13 ms·

India’s DNA Covid vaccine is a world first – more are coming

82 points by dsr12 5y ago

yonaguska 5y ago
> 67% protective against symptomatic COVID-19 in clinical trials I'm not a big fan of any of the current vaccines due to their low efficacy against variants, and especially because they trigger an initially weak immune response and are only effective against symptomatic covid-19. The initial weak immune response gives mutations more time to occur, in my rudimentary understanding. If this vaccine is only good at preventing symptomatic infection- does this mean it'll apply more selective pressure on even more variants? I know that a Marek's situation is highly unlikely with Covid, but won't weak vaccines increase the probability of this happening? As a young healthy person, I still think natural immunity is the best way to reach some semblance of herd immunity for groups not at high risk. This feels like prescribing incomplete courses of antibiotics.
- jmnicolas 5y ago
  > I know that a Marek's situation is highly unlikely with Covid Someone told me about Marek at work but I didn't find anything related to COVID vaccines, good or bad. Do you have some sources that speak about it?
  - generalizations 5y ago
    It's general to all vaccines, not specific to just COVID. The search term you want is "leaky vaccine". Basically, when you have a treatment (a 'leaky vaccine') that prevents symptoms but not transmission, then the normal evolutionary constraint for a virus to become less-harmful (to maximize transmission) goes out the window - because anyone that's been vaccinated could just as easily carry a more-harmful version of the virus. It doesn't always happen, and it's hard to predict when it will, but Marek's disease is an example of a worst-case scenario actually happening: when a leaky vaccine scenario allows the virus to mutate and become highly lethal.
    - majormajor 5y ago
      > normal evolutionary constraint for a virus to become less-harmful (to maximize transmission) I don't know why we're taking it for granted that maximizing transmission is the same as being less harmful. The delta variant seems both more harmful AND more transmissible (and developed in an area that didn't have vaccines yet last fall). There seems to be a good case to be made that, say, ebola is too harmful to be super transmissible. I don't think we can say the same for Covid yet. The majority of cases have never been fatal, on the contrary, being transmissible is what's made it a public threat and mass scale killer already. "Transmitting it without symptoms" has been a thing since day 1.
      - generalizations 5y ago
        > The delta variant seems both more harmful AND more transmissible (and developed in an area that didn't have vaccines yet last fall). I left it out of the initial explanation for the sake of brevity, but there's several outcomes from a leaky vaccine. Two of them are: increased lethality, and adaptation to vaccines, requiring new vaccines to be developed. So yeah, the delta variant makes it look like we might be dealing with a leaky vaccine scenario.
      - corty 5y ago
        You have to look at the reasons why this behavior is occuring: Viruses get less harmful if it improves transmission. E.g. if you are more active and have a higher rate of contacts, even if infected and sick with a certain strain, that strain has an advantage. With Covid, most of the transmission occurs before symptoms appear, meaning that the severity of the following illness is irrelevant to transmission. In that case, the virus has no advantage from being less harmful. Also, simpler changes are preferred over more complex ones. Delta probably just has a mutation that allows it to reproduce faster after an infection, meaning that both infectiousness as well as severity of illness go up at the same time. Mutations that increase infectiousness but lower severity are usually more complex, so less likely to occur, especially if not selected for.
    - jmnicolas 5y ago
      Sorry I wasn't clear: I have read about Marek but what I didn't find is can it happen with COVID vaccines or not.
  - raphlinus 5y ago
    Sure. Here's a recent article by one of the authors of the 2015 paper on Marek, claiming that it is being twisted to support an antivax narrative. It also goes into considerable detail explaining the virological and immunological background: https://theconversation.com/vaccines-could-affect-how-the-coronavirus-evolves-but-thats-no-reason-to-skip-your-shot-165960 https://theconversation.com/vaccines-could-affect-how-the-co...
    - jmnicolas 5y ago
      Thanks. edit: I don't know why you were downvoted your article is perfectly on point.
- alecst 5y ago
  Remind me of what natural immunity is supposed to be good for, if not for preventing disease.
