3 ms·

And now that it's ending there are, besides all the negative outcomes of course, some amazing benefits that have come out of the pandemic or at least were sped

And now that it's ending there are, besides all the negative outcomes of course, some amazing benefits that have come out of the pandemic or at least were sped up: - the breakthrough of RNA based vaccins - a deeper understanding of how air based viruses spread (although much more research still needs to be done) - a lot of practical lessons learned about managing global virus outbreaks

wccrawford 5y ago
>the breakthrough of RNA based vaccins My understanding is that we were at that breakthrough anyhow. This was just the first chance to test it. The emergency sped up that testing, but it didn't create the breakthrough. The rest I agree with though. There's a ton of information we learned from this experience, and we're still learning.
- kristjansson 5y ago
  Commercialization counts as breakthrough here I think. We’ve demonstrably solved all the problems required to get from labs to billions of arms
deleted 5y ago
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k-mcgrady 5y ago
>> - a lot of practical lessons learned about managing global virus outbreaks You would think, but I feel like with each wave (and therefore each opportunity to learn from previous mistakes) countries repeated the mistakes of the past. I have very little confidence that if we were faced with a similar threat in the near future that things would be different.
gerbilly 5y ago
I think the biggest benefit will be that mRNA vaccines may be used more in cancer treatments. Now that we know they are safe (we've just had an informal clinical trial with hundreds of millions of patients) maybe they will get used more. This is just the first article I could find on treating cancer with mRNA immunotherapy: https://molecular-cancer.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12943-021-01335-5 https://molecular-cancer.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/... I'm sure there are many more.

wccrawford 5y ago

>the breakthrough of RNA based vaccins My understanding is that we were at that breakthrough anyhow. This was just the first chance to test it. The emergency sped up that testing, but it didn't create the breakthrough. The rest I agree with though. There's a ton of information we learned from this experience, and we're still learning.

kristjansson 5y ago
Commercialization counts as breakthrough here I think. We’ve demonstrably solved all the problems required to get from labs to billions of arms

deleted 5y ago

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k-mcgrady 5y ago

>> - a lot of practical lessons learned about managing global virus outbreaks You would think, but I feel like with each wave (and therefore each opportunity to learn from previous mistakes) countries repeated the mistakes of the past. I have very little confidence that if we were faced with a similar threat in the near future that things would be different.

gerbilly 5y ago

I think the biggest benefit will be that mRNA vaccines may be used more in cancer treatments. Now that we know they are safe (we've just had an informal clinical trial with hundreds of millions of patients) maybe they will get used more. This is just the first article I could find on treating cancer with mRNA immunotherapy: https://molecular-cancer.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12943-021-01335-5 https://molecular-cancer.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/... I'm sure there are many more.