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Any and all updates regarding the COVID-19 will need a source provided. Please do your part in helping us to keep this thread maintainable and under control.
It is YOUR responsibility to fully read through the sources that you link, and you MUST provide a brief summary explaining what the source is about. Do not expect other people to do the work for you.
Conspiracy theories and fear mongering will absolutely not be tolerated in this thread. Expect harsh mod actions if you try to incite fear needlessly.
This is not a politics thread! You are allowed to post information regarding politics if it's related to the coronavirus, but do NOT discuss politics in here.
Added a disclaimer on page 662. Many need to post better. |
On December 09 2020 11:31 eviltomahawk wrote:Show nested quote +On December 09 2020 11:13 Vivax wrote:On December 09 2020 11:00 Amui wrote:
Ethical exposure is just letting them go on with their daily lives, albeit with regular checkins. Same as almost every other vaccine ever made in the last few decades.
Detection method is looking for virus itself, not anti-bodies for it. Vaccinated people should have no traces of the virus once the vaccine course has run. Find me a law anywhere that makes an exception for lockdowns and other restrictions for vaccinated people, I am currently not aware of such a thing. Is the vaccine effective if they are tested negative? Or if they are tested positive and symptomless? You can't look for the virus itself in people (you can detect it in selected tissue under an electron microscope, but you'd have to know it's there by other means first), just parts of it. Vaccinated people will have traces of the virus, or rather, the antibodies against it. Humoral hepatitis detection is a good example to get insight into how that works. "Go on with their daily lives" means that they're still following the same mask and social distancing guidelines as everyone else in their respective territories. According to the papers submitted to the FDA, (which you should definitely read through, btw, if you're so concerned about the study design of the trials), efficacy was assessed as follows: Show nested quote +Efficacy is being assessed throughout a participant’s follow-up in the study through surveillance for potential cases of COVID-19. If, at any time, a participant develops acute respiratory illness, an illness visit occurs. Assessments for illness visits include a nasal (midturbinate) swab, which is tested at a central laboratory using a reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test (e.g., Cepheid; FDA authorized under EUA), or other sufficiently validated nucleic acid amplification-based test (NAAT), to detect SARS-CoV-2. The central laboratory NAAT result is used for the case definition, unless it is not possible to test the sample at the central laboratory. In that case, the following NAAT results are acceptable: Cepheid Xpert Xpress SARS-CoV-2Roche cobas SARS-CoV-2 real-time RT-PCR test (EUA200009/A001) Abbott Molecular/RealTime SARS-CoV-2 assay (EUA200023/A001). So basically, when they feel sick, they get tested for Covid. It happened to be that more people out of the placebo group tested positive compared to that of the vaccinated group. For example, 192 positive cases from the placebo group and 8 positive cases from the vaccinated group. Page 24 of the document I linked has details on the efficacy studies. And here's another paper from Pfizer submitted to the FDA meeting that has additional details.
Thanks a lot for the links. That helps. In the first link you mention there's another link leading here, the industry guidance for the production:
https://www.fda.gov/media/139638/download
On December 09 2020 15:01 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On December 09 2020 10:38 Vivax wrote:
Antigen as far as I know is the definition of any bindable protein on a cell's surface.
Conventional vaccines put an inert pathogen into you, and the immune response adapts by producing antibodies against their key antigens. The concept has been proven reliable (while I don't have the knowledge atm to claim that there could or could not be more severe side-effects), and nowhere do I intend to dispute that.
The new vaccine aims at putting a virus' key antigen onto your own cell's surface, which at glance to me seems like an insane thing to do. I'd also like to point out that there is way more types of RNA in our cells than just the ones involved in translating genetic code to proteins, and one shouold not necessarily expect it to be fully understood. Doesn’t have to be a protein, doesn’t have to be on the surface of a cell. There are people using all kinds of antibodies and all kinds of antigens for ELISA’s. It’s not magic, it’s just binding affinity. Expect what to be fully understood? It’s not siRNA, it’s not tRNA, it’s mRNA. The data says it’s immunogenic, which means it is, in fact, being translated, and the body is forming antibodies against the produced protein. Is your objection just “what if it does something else too?” Because that’s a question for literally every pharmaceutical product (or, for that matter, anything else we ingest). But if we have no reason to think it causes serious adverse events, and we’ve given it to tens of thousands of people, monitored them, and found no evidence of serious adverse events, then either they don’t exist, or they’re too rare to outweigh the benefits.
Didn't happen (yet) though. And we're talking about something that can have adverse effects with an unknown latency. Otherwise I'd agree with the statement, but the premise isn't fulfilled.
From the guidance I linked above you can see problem 1:
COVID-19 vaccine development may be accelerated based on knowledge gained
from similar products manufactured with the same well-characterized platform
technology, to the extent legally and scientifically permissible.
Problem 2:
Data from studies in animal models administered certain vaccine constructs
against other coronaviruses (SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV) have raised concerns of
a theoretical risk for COVID-19 vaccine-associated enhanced respiratory disease
(ERD). In these studies, animal models were administered vaccine constructs
against other coronaviruses and subsequently challenged with the respective wildtype virus. These studies have shown evidence of immunopathologic lung reactions characteristic of a Th-2 type hypersensitivity similar to ERD described
in infants and animals that were administered formalin-inactivated respiratory
syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine and that were subsequently challenged with RSV
virus due to natural exposure or in the laboratory, respectively (Refs. 4-9).
Vaccine candidates should be assessed in light of these studies as described in
section D, below.
This one is similar to my fear about autoimmune encephalitis. Because it's already pointing to the expression of the pathogens own parts in our cells being a possible cause for intolerance of own tissue. The definition of vaccine constructs is already foggy here, but this might be one of the reasons no vaccine for SARS and MERS made it past development. Now we have accellerated development for something that by conventional vaccine development means wasn't possible or sufficiently safe.
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On December 09 2020 19:33 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On December 09 2020 18:51 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:On December 08 2020 22:26 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
If you are worried that the upcoming coronavirus vaccines aren't going to be safe because their research, manufacturing, and distribution have been dangerously rushed just to get a half-assed drug out on the market... this is simply not the case. The medical community has not only put a huge amount of resources behind these treatments (with all the appropriate trials and testing), but have allowed the mass production of these medicines to jump to the front of the line, due to our global pandemic.
