia.org], who discovered that leaded gasoline was a really bad idea and championed its end.
Three guys that discovered the terrible effects that CFCs had on the ozone layer did, however, in 1995 [nobelprize.org].
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You should take it or leave it as is. There's always going to be some arbitrariness to it because they aware *just one* in any particular field in any year. There is no way you could begin to honor all the scientists whose work deserves recognition.
In this case I think the award is clearly deserved -- not even necessarily because of the public health effect of the particular mRNA vaccines in circulation, but because the work has fundamentally altered an important area of medicine. The innovations of these
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The Nobel Prize needs competition. The rules are rather stringent and limiting. There are institutions that have similar prizes, but they've failed to gain sufficient notoriety. Maybe universities around the globe can cooperate on one.
Sure. Why don't you fund multi-million dollar science prizes on your own then. After you have figured out funding, figure out a system of awarding prizes. Maybe use AI these days instead of opinions of people. Hey, it is your prize; you can do what you want.
Want to Know More About mRNA Before Your COVID Jab (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Want to Know More About mRNA Before Your COVID (Score:4, Insightful)
The argument from anti-vaxxers is that being relatively new for humans, there could be long-term side-effects of mRNA vax's that nobody knows about yet. "Maybe in 10 years the men will grow breasts" and so on.
There is some general rationality to such fears; however, a heavy bout of Covid itself can have unpleasant long-term side-effects, as heavy virus illnesses often give, because human cells are casualties in big immunology wars. Almost any kind of cell can get whacked; it's playing Russian Roulette with your cells.
Half my brother's face sometimes goes numb because of a nasty infection he once had decades ago. It also affects his ability to taste food.
I've never received a good answer on why anti-mRNAers think the first risk is higher than the second.
One person said, "I'd rather live with nature's danger than man-made dangers", but couldn't clarify it beyond that.
And when the "regular" non-mRNA Covid vax came out, many complainers STILL didn't take it. It's as if they are being obstinate merely to "own the libs".
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I've never received a good answer on why anti-mRNAers think the first risk is higher than the second.
It is a bit of a false choice to say the only options were mRNA vaccines or no vaccines given fact Novavax beat Pfizer to human trials. It could have been done without rolling the dice on mRNA.
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It is a bit of a false choice to say the only options were mRNA vaccines or no vaccines given fact Novavax beat Pfizer to human trials.
Novavax released Phase III trials in January 2021. [wikipedia.org] One month earlier, Pfizer had delivered the first 1.8M doses of their vaccine while Moderna had 4.0M doses by February 2021. Novavax would not begin manufacture until later.
It could have been done without rolling the dice on mRNA.
One of main benefits to mRNA vaccines was the speed and cost of manufacture as traditional vaccines require the production of the pathogens. While traditional vaccines could have been manufactured eventually mRNA vaccines were indeed faster to design and manufacture.
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Novavax released Phase III trials in January 2021. One month earlier, Pfizer had delivered the first 1.8M doses of their vaccine while Moderna had 4.0M doses by February 2021. Novavax would not begin manufacture until later.
By first to human trials I'm referring to the Phase I trials in May 2020.
Novavax
https://clinicaltrials.gov/stu... [clinicaltrials.gov]
Pfizer
https://clinicaltrials.gov/stu... [clinicaltrials.gov]
One of main benefits to mRNA vaccines was the speed and cost of manufacture as traditional vaccines require the production of the pathogens.
The benefit of the mRNA platform is that it's mostly software defined allowing vaccines to be developed and in the presence of preexisting production facilities to scaled up quickly. In the case of covid there was no preexisting production capability to speak of. That had to be created by throwing billions of dollars in money and resources at the problem.
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By first to human trials I'm referring to the Phase I trials in May 2020.
And why is that even remotely relevant if it took LONGER for Novavax to be manufactured?
The benefit of the mRNA platform is that it's mostly software defined allowing vaccines to be developed and in the presence of preexisting production facilities to scaled up quickly. In the case of covid there was no preexisting production capability to speak of. That had to be created by throwing billions of dollars in money and resources at the problem. There is zero reason the same could not have been done with Novavax to scale up their production.
mRNA vaccines do not require the pathogen to be created FIRST. That speeds up manufacture. For Novavax, they had to create protein adjuvant. Do you think that was magically created?
