8 ms·

Derek Lowe's articles during covid have been a huge help trying to navigate the coronavirus hellscape we have been in. It's great to see him start to talk post-

Derek Lowe's articles during covid have been a huge help trying to navigate the coronavirus hellscape we have been in. It's great to see him start to talk post-covid applications of medicine as things maybe wind down a bit. Delta+ willing

sjg007 5y ago
Delta+ and the next variant after that just in time for school in the Fall and a bunch of unvaccinated kids.
nabla9 5y ago
His "Things I Won’t Work With" articles are really informative and entertaining. https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/category/things-i-wont-work-with https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/category/thin... For example: Things I Won’t Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/things_i_wont_work_with_dioxygen_difluoride https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/th...
- SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
  > If the paper weren’t laid out in complete grammatical sentences and published in JACS, you’d swear it was the work of a violent lunatic. Favorite part of a good article. Although it seems to me these experiments need to be repeated, for science.
- UncleSlacky 5y ago
  Reminds me of the excellent book "Ignition!" by John D. Clark: https://archive.org/details/ignition_201612 https://archive.org/details/ignition_201612
wbl 5y ago
We could retarget the mRNA batches tonight if it wasn't for the FDA not taking this seriously.
- H8crilA 5y ago
  Uhm, it is serious if you know anything about drug development history. It always is. The current mRNA Covid vaccines have a pretty high incidence rate of ongoing rapid swelling and rashes (in the 1/100 to 1/1000 range), and it's still unclear what will happen to the hundreds of thousands of affected people. Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfizer%E2%80%93BioNTech_COVID-19_vaccine#Adverse_effects https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfizer%E2%80%93BioNTech_COVI... Also to be found in the adverse reactions database (VAERS) by the CDC.
  - astrange 5y ago
    VAERS reports aren't sufficient to show causation, because they just show whatever people happened to report. It's the same reason drugs show the thing they're treating as a side effect. People are reporting the symptom because they already had it.
- gus_massa 5y ago
  Retargeting is one of those things that everyone is 99% sure it's safe. But 99% sure in millions of people means thousand of problems and perhaps deaths. So before signing any authorization it's better to wait until the clinical trials are done instead of using gut feelings. (Waiting too much is also bad, so it's a tradeoff.)
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Retargeting is one of those things that everyone is 99% sure it's safe. But 99% sure in millions of people means thousand of problems and perhaps deaths. You seem to be assuming “99% sure it is safe” means “sure that its 99(.9)% safe”. They are...not equivalent.
    - gus_massa 5y ago
      I know... I know... You are right. But a simple calculation sometimes is better than a correct long calculation in an online discussion :) The correct calculation is to ask them "How sure are you that is at lest safe for X% of the persons?" The replies are like 100% sure that it's safe for 90% of the persons. Also 100% sure that it's safe for 99% of the persons. 97% sure that it's safe for 99.9% of the persons. 93% sure that it's safe for 99.99% of the persons. 87% sure that it's safe for 99.999% of the persons. ... Now you take the derivative of the function (or the inverse of the function?), multiply by -1 if necessary and get a gut feeling probability distribution to use to calculate the integral and get the expected values of deaths of using the new version without a clinical trial. Anyway, you need a lot of 9s, because a FDA approval means almost automatic approval in a lot of countries. There are like 10 vaccines now and 7.000 million people in the word, so my guess that it will be used in 500-100 million people.
deleted 5y ago
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sjg007 5y ago

Delta+ and the next variant after that just in time for school in the Fall and a bunch of unvaccinated kids.

nabla9 5y ago

His "Things I Won’t Work With" articles are really informative and entertaining. https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/category/things-i-wont-work-with https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/category/thin... For example: Things I Won’t Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/things_i_wont_work_with_dioxygen_difluoride https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/th...

SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
> If the paper weren’t laid out in complete grammatical sentences and published in JACS, you’d swear it was the work of a violent lunatic. Favorite part of a good article. Although it seems to me these experiments need to be repeated, for science.
UncleSlacky 5y ago
Reminds me of the excellent book "Ignition!" by John D. Clark: https://archive.org/details/ignition_201612 https://archive.org/details/ignition_201612

wbl 5y ago

We could retarget the mRNA batches tonight if it wasn't for the FDA not taking this seriously.

H8crilA 5y ago
Uhm, it is serious if you know anything about drug development history. It always is. The current mRNA Covid vaccines have a pretty high incidence rate of ongoing rapid swelling and rashes (in the 1/100 to 1/1000 range), and it's still unclear what will happen to the hundreds of thousands of affected people. Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfizer%E2%80%93BioNTech_COVID-19_vaccine#Adverse_effects https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfizer%E2%80%93BioNTech_COVI... Also to be found in the adverse reactions database (VAERS) by the CDC.
- astrange 5y ago
  VAERS reports aren't sufficient to show causation, because they just show whatever people happened to report. It's the same reason drugs show the thing they're treating as a side effect. People are reporting the symptom because they already had it.
gus_massa 5y ago
Retargeting is one of those things that everyone is 99% sure it's safe. But 99% sure in millions of people means thousand of problems and perhaps deaths. So before signing any authorization it's better to wait until the clinical trials are done instead of using gut feelings. (Waiting too much is also bad, so it's a tradeoff.)
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Retargeting is one of those things that everyone is 99% sure it's safe. But 99% sure in millions of people means thousand of problems and perhaps deaths. You seem to be assuming “99% sure it is safe” means “sure that its 99(.9)% safe”. They are...not equivalent.
  - gus_massa 5y ago
    I know... I know... You are right. But a simple calculation sometimes is better than a correct long calculation in an online discussion :) The correct calculation is to ask them "How sure are you that is at lest safe for X% of the persons?" The replies are like 100% sure that it's safe for 90% of the persons. Also 100% sure that it's safe for 99% of the persons. 97% sure that it's safe for 99.9% of the persons. 93% sure that it's safe for 99.99% of the persons. 87% sure that it's safe for 99.999% of the persons. ... Now you take the derivative of the function (or the inverse of the function?), multiply by -1 if necessary and get a gut feeling probability distribution to use to calculate the integral and get the expected values of deaths of using the new version without a clinical trial. Anyway, you need a lot of 9s, because a FDA approval means almost automatic approval in a lot of countries. There are like 10 vaccines now and 7.000 million people in the word, so my guess that it will be used in 500-100 million people.

deleted 5y ago

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