If governments would change the law to allow COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers to be legally and financially liable for any future COVID-19 vaccine related injuries or side effects then you'd mitigate a fuckload of worry from people.You're asking people to take a quickly developed, experimental mRNA (First mRNA vaccine approved for human use) vaccine where the manufacturer does not know the long term side effects and the patient has no legal recourse down the line.Thats the issue here.The rushed 1976 swine flu vaccine Guillain-Barre Syndrome outbreak could be a walk in the park compared to this, who knows. You might mitigate some of the worrying, but that's obviously an absurd proposition. And I don't know what you mean by the G-B outbreak from swine flu's vaccine, since that was hardly a thing. The 1976 vaccine's common side effects (if any were experienced at all) were headache and tiredness and fever, which quickly subsided. Things like G-B had less than a 1 in 100,000 chance of happening. Source: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/guillain-barre-syndrome.html Also, keep in mind that this 1976 vaccine was a necessary response to a pandemic that was similar to the 1918 one that had killed over 50 million people. If we're comparing the disease to the vaccine - whether it's the 1976 swine flu or our current coronavirus crisis - the risks of the disease vs. the risks of the vaccinations aren't even in the same universe. We know what the short-term risks of coronavirus are, and god help us with the long-term risks... so the proposal that there might be a one-in-a-million chance that someone gets seriously ill years from now from the vaccination is not worth entertaining. There is always a chance of that happening, with anything, ever. I feel like some people are comparing the risks of a vaccine to some baseline of zero risk, as opposed to the risks of the real disease, which is ludicrous.
Over 500 developed Guillian-Barre which can cause paralysis with 25 deaths.The vaccine was pulled after 10 weeks.I certainly wouldn't call that a success but I was just giving the example of what can happen.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-apr-27-sci-swine-history27-story.html
What did materialize were cases of a rare side effect thought to be linked to the shot. The unexpected development cut short the vaccination effort -- an unprecedented national campaign -- after 10 weeks.
Now, the covid death rate for a healthy 19 year old is what? 0.001% or less.You can't reintroduce legal liability for vaccine manufacturers so you admit the vaccine has risk.Many young People will believe the potential risk from the vaccine is greater than the 0.001% or whatever risk from Covid.It will not be a small number refusing to take it.
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On December 09 2020 18:32 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On December 09 2020 18:13 Uldridge wrote:
If you can't get behind people spending their lives in trying to find alternative (and more often than not safer ways) for difficult to tackle problems for certain diseases (like how to immunize people for certain virus families - look at the HIV body of research done in the '80s for example), then I don't know what you can trust. They know infinitely more about biology than you and I ever will and they're surrounded by more people (that know infinitely more about biology than you or me) than you can count. They want what's best for you, not necessarily the big bux. That's what the marketing and financial departments of the companies are for. I generally agree with the rest of what you were saying - the mechanism has enough scientific basis to be sound - but playing this appeal to authority is something of a bridge too far. I've seen plenty of frauds be defended with words not far from what you have given here, and a company with no history of successful vaccines making one now is worth being skeptical of. When their stock price so aggressively follows their vaccine development and is used to support a billion dollar capital raise and lots of executive stock sale is noted, the point about "it's not about the money" is a load of baloney. "Follow the money" is an important part of basic science R&D, a piece of due diligence that shouldn't be forgotten even in light of everything else that you may want to argue for. All that said, "look at the results" is a more valid take than "dare you question their expertise?!?" Thankfully that seems to support that a good vaccine has been made, but don't be using that to make undue claims of unquestionable credibility or benevolence.
I can't clear any board members/executives. I don't care about those people, many times they're completely removed from the actual work that's being done (rings any analogical bells with politicians and citicens?). I see it all the time with how the managing people want to change up our corporate structure. It may make sense from a strategical business financial techinical whatever viewpoint, but it often poorly translates into the messy ways the jobs that make the companys cogs churn actually work.
I was mostly talking to the post-docs that are project leaders that not necessarily have that big a financial stake in the company. They are ideologues that were hired for their expertise. And you can bet your ass they know their shit and want it to be the best they can make it (if finances allows it to be at least)
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On December 09 2020 20:17 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:Show nested quote +On December 09 2020 19:33 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On December 09 2020 18:51 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:On December 08 2020 22:26 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
If you are worried that the upcoming coronavirus vaccines aren't going to be safe because their research, manufacturing, and distribution have been dangerously rushed just to get a half-assed drug out on the market... this is simply not the case. The medical community has not only put a huge amount of resources behind these treatments (with all the appropriate trials and testing), but have allowed the mass production of these medicines to jump to the front of the line, due to our global pandemic.
If governments would change the law to allow COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers to be legally and financially liable for any future COVID-19 vaccine related injuries or side effects then you'd mitigate a fuckload of worry from people.You're asking people to take a quickly developed, experimental mRNA (First mRNA vaccine approved for human use) vaccine where the manufacturer does not know the long term side effects and the patient has no legal recourse down the line.Thats the issue here.The rushed 1976 swine flu vaccine Guillain-Barre Syndrome outbreak could be a walk in the park compared to this, who knows. You might mitigate some of the worrying, but that's obviously an absurd proposition. And I don't know what you mean by the G-B outbreak from swine flu's vaccine, since that was hardly a thing. The 1976 vaccine's common side effects (if any were experienced at all) were headache and tiredness and fever, which quickly subsided. Things like G-B had less than a 1 in 100,000 chance of happening. Source: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/guillain-barre-syndrome.html Also, keep in mind that this 1976 vaccine was a necessary response to a pandemic that was similar to the 1918 one that had killed over 50 million people. If we're comparing the disease to the vaccine - whether it's the 1976 swine flu or our current coronavirus crisis - the risks of the disease vs. the risks of the vaccinations aren't even in the same universe. We know what the short-term risks of coronavirus are, and god help us with the long-term risks... so the proposal that there might be a one-in-a-million chance that someone gets seriously ill years from now from the vaccination is not worth entertaining. There is always a chance of that happening, with anything, ever. I feel like some people are comparing the risks of a vaccine to some baseline of zero risk, as opposed to the risks of the real disease, which is ludicrous. Over 500 developed Guillian-Barre which can cause paralysis with 25 deaths.The vaccine was pulled after 10 weeks.I certainly wouldn't call that a success but I was just giving the example of what can happen. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-apr-27-sci-swine-history27-story.htmlShow nested quote +What did materialize were cases of a rare side effect thought to be linked to the shot. The unexpected development cut short the vaccination effort -- an unprecedented national campaign -- after 10 weeks. Now, the covid death rate for a healthy 19 year old is what? 0.001% or less.You can't reintroduce legal liability for vaccine manufacturers so you admit the vaccine has risk.Many young People will believe the potential risk from the vaccine is greater than the 0.001% or whatever risk from Covid.It will not be a small number refusing to take it.