- elliottkember 5y ago
  Are you an epidemiologist, or should we consider your credentials to be merely "young healthy person"?
  - generalizations 5y ago
    How about an immunologist's take? https://news.yahoo.com/single-most-qualified-mrna-expert-173600060.html https://news.yahoo.com/single-most-qualified-mrna-expert-173...
    - BoorishBears 5y ago
      "Malone clarified that he was not discouraging the use of the vaccine but was providing people with as much fair information as he could about their risks." Doesn't exactly jive with: "As a young healthy person, I still think natural immunity is the best way to reach some semblance of herd immunity for groups not at high risk. This feels like prescribing incomplete courses of antibiotics."
      - generalizations 5y ago
        He's been dragged through the mud as a peddler of misinformation. He kinda has to include that disclaimer if he doesn't want to lose whatever's left of his career.
        BoorishBears 5y ago
        Do you really think he supports this? "I still think natural immunity is the best way to reach some semblance of herd immunity for groups not at high risk" https://usafacts.org/visualizations/covid-vaccine-tracker-states/state/florida https://usafacts.org/visualizations/covid-vaccine-tracker-st... We're already seeing what happens with that approach here in the US. ICUs are being completely overwhelmed in areas where 'healthy young people' took it upon themselves to turn down the vaccine and test this person's theory on natural immunity. What a joke that people are actually acting like Tucker Carlson misusing an experts words, and that expert having the audacity to correct that misuse, is not exactly what it sounds like... an expert caring about nuance in conversations more than a talking head and a random "healthy young person" might It's especially a joke when it's so easy to look for yourself and see how bad of a hypothesis it is: https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2021/07/30/florida-leads-the-nation-in-covid-infections-hospitalizations/ https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2021/07/30/florida-lead...
- afavour 5y ago
  > especially because they trigger an initially weak immune response Do you have any citations on that? Because it doesn’t match with my (admittedly rudimentary) understanding of how the vaccine works.
- majormajor 5y ago
  > I'm not a big fan of any of the current vaccines due to their low efficacy against variants, and especially because they trigger an initially weak immune response and are only effective against symptomatic covid-19. The initial weak immune response gives mutations more time to occur, in my rudimentary understanding. If this vaccine is only good at preventing symptomatic infection- does this mean it'll apply more selective pressure on even more variants? I would assume the average hospitalized case has a longer course than the average non-hospitalized one - in which case, a vaccine that reduces risk of hospitalization seems to also reduce risk of mutations being spread on (since the time for mutations to develop and reproduce in a person is shorter).
- slacka 5y ago
  > As a young healthy person I personally worked with a "a young healthy person" with your attitude. He's dead now. This is not your average cold we're dealing with. Most vaccine boosters are spaced out 6+ months, but the emergency nature of the pandemic forced the trials to only space them out 3-4 weeks. All of the data is showing that a 6-8 month booster will offer a more robust protection. Further more, a delta or any specific tailored booster is trivial with mRNA tech.
  - MarcoZavala 5y ago
    >I personally worked with "a young healthy person" with your attitude. He's dead now. How dramatic. I'm sure this actually happened.
  - yonaguska 5y ago
    If most vaccine boosters are spaced out like this, then I think we should continue doing this. Additionally, we should be factoring in previous exposure to covid before administering vaccines. Especially considering the increased risk of adverse vaccine reactions if you have already been exposed to covid19. As stated in a previous comment, I indirectly know four healthy young, that died shortly after taking their second shots.
- lostlogin 5y ago
  > young healthy Auckland, New Zealand is currently trying to stamp out an outbreak of Delta. 60% of those hospitalised are under 30 years of age. I’m not sure that relying on being young is that helpful. https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/126218288/covid19-30-out-of-34-hospital-admissions-are-pacific-people https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/126218288/...
  - oxymoran 5y ago
