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Assuming (for the sake of argument) that covid vaccines were more harmful than typical vaccines, I have a few questions [based entirely on my ignorance]: 1. We

Assuming (for the sake of argument) that covid vaccines were more harmful than typical vaccines, I have a few questions [based entirely on my ignorance]: 1. Were the doses too high? or ... 2. It is something about what was being vaccinating against, or ... 3. the mRNA technology mRNA vaccine technology seems to be really exciting; what might be done to make them safer? or is there really not special risk to that technology at all?

m348e912 4y ago
Here's an interesting theory to consider. The covid-19 vaccines are intended to administered intramuscularly. The resulting immune reaction is intended to be localized to that area and generally the expected result is some localized discomfort (and the creation of antibodies) -- so far so good, right? Medical professionals are recommended to perform a technique called intramuscular aspiration. It helps ensure the vaccine is delivered to a localized area. The technique involves injecting the needle, sucking back on the syringe slightly and looking for blood. If there is no blood, push the contents of the syringe into the muscle and complete the vaccine administration. If during aspiration there IS blood, it means the needle may have hit a vein or artery in or near the muscle. At that point, administration should be stopped and the medical professional should re-administer the vaccine in a different location. Here is the theory: Intramuscular aspiration has not been consistently practiced. A certain percentage of covid-19 vaccinations have not been administered locally, but into the circulatory system via a vein or artery. This is not how the vaccine was designed to be administered, and it's not fully clear on what (if any) negative affects may result.
- jonnycomputer 4y ago
  Interesting. Given how many people were giving out shots, wouldn't surprise me at all if best practices were not adhered to.
  - LorenPechtel 4y ago
    And my first two were definitely by people that weren't exactly routine injectors and I think one of my wife's shots was placed too high.
origin_path 4y ago
I did a lot of research on this last year. Here are the best answers I could find out to your questions: 1. This is possible. No real information is public on how dose ranging was done. The closest I could get is the suggestion that doses were calculated based on animal experiments by simply starting high and reducing it until the animals didn't seem to get sick or die anymore. So, doses appear to be the highest tolerable in whatever sample size they used to do this. If there's deeper theory behind the doses it's unclear what it can be because Moderna dosage is 3x stronger than Pfizer for no obvious reason (they are advertised as granting equivalent protection). 2. Yes, vaccinating against CoVs is ~useless and can backfire. There was evidence in the research literature about this before COVID. There are two related problems: 2a. Useless: respiratory viruses like CoVs and influenza can mutate very fast. Nobody ever made a vaccine against the common cold because the viruses mutate beyond it immediately, rendering the vaccine useless. Flu vaccines routinely have efficacy of <20% or even zero because they get made for a variant that doesn't then emerge. It was not a huge leap to realize that the fast mutation problem was also going to apply here, and indeed just months after vaccination started Omicron appeared and replaced Delta completely. 2b. Can backfire: There can be a problem called OAS or antigenic fixation. The immune system appears to lack fine grained resolution. After the immune system memorizes a virus it's possible for it to get confused and think it's detected that virus when in reality it's seeing a slight mutation. When this happens it produces antibodies to the older antigens, and if the virus mutated in such a way that they're now less effective this can lead to the virus not being stopped properly. In other words it can make things worse. Not all viruses are as unstable as CoVs so this problem doesn't occur with e.g. smallpox, but SARS-CoV-2 is very unstable. There's some evidence that COVID vaccines can cause this effect unfortunately, whereby the immune system produces antibodies to the long extinct Wuhan 2019 strain instead of the one the body was actually exposed to. 3. mRNA tech is very neat in theory but there are two major possible issues: 3a. It never launched before COVID because it was plagued with extremely severe toxicity problems that caused any drug using it to fail trials / safety approvals. The problem seemed to be the lipid