I feel you're conflating multiple things here, especially switching back and forth between the risk of generic side effects and the risk of literal death. These are not the same things, nor are their probabilities comparable. It's unfortunate that many people myopically view coronavirus victims as being placed into the two buckets of living vs. dying, because living doesn't mean having no side effects or being restored to perfect health. They seem to conveniently forget that organ failure, trouble breathing, and loss of multiple senses are some of many legitimate side effects that could occur in the "living" bucket. On the other hand, there's magically all this suspiciously deep nuance when those same people evaluate the risks of vaccines - it's never the same dichotomy of "the vaccine killing you vs. not killing you", but rather this spectrum that involves all these hypothetical complications and "what-if" side effects that may or may not have any basis in reality.
Everything has a risk; that doesn't mean that everything is equally dangerous.
If we're going to compare the death rate of coronavirus to the death rate of being vaccinated, that would be a fair comparison (with vaccinations being significantly safer). If we're going to compare the severe complication / side-effect rate of coronavirus to the severe complication / side-effect rate of being vaccinated, that would also be a fair comparison (with vaccinations, of course, again being significantly safer). I just feel like there is too much bait-and-switch when I read things like "What if someone has a .01% chance of developing a serious side-effect from the vaccination, when actually getting coronavirus just means you have a .001% chance of dying, which means that coronavirus is 10x safer." You didn't use these exact words, but I've seen this kind of statistical misrepresentation several times from many individuals, and it's frustrating to read/hear.
Also, keep in mind that the vaccination isn't just to keep yourself safe; it's to drastically mitigate the spread of the virus. If a 19-year-old doesn't want to get the coronavirus vaccination, then I think he has the right to not get the vaccine; however, he better not be allowed on his college campus (unless he's social distancing and/or wearing a mask at all times), because he's still a potential carrier who could spread the disease to thousands of other people in public areas.
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On December 09 2020 15:01 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On December 09 2020 10:38 Vivax wrote:
Antigen as far as I know is the definition of any bindable protein on a cell's surface.
Conventional vaccines put an inert pathogen into you, and the immune response adapts by producing antibodies against their key antigens. The concept has been proven reliable (while I don't have the knowledge atm to claim that there could or could not be more severe side-effects), and nowhere do I intend to dispute that.
The new vaccine aims at putting a virus' key antigen onto your own cell's surface, which at glance to me seems like an insane thing to do. I'd also like to point out that there is way more types of RNA in our cells than just the ones involved in translating genetic code to proteins, and one shouold not necessarily expect it to be fully understood. Doesn’t have to be a protein, doesn’t have to be on the surface of a cell. There are people using all kinds of antibodies and all kinds of antigens for ELISA’s. It’s not magic, it’s just binding affinity. Expect what to be fully understood? It’s not siRNA, it’s not tRNA, it’s mRNA. The data says it’s immunogenic, which means it is, in fact, being translated, and the body is forming antibodies against the produced protein. Is your objection just “what if it does something else too?” Because that’s a question for literally every pharmaceutical product (or, for that matter, anything else we ingest). But if we have no reason to think it causes serious adverse events, and we’ve given it to tens of thousands of people, monitored them, and found no evidence of serious adverse events, then either they don’t exist, or they’re too rare to outweigh the benefits.
I have a book on genetics in front of me. We could also be talking about ncRNA, lncRNA, miRNA, siRNA, piRna, snRNA, snoRNA, circRNA and riboswitches. And I quote, translated from German from the part on non-coding RNAs: 'We are still far away from from understanding the entirety of functions of ncRNAs during health and disease."
Then there's a mention on RNA interference, which explains how RNA expression regulates genetic expression. Remember when I asked if we know if artificial RNA can alter the genome and that got quickly dismissed? It's not just possible, siRNA is actively used to 'turn off' genes (that end up coding for something), and miRNA can change the chromatine structure and translation process.
Who's to say that this artificial mRNA won't cause unknown effects in my body that not only concern me and my genome, but also possibly the genome of future generations if it's at the reproductive level? Who's going to notice these changes if they don't cause discomfort?
So thinking that it's all old stuff and all figured out and pharma always knows what they're doing is a wrong assumption. There's the saying in medicine that not knowing something is less dangerous than believing to know something that is wrong. If everyone weren't convinced Covid was such an apocalyptic thing, this approach to a treatment would never be allowed.
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On December 09 2020 20:16 Vivax wrote:Show nested quote +On December 09 2020 11:31 eviltomahawk wrote:On December 09 2020 11:13 Vivax wrote:On December 09 2020 11:00 Amui wrote:
Ethical exposure is just letting them go on with their daily lives, albeit with regular checkins. Same as almost every other vaccine ever made in the last few decades.