    I am vaccinated but to be fair, that article is not a great rebuttal: it’s only a total of 34 hospitalizations and it doesn’t indicate that those young people were healthy. For all we know they could be cancer patients.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - lostlogin 5y ago
      > that article is not a great rebuttal For sure. It’s the bunch people it hit when it got loose here. It was just the first thing that came to mind when the “I’m young and healthy” argument popped up. It’s quite early in the piece for good data, but ‘younger, sicker, quicker’ seems to be the takeaway.
anotheryou 5y ago
I really want more info on the injection: "a needle-free device pressed against the skin, which creates a fine, high-pressure stream of fluid that punctures the surface and is less painful than an injection" edit: in action: https://youtu.be/MGvSWtuu4z4?t=86 https://youtu.be/MGvSWtuu4z4?t=86
- majormajor 5y ago
  Sounds like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_injector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_injector > Jet injectors were used for mass vaccination, and as an alternative to needle syringes for diabetics to inject insulin. However, the World Health Organization no longer recommends jet injectors for vaccination due to risks of disease transmission.[1] Similar devices are used in other industries to inject grease or other fluid.
  - anotheryou 5y ago
    Yes. Hard to believe it's less painful. My vaccine injections had such a thin needle I barley felt it and the doc was lightning fast. Felt like a hip shot by her :)
    - macintux 5y ago
      I think part of the pain is that the needles go into the muscles. Would be nice to avoid that.
  - sdflhasjd 5y ago
    So _this_ is what the Hollywood "hi-tech injection" trope is based on. I always thought it was a purely fantastical creation for cinema for a satisfying "psht" sound to let you know it worked.
    - mschuster91 5y ago
      According to Wikipedia, "hyposprays" were done to avoid broadcaster regulations against showing needle injections on-screen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypospray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypospray).
avnigo 5y ago
> ZyCoV-D, which is administered into the skin without an injection This is wrong. It is administered with an injection, just not a needle.
- omegalulw 5y ago
  Why do people always highlight needles so much? The biggest concern with needles would be proper sterilization and no-reuse, but other than that, what are some other concerns that would motivate us to do away with needles? We are bags of fluid and veins, so needles seem like the best solution to poke and inject?
  - icegreentea2 5y ago
    Needle injection is a skilled act. Jet injectors requires significantly less skill and training. This is useful for some models of mass vaccinations. Edit: Also just speculating, for this specific vaccine is looks like jet injection is actually preferred. The requirement to place the injection under the skin versus into the muscle seems like it has a tighter tolerances that would be more difficult to achieve with needle injection.
    - magila 5y ago
      > Needle injection is a skilled act. Eh, sort of. Subcutaneous (under the skin) injections are pretty hard to screw up. You can train someone to administer them in 10 minutes.
  - touisteur 5y ago
    Stupid thing but I had to inject my wife for months and I hated the whole thing. Where, what angle, what pressure to apply and then when I was 'in' taking care not to move or cause more pain and blood. Shaking or slight tremor = pain. Depending on the size and action of the 'pump' I was always putting her through some new pain everyday. And then I nicked myself several times, even with the modern home-injection kits for noobz... Mronths of this, I don't feel better poking anyone. I should have got trained. So, yeah, if we find a way to do without nurses, or teach properly the thing to everyone, OK...
ahurmazda 5y ago
Anything cheap and decent performance would be most welcome. Aside, maybe its just the Fridays but hypospray[1] anyone? [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypospray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypospray
yyyk 5y ago
>“If DNA vaccines prove to be successful, this is really the future of vaccinology” because they are easy to manufacture, says Shahid Jameel, a virologist at Ashoka University in Sonipat, India. I doubt that. A vaccine ultimately needs to be administrated. Just wait for antivaxers to hear 'DNA' and go wild. The West will have plenty of mRNA stocks. Russia and China seem uninvested in the technology, according to the list in the article. It took the current crisis to win acceptance for mRNA vaccines and (hopefully) such a crisis will not repeat for many years. So with few to push it and a scary name, this tech is unlikely to win acceptance this time around.
- amirkdv 5y ago
