4 ms·

One bad autoimmune reaction from a poorly engineered vaccine and the whole society will boycott the mRNA vaccines forever after. Safety is higher priority to on

One bad autoimmune reaction from a poorly engineered vaccine and the whole society will boycott the mRNA vaccines forever after. Safety is higher priority to ongoing viability than speed.

inglor_cz 5y ago
Safety and speed must usually be balanced in a trade-off, and we are actually used to it, that is why people drive a car, even though it comes with a risk of dying or being maimed. I have no doubt that some kind of safety-related trials must be run on boosters and that they will be run, but they will likely only take weeks in the future, not months.
- f6v 5y ago
  > but they will likely only take weeks in the future, not months. We need just one Jesse Gelsinger to shut the whole thing down.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    J.G. is a famous case and his death definitely delayed development for a decade or more, but it should be noted that when he died, the technology was extremely untested in humans. We now have a few hundred million people who got mRNA vaccine and had no trouble. I don't think that even after a death, mRNA would be completely toast. It has already proven its merit.
    - bewaretheirs 5y ago
      mRNA? J.G.'s death involved an experimental modified adenovirus (the same family of viruses used as the vector for several non-mRNA COVID vaccines: Johnson & Johnson/Janssen, Astrazenica/Oxford, and Sputnik V).
      - inglor_cz 5y ago
        The OP was mentioning J.G.'s case as an example of what could happen, too with rushed mRNA vaccines, and that the fallout would be bad.
- kingkawn 5y ago
  You presume the time required is a function of something other than observing the physiologic reaction to the inoculation over an adequate period of time.
harshreality 5y ago
But it doesn't make sense in this context. They're literally changing nothing except the mRNA sequence. If a new vaccine is made by taking a gene sequence from a virus protein that's already in the wild, and packaging it into a delivery mechanism (LNP) that's already approved for another vaccine... If there are any strange reactions to the new spike protein, that would also be caused by the wild virus spike protein, so it's an obvious competing harms situation where the vaccine should be approved, at least so long as the pandemic is ongoing.
- bxrxdx 5y ago
  Right, all you're changing is the mRNA, but that can still be really dangerous. What if you code for a protein that causes cross-reactivity with a human protein and you give millions of people an auto-immune disorder? I'm 1000% pro mRNA vaccines and pro covid vaccines, but they still need to be tested.
  - harshreality 5y ago
    Then the virus variant itself would cause autoimmune disease, and we'd have a much bigger problem than deciding whether to approve a new vaccine. For fuck's sake, I'm not saying do no testing. I would assume they do basic checks, first in humanized animals, then using bioassays to try to detect all sorts of problems including antibody cross-reactivity with a wide variety of human cells. I'm also not against a preliminary limited human trial, with bloodwork checked after a few weeks to try to see if the assays missed anything obvious. Short of that, what do you want them to do? We can't wait years to see if people develop symptomatic auto-immune problems. If we even wait 3-6 months for each new protein, the time advantage offered by mRNA or adenovirus vaccine tech is blown, or at least reduced to the point where there's no ability to react quickly to changing dominant viral strains in a pandemic, or new outbreaks of known diseases.
    - rddlob 5y ago
      >Then the virus variant itself would cause autoimmune disease You clearly have no idea what you are talking about or why the GP comment mentioned an autoimmune disease specifically. mRNA vaccines express specific proteins whereas the virus expresses entire viral molecules. A novel protein expression could cause an autoimmune disease because the novel proteins couls cause the immune system to attack the cells producing the isolated proteins, a problem you wouldnt have with cells producing entire viral bodies.
incrudible 5y ago
The number of people dead or severely ill from TTS is already in the hundreds. Where is the boycott of viral vector vaccines?

One bad autoimmune reaction from a poorly engineered vaccine and the whole society will boycott the mRNA vaccines forever after. Safety is higher priority to ongoing viability than speed.

inglor_cz 5y ago

Safety and speed must usually be balanced in a trade-off, and we are actually used to it, that is why people drive a car, even though it comes with a risk of dying or being maimed. I have no doubt that some kind of safety-related trials must be run on boosters and that they will be run, but they will likely only take weeks in the future, not months.

f6v 5y ago
> but they will likely only take weeks in the future, not months. We need just one Jesse Gelsinger to shut the whole thing down.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  J.G. is a famous case and his death definitely delayed development for a decade or more, but it should be noted that when he died, the technology was extremely untested in humans. We now have a few hundred million people who got mRNA vaccine and had no trouble. I don't think that even after a death, mRNA would be completely toast. It has already proven its merit.
  - bewaretheirs 5y ago
    mRNA? J.G.'s death involved an experimental modified adenovirus (the same family of viruses used as the vector for several non-mRNA COVID vaccines: Johnson & Johnson/Janssen, Astrazenica/Oxford, and Sputnik V).
    - inglor_cz 5y ago
      The OP was mentioning J.G.'s case as an example of what could happen, too with rushed mRNA vaccines, and that the fallout would be bad.
kingkawn 5y ago
You presume the time required is a function of something other than observing the physiologic reaction to the inoculation over an adequate period of time.

harshreality 5y ago

But it doesn't make sense in this context. They're literally changing nothing except the mRNA sequence. If a new vaccine is made by taking a gene sequence from a virus protein that's already in the wild, and packaging it into a delivery mechanism (LNP) that's already approved for another vaccine... If there are any strange reactions to the new spike protein, that would also be caused by the wild virus spike protein, so it's an obvious competing harms situation where the vaccine should be approved, at least so long as the pandemic is ongoing.

bxrxdx 5y ago
Right, all you're changing is the mRNA, but that can still be really dangerous. What if you code for a protein that causes cross-reactivity with a human protein and you give millions of people an auto-immune disorder? I'm 1000% pro mRNA vaccines and pro covid vaccines, but they still need to be tested.
- harshreality 5y ago
  Then the virus variant itself would cause autoimmune disease, and we'd have a much bigger problem than deciding whether to approve a new vaccine. For fuck's sake, I'm not saying do no testing. I would assume they do basic checks, first in humanized animals, then using bioassays to try to detect all sorts of problems including antibody cross-reactivity with a wide variety of human cells. I'm also not against a preliminary limited human trial, with bloodwork checked after a few weeks to try to see if the assays missed anything obvious. Short of that, what do you want them to do? We can't wait years to see if people develop symptomatic auto-immune problems. If we even wait 3-6 months for each new protein, the time advantage offered by mRNA or adenovirus vaccine tech is blown, or at least reduced to the point where there's no ability to react quickly to changing dominant viral strains in a pandemic, or new outbreaks of known diseases.
  - rddlob 5y ago
    >Then the virus variant itself would cause autoimmune disease You clearly have no idea what you are talking about or why the GP comment mentioned an autoimmune disease specifically. mRNA vaccines express specific proteins whereas the virus expresses entire viral molecules. A novel protein expression could cause an autoimmune disease because the novel proteins couls cause the immune system to attack the cells producing the isolated proteins, a problem you wouldnt have with cells producing entire viral bodies.

incrudible 5y ago

The number of people dead or severely ill from TTS is already in the hundreds. Where is the boycott of viral vector vaccines?