Detection method is looking for virus itself, not anti-bodies for it. Vaccinated people should have no traces of the virus once the vaccine course has run. Find me a law anywhere that makes an exception for lockdowns and other restrictions for vaccinated people, I am currently not aware of such a thing. Is the vaccine effective if they are tested negative? Or if they are tested positive and symptomless? You can't look for the virus itself in people (you can detect it in selected tissue under an electron microscope, but you'd have to know it's there by other means first), just parts of it. Vaccinated people will have traces of the virus, or rather, the antibodies against it. Humoral hepatitis detection is a good example to get insight into how that works. "Go on with their daily lives" means that they're still following the same mask and social distancing guidelines as everyone else in their respective territories. According to the papers submitted to the FDA, (which you should definitely read through, btw, if you're so concerned about the study design of the trials), efficacy was assessed as follows: Efficacy is being assessed throughout a participant’s follow-up in the study through surveillance for potential cases of COVID-19. If, at any time, a participant develops acute respiratory illness, an illness visit occurs. Assessments for illness visits include a nasal (midturbinate) swab, which is tested at a central laboratory using a reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test (e.g., Cepheid; FDA authorized under EUA), or other sufficiently validated nucleic acid amplification-based test (NAAT), to detect SARS-CoV-2. The central laboratory NAAT result is used for the case definition, unless it is not possible to test the sample at the central laboratory. In that case, the following NAAT results are acceptable: Cepheid Xpert Xpress SARS-CoV-2Roche cobas SARS-CoV-2 real-time RT-PCR test (EUA200009/A001) Abbott Molecular/RealTime SARS-CoV-2 assay (EUA200023/A001). So basically, when they feel sick, they get tested for Covid. It happened to be that more people out of the placebo group tested positive compared to that of the vaccinated group. For example, 192 positive cases from the placebo group and 8 positive cases from the vaccinated group. Page 24 of the document I linked has details on the efficacy studies. And here's another paper from Pfizer submitted to the FDA meeting that has additional details. Thanks a lot for the links. That helps. In the first link you mention there's another link leading here, the industry guidance for the production: https://www.fda.gov/media/139638/downloadShow nested quote +On December 09 2020 15:01 ChristianS wrote:On December 09 2020 10:38 Vivax wrote:
Antigen as far as I know is the definition of any bindable protein on a cell's surface.
Conventional vaccines put an inert pathogen into you, and the immune response adapts by producing antibodies against their key antigens. The concept has been proven reliable (while I don't have the knowledge atm to claim that there could or could not be more severe side-effects), and nowhere do I intend to dispute that.
The new vaccine aims at putting a virus' key antigen onto your own cell's surface, which at glance to me seems like an insane thing to do. I'd also like to point out that there is way more types of RNA in our cells than just the ones involved in translating genetic code to proteins, and one shouold not necessarily expect it to be fully understood. Doesn’t have to be a protein, doesn’t have to be on the surface of a cell. There are people using all kinds of antibodies and all kinds of antigens for ELISA’s. It’s not magic, it’s just binding affinity. Expect what to be fully understood? It’s not siRNA, it’s not tRNA, it’s mRNA. The data says it’s immunogenic, which means it is, in fact, being translated, and the body is forming antibodies against the produced protein. Is your objection just “what if it does something else too?” Because that’s a question for literally every pharmaceutical product (or, for that matter, anything else we ingest). But if we have no reason to think it causes serious adverse events, and we’ve given it to tens of thousands of people, monitored them, and found no evidence of serious adverse events, then either they don’t exist, or they’re too rare to outweigh the benefits. Didn't happen (yet) though. And we're talking about something that can have adverse effects with an unknown latency. Otherwise I'd agree with the statement, but the premise isn't fulfilled. From the guidance I linked above you can see problem 1: Show nested quote +COVID-19 vaccine development may be accelerated based on knowledge gained
from similar products manufactured with the same well-characterized platform
technology, to the extent legally and scientifically permissible. Problem 2: Show nested quote +Data from studies in animal models administered certain vaccine constructs
against other coronaviruses (SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV) have raised concerns of
a theoretical risk for COVID-19 vaccine-associated enhanced respiratory disease
(ERD). In these studies, animal models were administered vaccine constructs
against other coronaviruses and subsequently challenged with the respective wildtype virus. These studies have shown evidence of immunopathologic lung reactions characteristic of a Th-2 type hypersensitivity similar to ERD described
in infants and animals that were administered formalin-inactivated respiratory
syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine and that were subsequently challenged with RSV
virus due to natural exposure or in the laboratory, respectively (Refs. 4-9).
Vaccine candidates should be assessed in light of these studies as described in
section D, below. This one is similar to my fear about autoimmune encephalitis. Because it's already pointing to the expression of the pathogens own parts in our cells being a possible cause for intolerance of own tissue. The definition of vaccine constructs is already foggy here, but this might be one of the reasons no vaccine for SARS and MERS made it past development. Now we have accellerated development for something that by conventional vaccine development means wasn't possible or sufficiently safe.
It’s not similar though. That Th-2 thing they’re mentioning is a well-known mechanism of Vaccine-Associated Disease Enhancement (VADE) which has to do with inducing too much inflammation-causing immune response and too little NK cells and such. First encountered, apparently, in 1965 with the formalin-inactivated RSV vaccine (which, you’ll note, is obviously not an mRNA vaccine).
VADE has nothing to do with “expression of the pathogens own parts in our cells,” it’s just that immune responses are complicated and if you don’t get the right mix of responses things go bad. The other common one is Antibody-Dependent Enhancement (ADE) where the antibody response is primarily non-neutralizing antibodies. So the antibodies show up, and glom onto the pathogen, but not in a way that stops it from doing anything. Again, nothing to do with attacking your own cells. It’s also exactly the sort of thing you’d find out in clinical trials.
Oh, you’ve responded to me again:
Yeah, they’re a bunch of types of RNA. There’s people designing whole enzymes out of RNA. But this isn’t any of those, it’s mRNA. You don’t make an siRNA on accident, you design it to knock out a specific mRNA. Even siRNA, by the way, doesn’t actually change your genetic information, it just attaches to mRNAs and stops them from being translated.
This still amounts to “but what if there’s some other interaction we didn’t expect?” Which, again, is a question with every medicine, and clinical trials are how you discover it. If Moderna discovers in Phase 3 that, extremely improbably, their mRNA has a degradation product that acts as an siRNA for some important protein, causing serious adverse effects, then sure, maybe their vaccine shouldn’t get approved. But if they don’t, after administering to tens of thousands of people and monitoring them until well after their mRNA and resulting proteins would have degraded, that’s pretty strong evidence it’s not happening to any significant degree.