  > Just wait for antivaxers to hear 'DNA' and go wild. Sure the already anti-vaccination crowd will have more reasons to be peeved and more talking points to scream about. But would it mean new people would turn against vaccines because they hear "DNA"? It seems to me like the big divide in the general population is over people who are open to their conceptions of nature be challenged and corrected (this whole pandemic has been a mini science course for a lot of people: exponential growth, conditional probability, mRNAs, to name a few) and those who just are not. Any other pre-existing opinion/ideology ("I just don't do vaccines") is probably unaffected by technical details.
  - vanderZwan 5y ago
    Because the DNA has to go into the nucleus maybe? That's even more easily misunderstood in an "oh no what if it messes with my genetic make-up" way than mRNA.
  - yyyk 5y ago
    As I mentioned the West already has existing vaccines and the worst stage is (I believe) ending. The new people will hear 'DNA' and instead of turning against vaccines, take the existing vaccines. Health authorities will be wary of mixing (so no use as boosters) and accusations of going too fast, will take their time with DNA vaccines. There was an opening for new tech to win acceptance and mRNA won the race, I doubt there's room for DNA vaccines this time. Maybe if the tech could be used for some other disease.
icegreentea2 5y ago
Anyone in the know got some ideas about the advantages of DNA vaccines vs mRNA? What I gathered so far is: a) Easier handling and stability (DNA is just inherently more stable than RNA) b) Potentially easier to manufacture if you make an un-encapsulated plasmid vaccine (though I have no idea how that effects effectiveness) c) Higher payoff per material?? I assume that you can get more protein created per ng of genetic material. Does anyone know if DNA vaccines generate protein over longer timescales than mRNA? I assume that once the plasmid is picked up in the nucleus it becomes pretty stable until the cell itself dies - mRNA should be cleaned up relatively more quickly?
- Fjolsvith 5y ago
  Easier to track subjects? Simple GMO testing.
athrowaway3z 5y ago
So your naming a vaccine a Levenshtein distance of 2 away from Zyclon-D. Obviously this is nonsense, but it doesn't take much imagination to know marketing needs to step up their game if they want to sell to the antivax crowds. Although I imagine the damage is done. In 5 years somebody is going to post a shitty jpeg with this brand name as proof for.... Things.
- the_third_wave 5y ago
  There never was anything called Zyclon-D so this is not a thing. There was Zyklon (later renamed Zyklon A) and Zyklon B, the latter was renamed Cyanosil somewhere in the '70s and might still be produced. The active ingredient for all was hydrogen cyanide which is still used for fumigation purposes. It was also used in the USA for execution purposes and might soon be used for that purpose again, at least in Arizona [1]. [1] https://apnews.com/article/arizona-executions-business-health-government-and-politics-c3f67a6ec65959fea817b4c3193bb15e https://apnews.com/article/arizona-executions-business-healt...
  - corty 5y ago
    You are right, but the point remains: If the name almost rhymes with Zyklon-B, you better find another one and fire the marketing dept...
sva_ 5y ago
Funny, I was just listening to Lex Fridman's recent Podcast talking to Vincent Racaniello about Viruses and Vaccines, and he said "There are no human-licensed vaccines that are DNA vaccines" right when I saw this thread. Seems like progress in this field is pretty quick nowadays. https://youtu.be/G433fa01oMU?t=6188 https://youtu.be/G433fa01oMU?t=6188
spyder 5y ago
Aren't DNA vaccines more risky than RNA? "... But with any health advancement comes potential risk. Gennaro says that with a DNA vaccine, there is always a risk it can cause a permanent change to the cell’s natural DNA sequence. “Usually, there are ways in which DNA vaccines are made that try to minimize this risk, but it’s a potential risk,” she says. “Instead, if you inject mRNA, it cannot get integrated into the genetic material of a cell. It is also ready to be translated into protein.” " From: https://www.verywellhealth.com/rna-vs-dna-vaccine-5082285 https://www.verywellhealth.com/rna-vs-dna-vaccine-5082285
- dilippkumar 5y ago
  With mRNA vaccines, how far does the vaccine travel in the bloodstream before the mRNA finds its way into a host cell? Is it possible, for example, that a vaccine shot delivered to the shoulder can circulate around till it reaches sperm and egg cells and gets into one of them? Does a DNA vaccine have properties that change how far it can travel? Or any known mechanisms that will prevent a possible DNA alteration happening in the sperm or egg cells where it might land?

