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The ideological revulsion about mRNA vaccines in particular is an interesting phenomenon. The vaccines were developed during the first Trump administration. Tr

• boroboro4 1y ago
  Which is so unfortunate given the potential mRNA vaccines and therapies have. They would have made fighting flu so much easier (for the context current flu vaccines take a lot of time to be made each season and hence not very agile towards dominant strain and sometimes miss it a lot, mRNA potentially improves this).
  • potato3732842 1y ago
    >Which is so unfortunate given the potential mRNA vaccines and therapies have. There's what should be a glaringly obvious lesson about ends and means here but nobody will learn it.
  • amluto 1y ago
    I would have liked to see some actual studies of whether multiple doses, over the course of years, of mRNA vaccines are a good idea. Take a look at: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciimmunol.adg7327 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciimmunol.adg7327 and related papers. Is the propensity to generate IgG4 antibodies specific to mRNA vaccines? Is it a problem? It seems entirely plausible that an mRNA flu vaccine would look amazing for one season and less amazing years later. Or not. The COVID vaccine trials were very focused on the efficacy of a 1-3 dose series, in people with no previous immunity, at preventing disease or reducing its severity over a period of weeks to months after the vaccine series. This is not at all the situation with influenza or the situation now with COVID. Compare to vaccines like MMR or Varicella, which were, and still are, studied over a period of many years.
    • boroboro4 1y ago
      This is fascinating study, thanks for sharing! It definitely brings questions about repeated mRNA vaccinations (and mRNA therapies I guess then too?). Good thing repeated boosters for COVID shouldn't affect other diseases if I understood the study correctly (since target protein is different). Can be an issue for flu vaccines for sure (or it's not since protein used slightly different year to year?).
    • matthewdgreen 1y ago
      But answering this question is exactly why public funding is so important. If you're concerned about mRNA having long-term downsides, then continued government funding is exactly the right mechanism to force manufacturers to conduct the long-term studies you'd need to figure it out. It does not seem like it's necessarily in the manufacturer's interest to do these studies, if they're using their own funds and trying to turn a profit.
    • Izkata 1y ago
      > Is the propensity to generate IgG4 antibodies specific to mRNA vaccines? Is it a problem? It seems entirely plausible that an mRNA flu vaccine would look amazing for one season and less amazing years later. Or not. Flu vaccine effectiveness has been trending slowly downwards for about a decade. I don't recall any established reasons for it, though.
  • csense 1y ago
    The problem I've had with MRNA vaccines is that we decided a lengthy multi-year trial protocol was necessary to ensure vaccines are safe and effective. Then COVID hit, and suddenly we decided to rush MRNA [1] vaccines into mass production without those protocols. Moreover, at one point they wanted to force [2] them on the population. The thing that bothered me most is the government passed a law to prevent people from suing for damages if they're hurt by COVID vaccines [3]. If the vaccine really is safe and effective, why was the waiver necessary? [1] If the made the COVID vaccine the same way they've been making them since polio, I'd be less uneasy -- if you made 25 vaccines with the process and they all worked okay, saying "it should be fine" for the 26th one is backed by some evidence. But given MRNA vaccines were brand-new with the COVID ones, until then they'd made 0 vaccines with the process; saying "it should be fine" for the 1st one seems to be rather irresponsible. [2] In my opinion, "you're being forced to do X" is a fair description of the situation if you have to show proof you did X if you want to get a job, get an education, or get on an airplane. Around the time of the first vaccines getting rolled out, these policies were being discussed very seriously. [3] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/16/covid-vaccine-side-effects-compensation-lawsuit.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/16/covid-vaccine-side-effects-c...
    • add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
      The right's "rushed into production" talking point is especially amusing given their other messaging about cutting through government red tape. It's all just vibes.
      • boroboro4 1y ago
        We had a disease killing 10000s (if not 100000s) people in the country and you think government shouldn't adjust their regulatory framework to it? I would be very unhappy if they did not, government suppose to be conservative, but not that conservative. Calling this "just vibes" is very hypocritical in my opinion.
        • add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
          Right, my point is that we did appropriately cut through red tape when it became important to do so. Which (1) weakens arguments that complain about red tape and (2) exposes hypocrisy about claiming to oppose government red tape but then taking a bad faith stance about the vaccine being "rushed".
• tempera 1y ago
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  • yetihehe 1y ago
    Number of cancer patients and cancer related costs were increasing since forever.
  • edflsafoiewq 1y ago
    Post hoc ergo propter hoc.
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  • colanderman 1y ago
    There's also been an increase in wildfires since Pluto lost its status as a planet. Public info!
  • jjkaczor 1y ago
    And so has the amount of plastic in our biosystems and brains. And increased PFAS chemicals in various ecosystems. Soon with increased air overall environmental pollution in the US due to regulations being removed from various industries. But... no relation to cancer at all, right?
