Bird Flu Fears Stoke the Race for an mRNA Flu Vaccine 62
Concern over potential human-to-human transmission of bird flu has risen after six Missouri healthcare workers developed mild respiratory symptoms following contact with a patient infected with H5N1. The CDC reports only the original patient has tested positive for the virus. Scientists are ramping up efforts to develop mRNA vaccines against H5N1, with researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and major pharmaceutical companies like Moderna, Pfizer, and GSK leading the charge. While mRNA technology offers rapid vaccine production, clinical trials have shown mixed results, particularly against influenza B strains. Wired adds: [...] Traditionally, flu vaccines contain inactivated viruses that are grown in hens' eggs. This works reasonably well, but it takes a long time to make such jabs, which means health authorities have to publish their predictions about which strains of flu will be circulating during the upcoming winter well in advance. If you could manufacture vaccines more quickly, you could make more accurate predictions nearer to flu season.
Not only that, researchers hope that a single mRNA shot could one day target 20 or more strains of flu at once, relieving the need for some of this guesswork. Scher's colleagues are working on such a "universal" flu vaccine. With clinical trials ongoing, it's still early days. Sheena Cruickshank, an immunologist at the University of Manchester, has watched reports about emerging mRNA flu jabs with interest but says that questions remain. "We don't yet know how long-lasting the immunity they produce is," she says. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, concurs, though he notes that all flu jabs, regardless of how they are made, have a waning immunity problem -- your protection could decline by around 10 percent every month following injection.
Not only that, researchers hope that a single mRNA shot could one day target 20 or more strains of flu at once, relieving the need for some of this guesswork. Scher's colleagues are working on such a "universal" flu vaccine. With clinical trials ongoing, it's still early days. Sheena Cruickshank, an immunologist at the University of Manchester, has watched reports about emerging mRNA flu jabs with interest but says that questions remain. "We don't yet know how long-lasting the immunity they produce is," she says. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, concurs, though he notes that all flu jabs, regardless of how they are made, have a waning immunity problem -- your protection could decline by around 10 percent every month following injection.
Don't believe the hype (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes please, sign me up to take untested medication to help with my cold.
Yikes!
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_death_rates_by_country [wikipedia.org]
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines/keyfacts.html [cdc.gov]
Logic of the insane "Companies only want to get richer off this!" meanwhile "privatize schools!" and "private companies should do this work!" (hint: you should look at the cost difference)
Re: Don't believe the hype (Score:1)
Except in Japan which had a very low transmission rate before the Covid shots were released
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Except in Japan which had a very low transmission rate before the Covid shots were released
That's because Japanese people readily wear masks when they're sick to prevent others from getting sick. For them, putting on a mask to prevent getting sick is second nature.
Unlike in the U.S. where it was the most difficult thing in the world to do.
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I am still amazed at how many people, even in my own entourage, keep on insisting that masks are a PPE (with the corollary that it does not work as PPE) and not source control.
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You're comparing primary education and mRNA vaccine development. Impressive.
Stupid, but impressive. If privatizing education is bad, why is privatizing medicine NOT...? Oh, cause the government does such a great job.
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In other news, have you heard that the earth is spherical & orbits around the sun? Oh, & that the USA has successfully landed several manned missions on the moon? Oh, & Donald Trump didn't win the 2020 election; Biden won it fair & square?
That should keep you busy for a while
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What fiasco? The vaccine has been proven effective [cdc.gov] and has saved many lives.
Are you talking about the sensationalist headlines that made it sound like the vaccine killed more people than it saved, when in fact (if you read the articles that had those headlines) they said the exact opposite? They used clever wording and statplay to creating a shocking headline that simply didn't mean what it seemed to mean.
Or maybe those predictions of a mass die-off two years after getting the vaccines, which turned out t
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The covid vaccine is one of the most tested and closely studied vaccines in history. Plus mRNA has was discovered in the 60s and research started in the 90s. https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2... [jhu.edu]
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Good luck (Score:1)
I think it will be hard to do without collateral damage. Influenza is a very persistent virus that humanity tolerates very well. So there are possibly a lot of molecular mimicry risks where if you target the wrong protein, you're going to have a vaccine induced autoimmune disease. It sort of happened with the ACE2 receptor and COVID, but considering how widespread the virus itself was the side effects were more likely to happen from the real virus than a vaccine.
The motivation is profit (Score:1, Insightful)
The fear of Bird Flu/death is great for profits. Is that article funded by big pharma?
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Is that article funded by big pharma?
What vaccine article, isn’t.
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Why does th
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How dare companies try to find a way so people don't get sick or die. The outrage! We should let nature take its course and have tens of millions die [wikipedia.org] from a simple cold. Right now only about 50,000 people die each year, let's crank those numbers up and really drive the economy into a tailspin.
Umm, I think you have it backwards. Companies are in the game to make money. The pharma industry literally makes money from you being sick Seriously, take the rose tinted glasses off and have another look around.
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mRNA technology has been around for around 50 years [jhu.edu], longer than you've been on this planet. It's been used in multiple applications [nih.gov] during that time.
Now go collect your vodka or however you're being paid seeing how Russian companies have to resort to bartering [newsweek.com] because they don't have the money.
Interesting (Score:2)
1. You point to a dubious source that shoveled mountains of lies on the subject for YEARS (the NIH) to make a claim that mRNA tech has been around for 50 years... but THAT'S NOT WHAT THAT WEB SITE SAYS. Even the NIH admits that while the subject has been STUDIED for many years, "Phase 1 clinical trials to test the safety of mRNA vaccines for Nipah virus; the trials began in 2022" and the rest of that page goes on and on about the [failed] COVID-19 vaccine.