82 points by dsr12 5y ago

> 67% protective against symptomatic COVID-19 in clinical trials I'm not a big fan of any of the current vaccines due to their low efficacy against variants, and especially because they trigger an initially weak immune response and are only effective against symptomatic covid-19. The initial weak immune response gives mutations more time to occur, in my rudimentary understanding. If this vaccine is only good at preventing symptomatic infection- does this mean it'll apply more selective pressure on even more variants? I know that a Marek's situation is highly unlikely with Covid, but won't weak vaccines increase the probability of this happening? As a young healthy person, I still think natural immunity is the best way to reach some semblance of herd immunity for groups not at high risk. This feels like prescribing incomplete courses of antibiotics.

jmnicolas 5y ago
> I know that a Marek's situation is highly unlikely with Covid Someone told me about Marek at work but I didn't find anything related to COVID vaccines, good or bad. Do you have some sources that speak about it?
- generalizations 5y ago
  It's general to all vaccines, not specific to just COVID. The search term you want is "leaky vaccine". Basically, when you have a treatment (a 'leaky vaccine') that prevents symptoms but not transmission, then the normal evolutionary constraint for a virus to become less-harmful (to maximize transmission) goes out the window - because anyone that's been vaccinated could just as easily carry a more-harmful version of the virus. It doesn't always happen, and it's hard to predict when it will, but Marek's disease is an example of a worst-case scenario actually happening: when a leaky vaccine scenario allows the virus to mutate and become highly lethal.
  - majormajor 5y ago
    > normal evolutionary constraint for a virus to become less-harmful (to maximize transmission) I don't know why we're taking it for granted that maximizing transmission is the same as being less harmful. The delta variant seems both more harmful AND more transmissible (and developed in an area that didn't have vaccines yet last fall). There seems to be a good case to be made that, say, ebola is too harmful to be super transmissible. I don't think we can say the same for Covid yet. The majority of cases have never been fatal, on the contrary, being transmissible is what's made it a public threat and mass scale killer already. "Transmitting it without symptoms" has been a thing since day 1.
    - generalizations 5y ago
      > The delta variant seems both more harmful AND more transmissible (and developed in an area that didn't have vaccines yet last fall). I left it out of the initial explanation for the sake of brevity, but there's several outcomes from a leaky vaccine. Two of them are: increased lethality, and adaptation to vaccines, requiring new vaccines to be developed. So yeah, the delta variant makes it look like we might be dealing with a leaky vaccine scenario.
    - corty 5y ago
      You have to look at the reasons why this behavior is occuring: Viruses get less harmful if it improves transmission. E.g. if you are more active and have a higher rate of contacts, even if infected and sick with a certain strain, that strain has an advantage. With Covid, most of the transmission occurs before symptoms appear, meaning that the severity of the following illness is irrelevant to transmission. In that case, the virus has no advantage from being less harmful. Also, simpler changes are preferred over more complex ones. Delta probably just has a mutation that allows it to reproduce faster after an infection, meaning that both infectiousness as well as severity of illness go up at the same time. Mutations that increase infectiousness but lower severity are usually more complex, so less likely to occur, especially if not selected for.
  - jmnicolas 5y ago
    Sorry I wasn't clear: I have read about Marek but what I didn't find is can it happen with COVID vaccines or not.
- raphlinus 5y ago
  Sure. Here's a recent article by one of the authors of the 2015 paper on Marek, claiming that it is being twisted to support an antivax narrative. It also goes into considerable detail explaining the virological and immunological background: https://theconversation.com/vaccines-could-affect-how-the-coronavirus-evolves-but-thats-no-reason-to-skip-your-shot-165960 https://theconversation.com/vaccines-could-affect-how-the-co...
  - jmnicolas 5y ago
    Thanks. edit: I don't know why you were downvoted your article is perfectly on point.
alecst 5y ago
Remind me of what natural immunity is supposed to be good for, if not for preventing disease.
elliottkember 5y ago
Are you an epidemiologist, or should we consider your credentials to be merely "young healthy person"?
- generalizations 5y ago
  How about an immunologist's take? https://news.yahoo.com/single-most-qualified-mrna-expert-173600060.html https://news.yahoo.com/single-most-qualified-mrna-expert-173...