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On December 10 2020 00:04 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On December 09 2020 20:16 Vivax wrote:On December 09 2020 11:31 eviltomahawk wrote:On December 09 2020 11:13 Vivax wrote:On December 09 2020 11:00 Amui wrote:
Ethical exposure is just letting them go on with their daily lives, albeit with regular checkins. Same as almost every other vaccine ever made in the last few decades.
Detection method is looking for virus itself, not anti-bodies for it. Vaccinated people should have no traces of the virus once the vaccine course has run. Find me a law anywhere that makes an exception for lockdowns and other restrictions for vaccinated people, I am currently not aware of such a thing. Is the vaccine effective if they are tested negative? Or if they are tested positive and symptomless? You can't look for the virus itself in people (you can detect it in selected tissue under an electron microscope, but you'd have to know it's there by other means first), just parts of it. Vaccinated people will have traces of the virus, or rather, the antibodies against it. Humoral hepatitis detection is a good example to get insight into how that works. "Go on with their daily lives" means that they're still following the same mask and social distancing guidelines as everyone else in their respective territories. According to the papers submitted to the FDA, (which you should definitely read through, btw, if you're so concerned about the study design of the trials), efficacy was assessed as follows: Efficacy is being assessed throughout a participant’s follow-up in the study through surveillance for potential cases of COVID-19. If, at any time, a participant develops acute respiratory illness, an illness visit occurs. Assessments for illness visits include a nasal (midturbinate) swab, which is tested at a central laboratory using a reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test (e.g., Cepheid; FDA authorized under EUA), or other sufficiently validated nucleic acid amplification-based test (NAAT), to detect SARS-CoV-2. The central laboratory NAAT result is used for the case definition, unless it is not possible to test the sample at the central laboratory. In that case, the following NAAT results are acceptable: Cepheid Xpert Xpress SARS-CoV-2Roche cobas SARS-CoV-2 real-time RT-PCR test (EUA200009/A001) Abbott Molecular/RealTime SARS-CoV-2 assay (EUA200023/A001). So basically, when they feel sick, they get tested for Covid. It happened to be that more people out of the placebo group tested positive compared to that of the vaccinated group. For example, 192 positive cases from the placebo group and 8 positive cases from the vaccinated group. Page 24 of the document I linked has details on the efficacy studies. And here's another paper from Pfizer submitted to the FDA meeting that has additional details. Thanks a lot for the links. That helps. In the first link you mention there's another link leading here, the industry guidance for the production: https://www.fda.gov/media/139638/downloadOn December 09 2020 15:01 ChristianS wrote:On December 09 2020 10:38 Vivax wrote:
Antigen as far as I know is the definition of any bindable protein on a cell's surface.
Conventional vaccines put an inert pathogen into you, and the immune response adapts by producing antibodies against their key antigens. The concept has been proven reliable (while I don't have the knowledge atm to claim that there could or could not be more severe side-effects), and nowhere do I intend to dispute that.
The new vaccine aims at putting a virus' key antigen onto your own cell's surface, which at glance to me seems like an insane thing to do. I'd also like to point out that there is way more types of RNA in our cells than just the ones involved in translating genetic code to proteins, and one shouold not necessarily expect it to be fully understood. Doesn’t have to be a protein, doesn’t have to be on the surface of a cell. There are people using all kinds of antibodies and all kinds of antigens for ELISA’s. It’s not magic, it’s just binding affinity. Expect what to be fully understood? It’s not siRNA, it’s not tRNA, it’s mRNA. The data says it’s immunogenic, which means it is, in fact, being translated, and the body is forming antibodies against the produced protein. Is your objection just “what if it does something else too?” Because that’s a question for literally every pharmaceutical product (or, for that matter, anything else we ingest). But if we have no reason to think it causes serious adverse events, and we’ve given it to tens of thousands of people, monitored them, and found no evidence of serious adverse events, then either they don’t exist, or they’re too rare to outweigh the benefits. Didn't happen (yet) though. And we're talking about something that can have adverse effects with an unknown latency. Otherwise I'd agree with the statement, but the premise isn't fulfilled. From the guidance I linked above you can see problem 1: COVID-19 vaccine development may be accelerated based on knowledge gained
from similar products manufactured with the same well-characterized platform
technology, to the extent legally and scientifically permissible. Problem 2: Data from studies in animal models administered certain vaccine constructs
against other coronaviruses (SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV) have raised concerns of
a theoretical risk for COVID-19 vaccine-associated enhanced respiratory disease
(ERD). In these studies, animal models were administered vaccine constructs
against other coronaviruses and subsequently challenged with the respective wildtype virus. These studies have shown evidence of immunopathologic lung reactions characteristic of a Th-2 type hypersensitivity similar to ERD described
in infants and animals that were administered formalin-inactivated respiratory
syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine and that were subsequently challenged with RSV
virus due to natural exposure or in the laboratory, respectively (Refs. 4-9).
Vaccine candidates should be assessed in light of these studies as described in
section D, below. This one is similar to my fear about autoimmune encephalitis. Because it's already pointing to the expression of the pathogens own parts in our cells being a possible cause for intolerance of own tissue. The definition of vaccine constructs is already foggy here, but this might be one of the reasons no vaccine for SARS and MERS made it past development. Now we have accellerated development for something that by conventional vaccine development means wasn't possible or sufficiently safe. It’s not similar though. That Th-2 thing they’re mentioning is a well-known mechanism of Vaccine-Associated Disease Enhancement (VADE) which has to do with inducing too much inflammation-causing immune response and too little NK cells and such. First encountered, apparently, in 1965 with the formalin-inactivated RSV vaccine (which, you’ll note, is obviously not an mRNA vaccine). VADE has nothing to do with “expression of the pathogens own parts in our cells,” it’s just that immune responses are complicated and if you don’t get the right mix of responses things go bad. The other common one is Antibody-Dependent Enhancement (ADE) where the antibody response is primarily non-neutralizing antibodies. So the antibodies show up, and glom onto the pathogen, but not in a way that stops it from doing anything. Again, nothing to do with attacking your own cells. It’s also exactly the sort of thing you’d find out in clinical trials. Oh, you’ve responded to me again: Yeah, they’re a bunch of types of RNA. There’s people designing whole enzymes out of RNA. But this isn’t any of those, it’s mRNA. You don’t make an siRNA on accident, you design it to knock out a specific mRNA. Even siRNA, by the way, doesn’t actually change your genetic information, it just attaches to mRNAs and stops them from being translated. This still amounts to “but what if there’s some other interaction we didn’t expect?” Which, again, is a question with every medicine, and clinical trials are how you discover it. If Moderna discovers in Phase 3 that, extremely improbably, their mRNA has a degradation product that acts as an siRNA for some important protein, causing serious adverse effects, then sure, maybe their vaccine shouldn’t get approved. But if they don’t, after administering to tens of thousands of people and monitoring them until well after their mRNA and resulting proteins would have degraded, that’s pretty strong evidence it’s not happening to any significant degree.
