4 ms·

This almost throwaway line from the article struck me as an example of what we can do with technology, if we choose to put our billions of dollars towards it: "

This almost throwaway line from the article struck me as an example of what we can do with technology, if we choose to put our billions of dollars towards it: "I downloaded the BC30 genome".

creaktive 2mo ago
What’s even more shocking to me: one can “3D-print” downloaded genome, too! What a time to be alive.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
roughly 2mo ago
It's a shame it became such a weird political football, because the story of the mRNA COVID vaccine is absolutely in the "we are as gods" pantheon - the virus was sequenced, and 3 days later two separate labs had sequences for the vaccine. Phase 1 trials began within 3 months. To go from "weird novel pathogen" to "enough engineered vaccine candidate to start Phase 1 trials" is some legitimate sci-fi shit.
- Schiendelman 2mo ago
  Thankfully the political football is simmering down - I think we have mRNA flu vaccines in progress now, and attempts to stop that failed.
  - neonstatic 2mo ago
    I was a conscious adult when all that was going down, so I can remind you, that on top of standard lunacy, there were legitimate concerns about safety of injecting something novel and untested to large parts of the population, genuine collusion to get as many people as possible injected, harassment that went both ways, and last but not least, there were many people who took one of the many vaccines and had life crushing, incurable side effects, not even mentioning the ones who died. So the "political football" characterization is itself very political.
    - Eisenstein 2mo ago
      > So the "political football" characterization is itself very political. According to your description it sounds completely accurate.
    - Schiendelman 2mo ago
      I've heard a lot of arguments that sounded, at first glance, like legitimate concerns. But I haven't seen any that weren't rooted in "People are telling me to be scared so my concern must be legitimate," or "I don't know how this works and it sounds new so I'm worried." I think people with followings online got a ton of economic benefit from scaring people, the same as the rest of the news industry. Remember Upton Sinclair: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." The ONE thing I know of that survived study was the higher incidence of myocarditis in young men with Moderna, and provider guidance lists it as a potential side effect. However, the Novavax vaccine had the same myocarditis outcome without being mRNA, and the Pfizer mRNA didn't have that outcome. It's very unlikely clinical trials would have exposed that issue, so even in hindsight, none of the concerns seem to have been legitimate.
      - neonstatic 2mo ago
        > I think people with followings online got a ton of economic benefit from scaring people Yes, it was very upsetting at the time and unfortunately remains a constant. I guess one has to go through that at least once to recognize a grifter. > so even in hindsight, none of the concerns seem to have been legitimate. The point was not only that the vaccines were rushed, it was also that there was a tremendous amount of coercion to force people into taking them. There are a few countries that didn't do that (Sweden comes to mind) and they ended up not having a much worse outcome than anyone else. I think it was a very telling moment in modern history, because it exposed a lot of myths, e.g. the American myth of gun ownership to stand up to a tyrannical government was totally shredded. The government turned tyrannical re: vaccines and mandates, did the guns help?
        lesuorac 2mo ago
- onraglanroad 2mo ago
  What felt Sci-Fi to me was when I saw this Stack Exchange question about what the A's at the end of the COVID virus sequence meant: https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/90607/does-the-genetic-sequence-of-sars-cov-2-end-with-33-as https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/90607/does-the-g... Edit: I found the wrong one; I think the one I remember was https://bioinformatics.stackexchange.com/questions/11227/why-does-the-sars-cov2-coronavirus-genome-end-in-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa https://bioinformatics.stackexchange.com/questions/11227/why...
Terr_ 2mo ago
You might enjoy: "Reverse Engineering the source code of the BioNTech/Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine" (2020) Being much smaller than a whole organism genome, the base-pairs are literally published in a WHO Word-document. :p https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source-code-of-the-biontech-pfizer-vaccine/ https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source...

This almost throwaway line from the article struck me as an example of what we can do with technology, if we choose to put our billions of dollars towards it: "I downloaded the BC30 genome".

creaktive 2mo ago

What’s even more shocking to me: one can “3D-print” downloaded genome, too! What a time to be alive.

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

roughly 2mo ago

It's a shame it became such a weird political football, because the story of the mRNA COVID vaccine is absolutely in the "we are as gods" pantheon - the virus was sequenced, and 3 days later two separate labs had sequences for the vaccine. Phase 1 trials began within 3 months. To go from "weird novel pathogen" to "enough engineered vaccine candidate to start Phase 1 trials" is some legitimate sci-fi shit.

Schiendelman 2mo ago
Thankfully the political football is simmering down - I think we have mRNA flu vaccines in progress now, and attempts to stop that failed.
- neonstatic 2mo ago
  I was a conscious adult when all that was going down, so I can remind you, that on top of standard lunacy, there were legitimate concerns about safety of injecting something novel and untested to large parts of the population, genuine collusion to get as many people as possible injected, harassment that went both ways, and last but not least, there were many people who took one of the many vaccines and had life crushing, incurable side effects, not even mentioning the ones who died. So the "political football" characterization is itself very political.
  - Eisenstein 2mo ago
    > So the "political football" characterization is itself very political. According to your description it sounds completely accurate.
  - Schiendelman 2mo ago
    I've heard a lot of arguments that sounded, at first glance, like legitimate concerns. But I haven't seen any that weren't rooted in "People are telling me to be scared so my concern must be legitimate," or "I don't know how this works and it sounds new so I'm worried." I think people with followings online got a ton of economic benefit from scaring people, the same as the rest of the news industry. Remember Upton Sinclair: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." The ONE thing I know of that survived study was the higher incidence of myocarditis in young men with Moderna, and provider guidance lists it as a potential side effect. However, the Novavax vaccine had the same myocarditis outcome without being mRNA, and the Pfizer mRNA didn't have that outcome. It's very unlikely clinical trials would have exposed that issue, so even in hindsight, none of the concerns seem to have been legitimate.
    - neonstatic 2mo ago
      > I think people with followings online got a ton of economic benefit from scaring people Yes, it was very upsetting at the time and unfortunately remains a constant. I guess one has to go through that at least once to recognize a grifter. > so even in hindsight, none of the concerns seem to have been legitimate. The point was not only that the vaccines were rushed, it was also that there was a tremendous amount of coercion to force people into taking them. There are a few countries that didn't do that (Sweden comes to mind) and they ended up not having a much worse outcome than anyone else. I think it was a very telling moment in modern history, because it exposed a lot of myths, e.g. the American myth of gun ownership to stand up to a tyrannical government was totally shredded. The government turned tyrannical re: vaccines and mandates, did the guns help?
      - lesuorac 2mo ago
onraglanroad 2mo ago
What felt Sci-Fi to me was when I saw this Stack Exchange question about what the A's at the end of the COVID virus sequence meant: https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/90607/does-the-genetic-sequence-of-sars-cov-2-end-with-33-as https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/90607/does-the-g... Edit: I found the wrong one; I think the one I remember was https://bioinformatics.stackexchange.com/questions/11227/why-does-the-sars-cov2-coronavirus-genome-end-in-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa https://bioinformatics.stackexchange.com/questions/11227/why...

Terr_ 2mo ago

You might enjoy: "Reverse Engineering the source code of the BioNTech/Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine" (2020) Being much smaller than a whole organism genome, the base-pairs are literally published in a WHO Word-document. :p https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source-code-of-the-biontech-pfizer-vaccine/ https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source...