nanoparticle wrapper which became toxic on repeat doses. Most drugs require repeat doses so that's a problem. Moderna was a failing biotech firm before COVID because of this. They couldn't find a solution so pivoted to vaccines. Why? Because - pre COVID - vaccines were assumed to be something you take once and then you're done for many years or for life, so it was a way to dodge the repeat-dose-toxicity problem rather than solve it. Well, then COVID mass hysteria infected the globe and people are being forced to take 2, 3, 4 doses. So we're well into repeat doses territory. How many doses did Moderna's tech become toxic after, exactly? That's not public AFAIK. https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/10/moderna-trouble-mrna/ https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/10/moderna-trouble-mrna/ 3b. We were assured that the mRNA disappears from the body within a few days. That turned out to be false and mRNA spike can be found collecting in different parts of the body weeks or even months after injection. Because research that could undermine vaccines is so rare and hard to get published, and because mRNA vaccines are so new, why this happens is unclear. However some doctors have speculated that it's to do with the pseudo-uridine substitutions they do. (mRNA vaccines disable the immune system's normal defenses against foreign mRNA using some chemical tricks). On the other hand, mRNA itself is probably not the cause of the heart/clotting problems. AstraZeneca's vaccine doesn't use mRNA and has the same issues. The problem is more likely that the spike protein is toxic and can cause these problems if it gets into the bloodstream. Doesn't matter how you make it.
boastful_inaba 4y ago
It's different depending on which vaccine technology was used. Some vaccines used a lipid shell to get around the problems of raw MRNA being really fragile. However, it seems they made the protection too good, and MRNA that was supposed to just stay in the arm easily travelled further and got into the bloodstream. That means that MRNA was getting into cells all around the body and causing spike protein production everywhere, instead of just in the arm like designed. This means that you got inflammation problems everywhere in the body, including in the heart (myocarditis/pericarditis), vascular systems ("brain fog", general unwellness), and reproductive systems (especially for women). Inflammation in the injection site for a vaccine is pretty normal, inflammation elsewhere is terrible. Initial optimistic assumptions of the MRNA being permanently consumed by the body relatively quickly also don't seem to be true - even the CDC recently edited a page on MRNA vaxxes to remove a statement that the MRNA is used up quickly. The very worst case scenario could be people who got vaxxed just have cells pumping out inflammatory spike protein at a low rate for years. Other vaccines used a real virus vector that is modified version to express spike protein. This of course has the issue of a virus being not entirely controllable once it's in the body. Again, you'll have the problem of the virus (and thus the spike protein it expresses) ending up in strange places. However, the immune profile is slightly different, as the immune system will start to attack the vaccine vector as it progresses in the body. Several vaccines were associated with strange, systemic blood clotting in some people - but I'm not sure if they ever found the mechanism of action. Novavax uses a traditional protein+adjuvant mix seen in many previous vaxxes. There's no widespread report of nasty side effects with Novavax - but there's not that much usage of Novavax in the wild either. Aside from that, there's also the issue that in targeting a variant of the rapidly-mutating spike protein, you set people up to be victim to the long-known "original antigenic sin" effect. Immune system works off a principle of first impression - it targets a response to whatever it sees first. This also applies to infections that are somewhat close but not the same as what is 'memorised' by the immune system already. So an infection by a COVID variant when the person has been exposed to a vaccine for the originals will produce an immune response for the modified original protein, not the real infection that is currently happening. (The vaccines target a modified original spike protein, and not the S-shape protein as well, so the distance is even greater.) Since the spike protein keeps shifting so fast in the wild, hitting the OAS effect is really likely over time. Some people think the S-protein in the middle of COVID should have been targeted by the vaccines, not the spikes, as it's more stable. It's hard to know if that would have been more effective.