Thanks. You are well informed. Though I'd appreciate it if you explained why we need to instruct our cells to produce our 'own' covid spike protein, and to me it seems obvious that it has to be expressed on the cell's surface for it to work.
I guess we're about to get more information on how well it works anyway. Still far from transparent and a new method shouldn't be tested on large scale. Fingers crossed, I'm not optimistic. Pushing masses into something that is arguably more or less than an experiment is insanity.
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I haven't followed much of the news about the COVID vaccine(s). Aren't there multiple strains of COVID-19 now? Are the vaccines meant to be effective against all the strains?
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All known virus strains still have the same spike, antibodies can latch onto (afaik/iirc) and since all recent vaccines basically replicate that spike they should be effective against all of those strains.
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gotta kill those minks to avoid further possible mutations 
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On December 09 2020 11:31 eviltomahawk wrote:Show nested quote +On December 09 2020 11:13 Vivax wrote:On December 09 2020 11:00 Amui wrote:
Ethical exposure is just letting them go on with their daily lives, albeit with regular checkins. Same as almost every other vaccine ever made in the last few decades.
Detection method is looking for virus itself, not anti-bodies for it. Vaccinated people should have no traces of the virus once the vaccine course has run. Find me a law anywhere that makes an exception for lockdowns and other restrictions for vaccinated people, I am currently not aware of such a thing. Is the vaccine effective if they are tested negative? Or if they are tested positive and symptomless? You can't look for the virus itself in people (you can detect it in selected tissue under an electron microscope, but you'd have to know it's there by other means first), just parts of it. Vaccinated people will have traces of the virus, or rather, the antibodies against it. Humoral hepatitis detection is a good example to get insight into how that works. "Go on with their daily lives" means that they're still following the same mask and social distancing guidelines as everyone else in their respective territories. According to the papers submitted to the FDA, (which you should definitely read through, btw, if you're so concerned about the study design of the trials), efficacy was assessed as follows: Show nested quote +Efficacy is being assessed throughout a participant’s follow-up in the study through surveillance for potential cases of COVID-19. If, at any time, a participant develops acute respiratory illness, an illness visit occurs. Assessments for illness visits include a nasal (midturbinate) swab, which is tested at a central laboratory using a reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test (e.g., Cepheid; FDA authorized under EUA), or other sufficiently validated nucleic acid amplification-based test (NAAT), to detect SARS-CoV-2. The central laboratory NAAT result is used for the case definition, unless it is not possible to test the sample at the central laboratory. In that case, the following NAAT results are acceptable: Cepheid Xpert Xpress SARS-CoV-2Roche cobas SARS-CoV-2 real-time RT-PCR test (EUA200009/A001) Abbott Molecular/RealTime SARS-CoV-2 assay (EUA200023/A001). So basically, when they feel sick, they get tested for Covid. It happened to be that more people out of the placebo group tested positive compared to that of the vaccinated group. For example, 192 positive cases from the placebo group and 8 positive cases from the vaccinated group. Page 24 of the document I linked has details on the efficacy studies. And here's another paper from Pfizer submitted to the FDA meeting that has additional details.
So basically, when they feel sick, they get tested for Covid
They didnt test everyone in the trial twice? (right after the infections and upon reaching the benchmark number).
That seems odd to me,i thought they would test everyone right after getting the vaccine (to make sure noone had been infected yet) and then again after a certain amount of weeks. I dont understand why they would not test the whole group after the benchmark had been reached,it could give valuable information.
People not getting sick is a very good result obviously,but it would be even better if they didnt get the virus at all.
Testing everyone could also eliminate some of the statistical noise and uncertaintys and since testing is very cheap i dont fully understand why this has not been done.
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On December 10 2020 02:07 Vivax wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2020 00:04 ChristianS wrote:On December 09 2020 20:16 Vivax wrote:On December 09 2020 11:31 eviltomahawk wrote:On December 09 2020 11:13 Vivax wrote:On December 09 2020 11:00 Amui wrote:
Ethical exposure is just letting them go on with their daily lives, albeit with regular checkins. Same as almost every other vaccine ever made in the last few decades.