  - BoorishBears 5y ago
    "Malone clarified that he was not discouraging the use of the vaccine but was providing people with as much fair information as he could about their risks." Doesn't exactly jive with: "As a young healthy person, I still think natural immunity is the best way to reach some semblance of herd immunity for groups not at high risk. This feels like prescribing incomplete courses of antibiotics."
    - generalizations 5y ago
      He's been dragged through the mud as a peddler of misinformation. He kinda has to include that disclaimer if he doesn't want to lose whatever's left of his career.
      - BoorishBears 5y ago
        Do you really think he supports this? "I still think natural immunity is the best way to reach some semblance of herd immunity for groups not at high risk" https://usafacts.org/visualizations/covid-vaccine-tracker-states/state/florida https://usafacts.org/visualizations/covid-vaccine-tracker-st... We're already seeing what happens with that approach here in the US. ICUs are being completely overwhelmed in areas where 'healthy young people' took it upon themselves to turn down the vaccine and test this person's theory on natural immunity. What a joke that people are actually acting like Tucker Carlson misusing an experts words, and that expert having the audacity to correct that misuse, is not exactly what it sounds like... an expert caring about nuance in conversations more than a talking head and a random "healthy young person" might It's especially a joke when it's so easy to look for yourself and see how bad of a hypothesis it is: https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2021/07/30/florida-leads-the-nation-in-covid-infections-hospitalizations/ https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2021/07/30/florida-lead...
afavour 5y ago
> especially because they trigger an initially weak immune response Do you have any citations on that? Because it doesn’t match with my (admittedly rudimentary) understanding of how the vaccine works.
majormajor 5y ago
> I'm not a big fan of any of the current vaccines due to their low efficacy against variants, and especially because they trigger an initially weak immune response and are only effective against symptomatic covid-19. The initial weak immune response gives mutations more time to occur, in my rudimentary understanding. If this vaccine is only good at preventing symptomatic infection- does this mean it'll apply more selective pressure on even more variants? I would assume the average hospitalized case has a longer course than the average non-hospitalized one - in which case, a vaccine that reduces risk of hospitalization seems to also reduce risk of mutations being spread on (since the time for mutations to develop and reproduce in a person is shorter).
slacka 5y ago
> As a young healthy person I personally worked with a "a young healthy person" with your attitude. He's dead now. This is not your average cold we're dealing with. Most vaccine boosters are spaced out 6+ months, but the emergency nature of the pandemic forced the trials to only space them out 3-4 weeks. All of the data is showing that a 6-8 month booster will offer a more robust protection. Further more, a delta or any specific tailored booster is trivial with mRNA tech.
- MarcoZavala 5y ago
  >I personally worked with "a young healthy person" with your attitude. He's dead now. How dramatic. I'm sure this actually happened.
- yonaguska 5y ago
  If most vaccine boosters are spaced out like this, then I think we should continue doing this. Additionally, we should be factoring in previous exposure to covid before administering vaccines. Especially considering the increased risk of adverse vaccine reactions if you have already been exposed to covid19. As stated in a previous comment, I indirectly know four healthy young, that died shortly after taking their second shots.
lostlogin 5y ago
> young healthy Auckland, New Zealand is currently trying to stamp out an outbreak of Delta. 60% of those hospitalised are under 30 years of age. I’m not sure that relying on being young is that helpful. https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/126218288/covid19-30-out-of-34-hospital-admissions-are-pacific-people https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/126218288/...
- oxymoran 5y ago
  I am vaccinated but to be fair, that article is not a great rebuttal: it’s only a total of 34 hospitalizations and it doesn’t indicate that those young people were healthy. For all we know they could be cancer patients.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - lostlogin 5y ago
    > that article is not a great rebuttal For sure. It’s the bunch people it hit when it got loose here. It was just the first thing that came to mind when the “I’m young and healthy” argument popped up. It’s quite early in the piece for good data, but ‘younger, sicker, quicker’ seems to be the takeaway.