m348e912 4y ago

Here's an interesting theory to consider. The covid-19 vaccines are intended to administered intramuscularly. The resulting immune reaction is intended to be localized to that area and generally the expected result is some localized discomfort (and the creation of antibodies) -- so far so good, right? Medical professionals are recommended to perform a technique called intramuscular aspiration. It helps ensure the vaccine is delivered to a localized area. The technique involves injecting the needle, sucking back on the syringe slightly and looking for blood. If there is no blood, push the contents of the syringe into the muscle and complete the vaccine administration. If during aspiration there IS blood, it means the needle may have hit a vein or artery in or near the muscle. At that point, administration should be stopped and the medical professional should re-administer the vaccine in a different location. Here is the theory: Intramuscular aspiration has not been consistently practiced. A certain percentage of covid-19 vaccinations have not been administered locally, but into the circulatory system via a vein or artery. This is not how the vaccine was designed to be administered, and it's not fully clear on what (if any) negative affects may result.

jonnycomputer 4y ago
Interesting. Given how many people were giving out shots, wouldn't surprise me at all if best practices were not adhered to.
- LorenPechtel 4y ago
  And my first two were definitely by people that weren't exactly routine injectors and I think one of my wife's shots was placed too high.

origin_path 4y ago

I did a lot of research on this last year. Here are the best answers I could find out to your questions: 1. This is possible. No real information is public on how dose ranging was done. The closest I could get is the suggestion that doses were calculated based on animal experiments by simply starting high and reducing it until the animals didn't seem to get sick or die anymore. So, doses appear to be the highest tolerable in whatever sample size they used to do this. If there's deeper theory behind the doses it's unclear what it can be because Moderna dosage is 3x stronger than Pfizer for no obvious reason (they are advertised as granting equivalent protection). 2. Yes, vaccinating against CoVs is ~useless and can backfire. There was evidence in the research literature about this before COVID. There are two related problems: 2a. Useless: respiratory viruses like CoVs and influenza can mutate very fast. Nobody ever made a vaccine against the common cold because the viruses mutate beyond it immediately, rendering the vaccine useless. Flu vaccines routinely have efficacy of <20% or even zero because they get made for a variant that doesn't then emerge. It was not a huge leap to realize that the fast mutation problem was also going to apply here, and indeed just months after vaccination started Omicron appeared and replaced Delta completely. 2b. Can backfire: There can be a problem called OAS or antigenic fixation. The immune system appears to lack fine grained resolution. After the immune system memorizes a virus it's possible for it to get confused and think it's detected that virus when in reality it's seeing a slight mutation. When this happens it produces antibodies to the older antigens, and if the virus mutated in such a way that they're now less effective this can lead to the virus not being stopped properly. In other words it can make things worse. Not all viruses are as unstable as CoVs so this problem doesn't occur with e.g. smallpox, but SARS-CoV-2 is very unstable. There's some evidence that COVID vaccines can cause this effect unfortunately, whereby the immune system produces antibodies to the long extinct Wuhan 2019 strain instead of the one the body was actually exposed to. 3. mRNA tech is very neat in theory but there are two major possible issues: 3a. It never launched before COVID because it was plagued with extremely severe toxicity problems that caused any drug using it to fail trials / safety approvals. The problem seemed to be the lipid nanoparticle wrapper which became toxic on repeat doses. Most drugs require repeat doses so that's a problem. Moderna was a failing biotech firm before COVID because of this. They couldn't find a solution so pivoted to vaccines. Why? Because - pre COVID - vaccines were assumed to be something you take once and then you're done for many years or for life, so it was a way to dodge the repeat-dose-toxicity problem rather than solve it. Well, then COVID mass hysteria infected the globe and people are being forced to take 2, 3, 4 doses. So we're well into repeat doses territory. How many doses did Moderna's tech become toxic after, exactly? That's not public AFAIK. https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/10/moderna-trouble-mrna/ https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/10/moderna-trouble-mrna/ 3b. We were assured that the mRNA disappears from the body within a few days. That turned out to be false and mRNA spike can be found collecting in different parts of the body weeks or even months after injection. Because research that could undermine vaccines is so rare and hard to get published, and because mRNA vaccines are so new, why this happens is unclear. However some doctors have speculated that it's to do with the pseudo-uridine substitutions they do. (mRNA vaccines disable the immune system's normal defenses against foreign mRNA using some chemical tricks). On the other hand, mRNA itself is probably not the cause of the heart/clotting problems. AstraZeneca's vaccine doesn't use mRNA and has the same issues. The problem is more likely that the spike protein is toxic and can cause these problems if it gets into the bloodstream. Doesn't matter how you make it.

boastful_inaba 4y ago

It's different depending on which vaccine technology was used. Some vaccines used a lipid shell to get around the problems of raw MRNA being really fragile. However, it seems they made the protection too good, and MRNA that was supposed to just stay in the arm easily travelled further and got into the bloodstream. That means that MRNA was getting into cells all around the body and causing spike protein production everywhere, instead of just in the arm like designed. This means that you got inflammation problems everywhere in the body, including in the heart (myocarditis/pericarditis), vascular systems ("brain fog", general unwellness), and reproductive systems (especially for women). Inflammation in the injection site for a vaccine is pretty normal, inflammation elsewhere is terrible. Initial optimistic assumptions of the MRNA being permanently consumed by the body relatively quickly also don't seem to be true - even the CDC recently edited a page on MRNA vaxxes to remove a statement that the MRNA is used up quickly. The very worst case scenario could be people who got vaxxed just have cells pumping out inflammatory spike protein at a low rate for years. Other vaccines used a real virus vector that is modified version to express spike protein. This of course has the issue of a virus being not entirely controllable once it's in the body. Again, you'll have the problem of the virus (and thus the spike protein it expresses) ending up in strange places. However, the immune profile is slightly different, as the immune system will start to attack the vaccine vector as it progresses in the body. Several vaccines were associated with strange, systemic blood clotting in some people - but I'm not sure if they ever found the mechanism of action. Novavax uses a traditional protein+adjuvant mix seen in many previous vaxxes. There's no widespread report of nasty side effects with Novavax - but there's not that much usage of Novavax in the wild either. Aside from that, there's also the issue that in targeting a variant of the rapidly-mutating spike protein, you set people up to be victim to the long-known "original antigenic sin" effect. Immune system works off a principle of first impression - it targets a response to whatever it sees first. This also applies to infections that are somewhat close but not the same as what is 'memorised' by the immune system already. So an infection by a COVID variant when the person has been exposed to a vaccine for the originals will produce an immune response for the modified original protein, not the real infection that is currently happening. (The vaccines target a modified original spike protein, and not the S-shape protein as well, so the distance is even greater.) Since the spike protein keeps shifting so fast in the wild, hitting the OAS effect is really likely over time. Some people think the S-protein in the middle of COVID should have been targeted by the vaccines, not the spikes, as it's more stable. It's hard to know if that would have been more effective.