Detection method is looking for virus itself, not anti-bodies for it. Vaccinated people should have no traces of the virus once the vaccine course has run. Find me a law anywhere that makes an exception for lockdowns and other restrictions for vaccinated people, I am currently not aware of such a thing. Is the vaccine effective if they are tested negative? Or if they are tested positive and symptomless? You can't look for the virus itself in people (you can detect it in selected tissue under an electron microscope, but you'd have to know it's there by other means first), just parts of it. Vaccinated people will have traces of the virus, or rather, the antibodies against it. Humoral hepatitis detection is a good example to get insight into how that works. "Go on with their daily lives" means that they're still following the same mask and social distancing guidelines as everyone else in their respective territories. According to the papers submitted to the FDA, (which you should definitely read through, btw, if you're so concerned about the study design of the trials), efficacy was assessed as follows: Efficacy is being assessed throughout a participant’s follow-up in the study through surveillance for potential cases of COVID-19. If, at any time, a participant develops acute respiratory illness, an illness visit occurs. Assessments for illness visits include a nasal (midturbinate) swab, which is tested at a central laboratory using a reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test (e.g., Cepheid; FDA authorized under EUA), or other sufficiently validated nucleic acid amplification-based test (NAAT), to detect SARS-CoV-2. The central laboratory NAAT result is used for the case definition, unless it is not possible to test the sample at the central laboratory. In that case, the following NAAT results are acceptable: Cepheid Xpert Xpress SARS-CoV-2Roche cobas SARS-CoV-2 real-time RT-PCR test (EUA200009/A001) Abbott Molecular/RealTime SARS-CoV-2 assay (EUA200023/A001). So basically, when they feel sick, they get tested for Covid. It happened to be that more people out of the placebo group tested positive compared to that of the vaccinated group. For example, 192 positive cases from the placebo group and 8 positive cases from the vaccinated group. Page 24 of the document I linked has details on the efficacy studies. And here's another paper from Pfizer submitted to the FDA meeting that has additional details. Thanks a lot for the links. That helps. In the first link you mention there's another link leading here, the industry guidance for the production: https://www.fda.gov/media/139638/downloadOn December 09 2020 15:01 ChristianS wrote:On December 09 2020 10:38 Vivax wrote:
Antigen as far as I know is the definition of any bindable protein on a cell's surface.
Conventional vaccines put an inert pathogen into you, and the immune response adapts by producing antibodies against their key antigens. The concept has been proven reliable (while I don't have the knowledge atm to claim that there could or could not be more severe side-effects), and nowhere do I intend to dispute that.
The new vaccine aims at putting a virus' key antigen onto your own cell's surface, which at glance to me seems like an insane thing to do. I'd also like to point out that there is way more types of RNA in our cells than just the ones involved in translating genetic code to proteins, and one shouold not necessarily expect it to be fully understood. Doesn’t have to be a protein, doesn’t have to be on the surface of a cell. There are people using all kinds of antibodies and all kinds of antigens for ELISA’s. It’s not magic, it’s just binding affinity. Expect what to be fully understood? It’s not siRNA, it’s not tRNA, it’s mRNA. The data says it’s immunogenic, which means it is, in fact, being translated, and the body is forming antibodies against the produced protein. Is your objection just “what if it does something else too?” Because that’s a question for literally every pharmaceutical product (or, for that matter, anything else we ingest). But if we have no reason to think it causes serious adverse events, and we’ve given it to tens of thousands of people, monitored them, and found no evidence of serious adverse events, then either they don’t exist, or they’re too rare to outweigh the benefits. Didn't happen (yet) though. And we're talking about something that can have adverse effects with an unknown latency. Otherwise I'd agree with the statement, but the premise isn't fulfilled. From the guidance I linked above you can see problem 1: COVID-19 vaccine development may be accelerated based on knowledge gained
from similar products manufactured with the same well-characterized platform
technology, to the extent legally and scientifically permissible. Problem 2: Data from studies in animal models administered certain vaccine constructs
against other coronaviruses (SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV) have raised concerns of
a theoretical risk for COVID-19 vaccine-associated enhanced respiratory disease
(ERD). In these studies, animal models were administered vaccine constructs
against other coronaviruses and subsequently challenged with the respective wildtype virus. These studies have shown evidence of immunopathologic lung reactions characteristic of a Th-2 type hypersensitivity similar to ERD described
in infants and animals that were administered formalin-inactivated respiratory
syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine and that were subsequently challenged with RSV
virus due to natural exposure or in the laboratory, respectively (Refs. 4-9).
Vaccine candidates should be assessed in light of these studies as described in
section D, below. This one is similar to my fear about autoimmune encephalitis. Because it's already pointing to the expression of the pathogens own parts in our cells being a possible cause for intolerance of own tissue. The definition of vaccine constructs is already foggy here, but this might be one of the reasons no vaccine for SARS and MERS made it past development. Now we have accellerated development for something that by conventional vaccine development means wasn't possible or sufficiently safe. It’s not similar though. That Th-2 thing they’re mentioning is a well-known mechanism of Vaccine-Associated Disease Enhancement (VADE) which has to do with inducing too much inflammation-causing immune response and too little NK cells and such. First encountered, apparently, in 1965 with the formalin-inactivated RSV vaccine (which, you’ll note, is obviously not an mRNA vaccine). VADE has nothing to do with “expression of the pathogens own parts in our cells,” it’s just that immune responses are complicated and if you don’t get the right mix of responses things go bad. The other common one is Antibody-Dependent Enhancement (ADE) where the antibody response is primarily non-neutralizing antibodies. So the antibodies show up, and glom onto the pathogen, but not in a way that stops it from doing anything. Again, nothing to do with attacking your own cells. It’s also exactly the sort of thing you’d find out in clinical trials. Oh, you’ve responded to me again: Yeah, they’re a bunch of types of RNA. There’s people designing whole enzymes out of RNA. But this isn’t any of those, it’s mRNA. You don’t make an siRNA on accident, you design it to knock out a specific mRNA. Even siRNA, by the way, doesn’t actually change your genetic information, it just attaches to mRNAs and stops them from being translated. This still amounts to “but what if there’s some other interaction we didn’t expect?” Which, again, is a question with every medicine, and clinical trials are how you discover it. If Moderna discovers in Phase 3 that, extremely improbably, their mRNA has a degradation product that acts as an siRNA for some important protein, causing serious adverse effects, then sure, maybe their vaccine shouldn’t get approved. But if they don’t, after administering to tens of thousands of people and monitoring them until well after their mRNA and resulting proteins would have degraded, that’s pretty strong evidence it’s not happening to any significant degree. Thanks. You are well informed. Though I'd appreciate it if you explained why we need to instruct our cells to produce our 'own' covid spike protein, and to me it seems obvious that it has to be expressed on the cell's surface for it to work. I guess we're about to get more information on how well it works anyway. Still far from transparent and a new method shouldn't be tested on large scale. Fingers crossed, I'm not optimistic. Pushing masses into something that is arguably more or less than an experiment is insanity.