anotheryou 5y ago

I really want more info on the injection: "a needle-free device pressed against the skin, which creates a fine, high-pressure stream of fluid that punctures the surface and is less painful than an injection" edit: in action: https://youtu.be/MGvSWtuu4z4?t=86 https://youtu.be/MGvSWtuu4z4?t=86

majormajor 5y ago
Sounds like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_injector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_injector > Jet injectors were used for mass vaccination, and as an alternative to needle syringes for diabetics to inject insulin. However, the World Health Organization no longer recommends jet injectors for vaccination due to risks of disease transmission.[1] Similar devices are used in other industries to inject grease or other fluid.
- anotheryou 5y ago
  Yes. Hard to believe it's less painful. My vaccine injections had such a thin needle I barley felt it and the doc was lightning fast. Felt like a hip shot by her :)
  - macintux 5y ago
    I think part of the pain is that the needles go into the muscles. Would be nice to avoid that.
- sdflhasjd 5y ago
  So _this_ is what the Hollywood "hi-tech injection" trope is based on. I always thought it was a purely fantastical creation for cinema for a satisfying "psht" sound to let you know it worked.
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    According to Wikipedia, "hyposprays" were done to avoid broadcaster regulations against showing needle injections on-screen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypospray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypospray).

avnigo 5y ago

> ZyCoV-D, which is administered into the skin without an injection This is wrong. It is administered with an injection, just not a needle.

omegalulw 5y ago
Why do people always highlight needles so much? The biggest concern with needles would be proper sterilization and no-reuse, but other than that, what are some other concerns that would motivate us to do away with needles? We are bags of fluid and veins, so needles seem like the best solution to poke and inject?
- icegreentea2 5y ago
  Needle injection is a skilled act. Jet injectors requires significantly less skill and training. This is useful for some models of mass vaccinations. Edit: Also just speculating, for this specific vaccine is looks like jet injection is actually preferred. The requirement to place the injection under the skin versus into the muscle seems like it has a tighter tolerances that would be more difficult to achieve with needle injection.
  - magila 5y ago
    > Needle injection is a skilled act. Eh, sort of. Subcutaneous (under the skin) injections are pretty hard to screw up. You can train someone to administer them in 10 minutes.
- touisteur 5y ago
  Stupid thing but I had to inject my wife for months and I hated the whole thing. Where, what angle, what pressure to apply and then when I was 'in' taking care not to move or cause more pain and blood. Shaking or slight tremor = pain. Depending on the size and action of the 'pump' I was always putting her through some new pain everyday. And then I nicked myself several times, even with the modern home-injection kits for noobz... Mronths of this, I don't feel better poking anyone. I should have got trained. So, yeah, if we find a way to do without nurses, or teach properly the thing to everyone, OK...

ahurmazda 5y ago

Anything cheap and decent performance would be most welcome. Aside, maybe its just the Fridays but hypospray[1] anyone? [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypospray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypospray

yyyk 5y ago

>“If DNA vaccines prove to be successful, this is really the future of vaccinology” because they are easy to manufacture, says Shahid Jameel, a virologist at Ashoka University in Sonipat, India. I doubt that. A vaccine ultimately needs to be administrated. Just wait for antivaxers to hear 'DNA' and go wild. The West will have plenty of mRNA stocks. Russia and China seem uninvested in the technology, according to the list in the article. It took the current crisis to win acceptance for mRNA vaccines and (hopefully) such a crisis will not repeat for many years. So with few to push it and a scary name, this tech is unlikely to win acceptance this time around.