• exceptione 1y ago
  > But Trump's Base decided for Trump about this issue. Trump leads from behind on this one. 1. The base doesn't decide out of thin air, the USA audience have been primed for decades with `government = bad` (anything `social = bad` really). We have evidence of orchestrated anti covid campaigns on Twitter, but the soil was well prepared for it. 2. Trump always leads from behind. He is allowed some personal space and he uses that for personal profiteering. He flip flops on all important issues, policy does not interest him and it is way too difficult for him anyways. He gives public performances when he thinks it buys him respect. 3. If the public stops focusing on Trump's drama, they could regain bandwidth to make a proper analysis. But they need the help of an oligarch owned press, staffed by people who, like the general public, have to unshackle some self-harming beliefs.
  • ethbr1 1y ago
    Vaccine skepticism (and the broader medical skepticism) is a weird one though. Because it's patently counterproductive -- modern medical science saves lives. So what you really have is a bunch of people getting riled up about something because they don't currently need it, then making dumb choices at critical moments, then denying their actions caused consequences if they have bad luck. A partner was a critical care nurse during COVID, and said she had people dying in beds who still denied COVID existed. Mind-boggling.
    • exceptione 1y ago
      It is weird, but what we do know is that is surprisingly easy to compel people into self-harm. > Patently counterproductive Yes, but that is the gist. What you have got is the problem of the few who fear the numerous. Where you have power and wealth concentration, there will be a push to autocracy. Zero sum. Might makes right. It is an international phenomenon, where (political) organizations and people copy and sync each others playbooks. Look at the Brexit, look at Orban, look at the tariffs, look at expelling talent and science, look at the killing of the free enterprise. Fundamentally, parasites don't care about the host. If the host dies, they jump on the next one. That is why the Kremlin focuses on Ukraine and the rest, while the USA starts to talk about Greenland and Canada. For normal people it is too crazy to believe, so we don't believe it.
• stefantalpalaru 1y ago
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• kelipso 1y ago
  The medical community, the government, and the media in general hid, downplayed, and censored discussions about the negative side effects of mRNA vaccines. Thus creating an aura of suspicion around the mRNA vaccine and loss of trust in the medical community. Once they publish tons of trustworthy research on the side effects of mRNA vaccines, then people will have confidence in them. > trustworthy Yes. It will probably take years to decades for the medical community to regain the trust and confidence of the public. But keep doing good work and it will happen probably.
  • const_cast 1y ago
    The problem with mRNA vaccines is that we did not downplay and censor charlatans enough. We allowed anti-vax rhetoric to spread like wildfire on Twitter, Facebook, and the like. Our scientists and doctors actually humored these people, and that was a huge mistake. As soon as you tell an anti-vaxxer something like "there are risks, but..." all they hear is "aha!! I knew it was poison!". Nobody on planet Earth said that the vaccine was 100% safe, nor that it was 100% effective. Because no vaccine, and no medicine, is. But we allowed people to revel in their own fear and anti-establishment mentality, and because of that, a lot of people died that did not need to.
• pengaru 1y ago
  > The vaccines were developed during the first Trump administration. Trump himself wanted credit for developing them. No. They were produced at scale during his administration to combat the pandemic, but were developed well before that, with support from a government actually funding vaccine R&D: > Moderna was also awarded a $25,000,000 grant by DARPA through a program > Autonomous Diagnostics to Enable Prevention and Therapeutics: Prophylactic > Options to Environmental and Contagious Threats (ADEPT-PROTECT). Its stated goal > was to develop an mRNA vaccine with the capability to suppress a global pandemic > within 60 days. (2013)
  • ethbr1 1y ago
    The history of DARPA funding mRNA vaccine platforms should be more widely known, because it's exactly what the government should be doing. DARPA identified novel pathogens with pandemic potential as a key threat to the US (and everyone else), identified mRNA vaccine platforms as something that would allow more rapid responses to novel pathogens, and invested in it. And then when exactly that happened -- there were mRNA vaccine platforms ready.
    • pengaru 1y ago
      When the crackpots learn DARPA funded Moderna's development of mRNA vaccines ahead of COVID19, all they hear is the government caused the pandemic.
• matthewdgreen 1y ago
  My understanding is the mRNA vaccines are (1) the best hope for developing a fast vaccine in the face of a new, really-dangerous virus, and (2) incidentally a great hope against cancer. I'm sure this doesn't mean the end of funding for those other things, but I imagine it means less funding.
• g42gregory 1y ago
  Why do we need to engage in ideological discussions and feelings about the mRNA vaccines? Can somebody just post a link to the double-blind, placebo-based safety study of mRNA vaccine (e.g. COVID-19), to put this to rest once and for all?