This is not true. Novavax beat Pfizer to human arms and the only reason mRNA won was the capital investments for production dwarfed what was available to Novavax. In an alternate reality without Pfizer or Moderna Novavax would have most certainly been on the receiving end of the necessary capital investments to rapidly scale production.
What kind of denier are you? It if a FACT that Pfizer and Moderna had MILLIONS of vaccines distributed BEFORE Novavax started manufacture. That was the reality. Why are you lying about facts? Still whining that Novavax went to trial first is b
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And why is that even remotely relevant if it took LONGER for Novavax to be manufactured?
Is it really so hard to understand larger capital investment = more product quicker?
mRNA vaccines do not require the pathogen to be created FIRST.
Do you know what a pathogen is?
That speeds up manufacture. For Novavax, they had to create protein adjuvant.
Do you know what an adjuvant is? It sounds like the answer to both questions is a resounding no.
This is not true. Novavax beat Pfizer to human arms and the only reason mRNA won was the capital investments for production dwarfed what was available to Novavax. In an alternate reality without Pfizer or Moderna Novavax would have most certainly been on the receiving end of the necessary capital investments to rapidly scale production.
What kind of denier are you? It if a FACT that Pfizer and Moderna had MILLIONS of vaccines distributed BEFORE Novavax started manufacture. That was the reality. Why are you lying about facts? Still whining that Novavax went to trial first is basically denialism.
Good grief do you even speak English? I was not speaking of what happened I was speaking of what could have happened.
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There is some general rationality to such fears;
There is a general rationality of caution when it comes to all medication. For some small parts of the population, something that is generally benign like aspirin can be deadly to them. However, for the vast majority of people vaccines do not present as large a risk as the disease it protects against.
I've never received a good answer on why anti-mRNAers think the first risk is higher than the second.
Because someone told them. Let's be honest in that most people who were against the vaccines do not have any decent background in virology, pathology, epidemiology, etc. But their cousin's college roommate's co
Viable alternatives using standard methods (Score:3)
Novavax actually beat Pfizer to human trials using standard viral analog approach. Throwing money and resources at them could have easily resolved their production issues. Subsequently numerous other successful protein analog vaccines were created.
Not only could the same results have been achieved without mRNA the technology itself introduced additional risks in the form of the ability to infect any cell in the body causing cell damage/death and associated immune response and inflammation. These risks were largely avoidable using more traditional viral analogs.
Re:Viable alternatives using standard methods (Score:5, Interesting)
Novavax actually beat Pfizer to human trials using standard viral analog approach. Throwing money and resources at them could have easily resolved their production issues. Subsequently numerous other successful protein analog vaccines were created.
The point you seem to miss is that mRNA is faster and cheaper to manufacture. When making billions of vaccines, this is important.
Not only could the same results have been achieved without mRNA the technology itself introduced additional risks in the form of the ability to infect any cell in the body causing cell damage/death and associated immune response and inflammation. These risks were largely avoidable using more traditional viral analogs.
And how many months did the Novavax vaccine arrive after both Pfizer and Moderna?
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Neither assertions are in fact correct. Analog protein vaccines are several times cheaper to produce at the same scale as mRNA. The mRNA platform does have a speed advantage once there is supporting infrastructure in place for mass production as the capital costs of new production is lower... yet that infrastructure didn't exist before covid.. it had to be developed during the pandemic at great cost.
In the ONE vaccine example we have that is true. Pfizer and Moderna had millions distributed before Novavax. So you are LYING.
Again Novavax beat Pfizer to human arms not the other way around. Trials and production could have been scaled up with larger capital investments.,
By human arms, you mean Novavax made SOME. They did not make enough for mass distribution. How useful was making SOME for mass distribution? Not very useful
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In the ONE vaccine example we have that is true. Pfizer and Moderna had millions distributed before Novavax. So you are LYING.
What am I lying about? Were you able to comprehend what I actually said? It doesn't sound like it.
By human arms, you mean Novavax made SOME. They did not make enough for mass distribution. How useful was making SOME for mass distribution? Not very useful
Jesus it's like I'm talking to a brick wall. I'm unambiguously referring to what could have been done with the proper capital investments early on and you keep trying to refute it with what actually happened. What is it about English you find so difficult to understand?