Why do I say "failed" COVID-19 vaccine?
Remember when
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I'm no expert, but from what I understand
Good. Stop talking then.
Re: Just Say No to mRNA (Score:2)
Like the time you took wild guesses in slashdot comments? I guess rules for thee but not for me. You must have been the hit of parties during the plandemic
Re: Just Say No to mRNA (Score:2)
Related link: https://m.slashdot.org/thread/64835783
Betting pool on (Score:2, Troll)
1. How fast the 5G conspiracy theories get revived.
2. How fast the democrats will push to make it a mandatory condition of stepping outside your door.
3. Whether or not it actually works better for the regular ol flu than the shit they hand out now.
Discuss
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#1 is the fault of a conservative media that revels in giving life to things like 5G conspriracies, they own that one.
How fast the democrats will push to make it a mandatory condition of stepping outside your door.
Yeah ok, conservatives from small folks to right to the largest media figures told us for what, a year or two, that Federal mandates would be a thing and how any day now, how it didn't work and how there would an upcoming wave of side effects all the way to mass death.
None of this happened and they get to just brush past it and pretend they never said all those things with conviction, so are
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Nah, the victim card doesn't work anymore, conservatives have milked that long enough.
The largest alterantive media influencers, channels, podcasts with viewbases in the millions and millions and their continued dominance of local news and talk radio means I don't have to listen to what MSNBC is saying, you can throw a rock and hit a piece of conservative media.
No more hiding behind the "mainstream media" charade like they are some oppressed counterculture, conservatives speak for themselves, loud and clear
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We do not need to, we get a very good dose of both extremists sides here on slashdot.
Re: Betting pool on (Score:4, Interesting)
But they did get to limit what drugs women can put in their body. So partial win??
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I asked first.
Re:Betting pool on (Score:4, Funny)
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4. How fast the GOP will organise "flu parties."
Not 'troll'.
If the Marburg virus or Ebola virus started having human cases of them in the U.S., they'd have 'parties' to infect each other with those, too; call it 'evolution in action ' -- which is ironic as fuck, since most of them are 'creationists'.
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Conservatives walking around with my body my choice signs in regards to vaccines is the most hypocritical shit ever. https://www.npr.org/sections/h... [npr.org]
So does that count for abortions?
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Re:Betting pool on (Score:4, Informative)
2. How fast the democrats will push to make it a mandatory condition of stepping outside your door.
Do you have children in public schools? You must provide proof of vaccination before children can be enrolled. Nearly every employer in the medical field has vaccine requirements for employees. When you let religious nutjobs skip vaccines you get outbreaks, like this for example. https://www.nyc.gov/assets/doh... [nyc.gov]
Hell in 2000 the CDC declared measles eliminated, thanks to vaccines of course. https://www.cdc.gov/measles/ab... [cdc.gov]
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You're comparing two very different kinds of viruses. Traditional flu shots are only 40-60% effective on a given year because they rapidly mutate like coronaviruses do. They are still highly recommended. Even if you don't prevent illness, you reduce transmission. And even when there is transmission, you reduce severity.
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You're comparing two very different kinds of viruses.
I was comparing two different vaccines. The point was that one cannot reason with Measles-level stats but then substitute Pfizer/COVID-jab as the subject. Mandatory school vaccinations are generally predicated on much more effective vaccines.
Also, that's one more reason to do away with public schools and embrace school choice. Then you can let those nasty right wingers you hate so much go to the same school and cough on each other, for example, while your little pink-haired wokesters are masked up 3x and
I had the Death Vaxx (Score:1)
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Sometimes. Most vaccines are less than 90% effective.
You can look at per capita infection curves for all of these diseases and vaccines were introduced as they approached zero with little inflection of the curves. That's just the hard data.
Add in ethyl mercury sequestration and macrophage-mediated associated aluminum nanoparticle transport across the blood-brain barrier, SV-40 cancers, and the lack of PC-RCT's for modern vaccines with zero liability and the calculus isn't straightforward.
I went from an advo
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If you're worried about SV-40 today, then you didn't read carefully enough. That was contaminated polio vaccines from at least 60 years ago and really nothing to do with the vaccines themselves. Pretty sure they're gone now.
Here we go again! (Score:1)
Aside from the above, also cue the people who will insist that whatever it is, is 'untested' and would rather wait YEARS for a so-callled 'traditional' vaccine, even if it's too damned late to do any good.
Jumps to mammals ... (Score:2)
The current strain of H5N1 jumps to mammals regularly.
For example, dozens of tigers died in Vietnam [msn.com], and before that seals in Patagonia [apnews.com].
It is only a matter of time before it infects humans in significant numbers.
Oh, and by the way, this is zoonosis at work, no lab leak crappy hypothesis...
Giving testing, would mRNA vaccine be quicker? (Score:2)
Sure, developing the new vaccine is faster but the long pole seems to be testing. That is why COVID vaccines and boosters are based on the strains circulating the previous winter. The 2022 version was available in September based on variants circulating in July. It was really cool because it was the only time most of us had access to a vaccine based on the currently circulating strain. However, they achieved this by going directly from animal testing to shipping product. No human testing. That was app
Most people not vaccinated (Score:2)
No thanks (Score:2)
So, everyone who was pro vaccine mandate ( and many even went full Nazi with deny those people healthcare, put em in quarantine camps and let them die ) loved to parrot the phrase " Follow the Science " during the entire event.
Which I find amusing as hell because, what they really meant was, " Only follow the Science that we approve of and ignore everything else. "
To wit:
THE SCIENCE says, the vaccine development timeline usually takes around 5 - 10 years to go through all the trials, ensure its safety and d