amirkdv 5y ago
> Just wait for antivaxers to hear 'DNA' and go wild. Sure the already anti-vaccination crowd will have more reasons to be peeved and more talking points to scream about. But would it mean new people would turn against vaccines because they hear "DNA"? It seems to me like the big divide in the general population is over people who are open to their conceptions of nature be challenged and corrected (this whole pandemic has been a mini science course for a lot of people: exponential growth, conditional probability, mRNAs, to name a few) and those who just are not. Any other pre-existing opinion/ideology ("I just don't do vaccines") is probably unaffected by technical details.
- vanderZwan 5y ago
  Because the DNA has to go into the nucleus maybe? That's even more easily misunderstood in an "oh no what if it messes with my genetic make-up" way than mRNA.
- yyyk 5y ago
  As I mentioned the West already has existing vaccines and the worst stage is (I believe) ending. The new people will hear 'DNA' and instead of turning against vaccines, take the existing vaccines. Health authorities will be wary of mixing (so no use as boosters) and accusations of going too fast, will take their time with DNA vaccines. There was an opening for new tech to win acceptance and mRNA won the race, I doubt there's room for DNA vaccines this time. Maybe if the tech could be used for some other disease.

icegreentea2 5y ago

Anyone in the know got some ideas about the advantages of DNA vaccines vs mRNA? What I gathered so far is: a) Easier handling and stability (DNA is just inherently more stable than RNA) b) Potentially easier to manufacture if you make an un-encapsulated plasmid vaccine (though I have no idea how that effects effectiveness) c) Higher payoff per material?? I assume that you can get more protein created per ng of genetic material. Does anyone know if DNA vaccines generate protein over longer timescales than mRNA? I assume that once the plasmid is picked up in the nucleus it becomes pretty stable until the cell itself dies - mRNA should be cleaned up relatively more quickly?

Fjolsvith 5y ago
Easier to track subjects? Simple GMO testing.

athrowaway3z 5y ago

So your naming a vaccine a Levenshtein distance of 2 away from Zyclon-D. Obviously this is nonsense, but it doesn't take much imagination to know marketing needs to step up their game if they want to sell to the antivax crowds. Although I imagine the damage is done. In 5 years somebody is going to post a shitty jpeg with this brand name as proof for.... Things.

the_third_wave 5y ago
There never was anything called Zyclon-D so this is not a thing. There was Zyklon (later renamed Zyklon A) and Zyklon B, the latter was renamed Cyanosil somewhere in the '70s and might still be produced. The active ingredient for all was hydrogen cyanide which is still used for fumigation purposes. It was also used in the USA for execution purposes and might soon be used for that purpose again, at least in Arizona [1]. [1] https://apnews.com/article/arizona-executions-business-health-government-and-politics-c3f67a6ec65959fea817b4c3193bb15e https://apnews.com/article/arizona-executions-business-healt...
- corty 5y ago
  You are right, but the point remains: If the name almost rhymes with Zyklon-B, you better find another one and fire the marketing dept...

sva_ 5y ago

Funny, I was just listening to Lex Fridman's recent Podcast talking to Vincent Racaniello about Viruses and Vaccines, and he said "There are no human-licensed vaccines that are DNA vaccines" right when I saw this thread. Seems like progress in this field is pretty quick nowadays. https://youtu.be/G433fa01oMU?t=6188 https://youtu.be/G433fa01oMU?t=6188

spyder 5y ago

Aren't DNA vaccines more risky than RNA? "... But with any health advancement comes potential risk. Gennaro says that with a DNA vaccine, there is always a risk it can cause a permanent change to the cell’s natural DNA sequence. “Usually, there are ways in which DNA vaccines are made that try to minimize this risk, but it’s a potential risk,” she says. “Instead, if you inject mRNA, it cannot get integrated into the genetic material of a cell. It is also ready to be translated into protein.” " From: https://www.verywellhealth.com/rna-vs-dna-vaccine-5082285 https://www.verywellhealth.com/rna-vs-dna-vaccine-5082285

dilippkumar 5y ago
With mRNA vaccines, how far does the vaccine travel in the bloodstream before the mRNA finds its way into a host cell? Is it possible, for example, that a vaccine shot delivered to the shoulder can circulate around till it reaches sperm and egg cells and gets into one of them? Does a DNA vaccine have properties that change how far it can travel? Or any known mechanisms that will prevent a possible DNA alteration happening in the sperm or egg cells where it might land?