Re:As always in these cases (Score:5, Informative)
The NYT has a piece: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/1... [nytimes.com] on how the vaccine came to be. It actually started back in the 1950s when a few brave soul thought mRNA was interesting enough to study. It took a few decades before the 1980s and HIV rolled around. The 1990s and the aughts saw some struggling to get funding to pursue the research. Eventually through the 2010s and just right at the end the pieces came together.
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Nice article. Apparent decades of sexism and racism against the female prize recipient.
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Says the people shoving fast food in their mouth while sipping a Monster energy drink. Don’t forget about sucking on that vape pen while talking about the “chemicals” in the vaccine.
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I wouldn't consider 30 years "rapid" development. (That's how long word on mRNA vaccines has been going on.)
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Indeed. Have another booster.
OK. How about the rest of use don't take medical advice from those who'd only ever paint their house or their fence once?
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A vaccine, colloquially, is nothing more than something that trains your immune system to attack something it wouldn't otherwise know how to attack. This separates it from something like say antibiotics or chemotherapy which are molecules which directly attack the pathogens so by that general metric it absolutely a vaccine.
and it does not prevent you from passing the disease to others ( you will still have a virus shedding phase).
The concept of "sterilizing immunity" is more complicated than many make it;
For most of vaccination history, humans have been guided by stopping sickness, and that’s been enough. T
smallpox vaccine is sterilizing (Score:2)
Here [nih.gov] and here - this one is even trying to promote the COVID treatments [theatlantic.com], but admits that the smallpox vaccine is sterilizing.
Long lasting immunity (>40y) after last smallpox vaccine dose [nih.gov]
Conflating the COVID-19 mRNA treatments with a sterilizing vaccine, which the smallpox vaccine is, is inaccurate. Actually the last paper was pretty interesting to me, since my last dose of the smallpox vaccine was in 2007 (first dose 1971). I probably have more vaccines than most, line of work.
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I think the word you are looking for is "sterilizing", which was what was expected of a vaccine in the past. It killed the agent targeted and gave long-lasting protection against the same target. The mRNA treatments were not ever intended to do that. They targeted the spike protein, the mechanism by which the virus gains access to the cell, coughing up antibodies that would bind to these and mark the associated virus for destruction. The spike proteins evolved rapidly and the mRNA treatments were effica
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Actually it's an apt comparison, since it appears the outer coat of influenza morphs over time. So whatever protected you in the past probably won't in the future, and every year they select 3 strains for the vaccine, and hope that they selected correctly to put a dent in the infections that year. That said, the influenza vaccine (usually) is a vaccine in the traditional sense because it contains live attenuated or inactivated virus. There was a recombinant flu vaccine approved that used another (non-hum
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You're full of shit
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wanted the government to mandate the vaccine to every adult
War crimes trials have been hold over that sort of thing. And rightly so.
People said that when infection was rare (Score:2)
But everybody gets infected sooner or later. As soon as it became obvious that side effects were in the 1 in 100,000 range, there was always a benefit for everyone to get vaccinated -- because it's better than getting COVID by a long way.
Sure, children were generally highly resistant to COVID and it was much less needed than with adults, never mind the vulnerable.
A couple of waves basically started in schools and were spread to parents and grandparents.
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Re:Do they get a cookie too? (Score:4, Funny)
If so, then should we not give Andy Warhol one retroactively?
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Obama still living rent free.
Re:Do they get a cookie too? (Score:5, Informative)
This one will occupy a place of pride, right next to the one Obama got for winning an election. In the future, everyone will get a Nobel prize to go with their 15 minutes of fame.
The standards for scientific Nobels and the Peace Prize are very different. A number of Nobel Peace Prizes have been given for reasons that turned out to be really bad in hindsight, not just Obama's. The ones given for scientific achievement, however, are reflective of important advances in human knowledge.
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I know you are joking, but the Nobel Prizes are funded by a private endowment and can't be defunded by any government.
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If you follow the news and the main media
Well, at least we've identified the problem.
All people who had the vaccine in my circle eventually got Covid.
ALL OF THEM? Every single one? All what, 10 of them? 100? How statistically significant is that sample size?
Sounds like a hoax to me.
Did you call the Nobel committee and offer them your opinion?
Re:Two things can be true at once. (Score:5, Insightful)
COVID was remarkable in that vulnerable people refused to follow basic instructions to save themselves. They stuffed up the hospitals.
So the choice was to block many of them from hospitals to allow non-COVID cases to be treated. Or to do what we did.
This is the way in which COVID was a threat to everyone.