I don’t know what you mean by “need.” Different companies tried all kinds of different approaches to inducing immunity. Adenovirus vectors, attenuated virus, RNA, DNA, and just about everything else somebody could think of. The RNA ones got out the door quickest. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the other ones wind up working too, if you really truly believe attenuated virus is the One True Way to vaccinate.
As a rule, don’t assume anything about the mechanism of a pharmaceutical product without some really rigorous research trying to determine exactly what makes it tick. Mechanisms are extremely hard, and it happens all the time that somebody designs a drug specifically to target some receptor, it has the expected effect, they take the thing through clinical trials and it gets approved, only to discover later that if you delete that receptor with a gene knockout the drug doesn’t lose any efficacy; it must be hitting something else.
In this case, you’re injecting mRNA coding for a coronavirus protein and it induces immunity to coronavirus, so it’s hard to imagine a mechanism that doesn’t involve the mRNA getting into cells and getting translated. After that, who knows? Maybe the spike proteins get incorporated into your cell membrane and your immune system finds them there; maybe they just float around in the cytoplasm and only get out when the cell dies; maybe there’s some weird mechanism where they can just float through the cell membrane on their own. Some proteins do that.
But even if what you seem to be scared of here turns out to be true - that they incorporate into the cell membrane, your immune system targets them, and kills the host cell - so what? Cells die all the time. If they’re not dying too fast, it’s often not a problem. And if they are dying too fast, you’d definitely feel it (and it’d be reported as an adverse event, if you’re in a clinical trial). Something like chemotherapy is specifically trying to find the limit of how fast it can kill off your cells without killing you; you can bet if patients were feeling chemo symptoms they’d speak up.
What exactly do you think they should do first before testing it on a large scale? Try it out in animal models first? Then small groups of humans, with dose escalation studies to probe dose response while hopefully catching any side effects before you give anybody too high a dose? Then larger scale trials to catch any rarer side effects before approving it for general use?
I mean the mRNA vaccine concept has been around for decades researched in academia. IIRC there are already some approved veterinary mRNA vaccines out there. They put it through the clinical trial process. I was genuinely worried we were gonna get some kind of half-assed testing followed by a premature EUA, but no, they’ve going through all the normal hoops. What else do you want?
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I see that you're well read on the matter, but maybe you're cutting out on the fantasy here to predict unstudied effects.
I would not say 'so what' if your immune system starts gobbling up neurons or your own immune cells, or somehow the mRNA doesn't degrade, because maybe the spike protein sequence is already in your genome (transposons and all that) and its expression is reactivated/upregulated, you have the protein expressed permanently, and the effect carries over to offspring.
And, what else do I want? I like musing about this topic and enjoy the back and forth. Maybe learn something.
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It feels very unlikely that the vaccine mRNA would undergo any reverse transcription to get into the genome. Furthermore, the mRNA is being expressed in the cytosol, so the nucleus would be an additional barrier to that.
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I’ve followed the vaccine news I guess. I’m definitely no expert. I’m a chemist, this is biology stuff. Their naming conventions confuse me.
“Gobbling up” is a little dramatic. The “vaccine-affected cells get killed by your immune system” hypothesis is already pure speculation, but even granting that we don’t even know that neurons are especially affected. Put it this way: viruses work by infecting your cells, making them produce a bunch more viruses, and then killing them and spilling out a bunch of new viruses. Neurons are cells. Does that mean every time you catch a cold you lose a bunch of neurons? I don’t know. Doesn’t seem like people suffer long-term cognitive effects so either they’re not killing neurons or they are but not enough to cause problems. These are empirical sciences for a reason, speculating doesn’t get you that far on its own.
We know the coronavirus genetic sequence, we know the human genetic sequence. A coronavirus protein is a coronavirus protein, and an mRNA is an mRNA. Biological systems are complicated enough already, you don’t have to write fan fics to keep it interesting.
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On December 10 2020 11:38 Vivax wrote:
I see that you're well read on the matter, but maybe you're cutting out on the fantasy here to predict unstudied effects.
I would not say 'so what' if your immune system starts gobbling up neurons or your own immune cells, or somehow the mRNA doesn't degrade, because maybe the spike protein sequence is already in your genome (transposons and all that) and its expression is reactivated/upregulated, you have the protein expressed permanently, and the effect carries over to offspring.
And, what else do I want? I like musing about this topic and enjoy the back and forth. Maybe learn something.
Vaccine safety is at a very high level because of the pressure to make them as safe as possible. Their safety doesn't come from the fact that they use DNA instead of RNA, it comes from rigorous clinical trials after lab research. RNA vaccines aren't any more dangerous, they're not even a new development. RNA vaccine research has been going on for decades.
If anything, any of the risks would mostly concern storage, rather than development. It's far more important for us to answer questions about storage safety.
Tens of thousands of people have been treated with either Pfizer or Moderna. The side effects are moderate to severe ("severe" meaning that they impact the daily routine), but no longer than up to 48 hours after injection.
Here's a study on general vaccine safety.
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-2726
Digestible information about that study:
https://www.healthline.com/health-news/extensive-study-determines-vaccines-are-remarkably-safe#What-if-youre-skeptical?
More information about RNA vaccines from the CDC:
Often patients are concerned about live vaccines. mRNA vaccines are not live vaccines and do not use an infectious element, so they carry no risk of causing disease in the person vaccinated.
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/hcp/mrna-vaccine-basics.html
Also, the protein production from the injection is limited, and it will not alter your DNA permanently.
The main difficulty with the new RNA vaccines is storage. Since they require temperatures of -20°C (Moderna) all the way down to -80°C (Pfizer), not all clinics can store the Pfizer vaccine, or large quantities of it. But many clinics and physicians can store the Moderna vaccine without a problem, and it remains stable for about six months. And even if it is stored at room temperature it can still be used safely for 12 hours before it becomes unstable (and thus dangerous).
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/rna-vaccines-against-covid-19-will-not-permanently-alter-your-dna/
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Perhaps the more difficult question (from both a scientific and political aspect) is to what extent governments will shape policies on vaccine preference
1) Internal - Can Government X justify investing and mandating Vaccine A and B (instead of C and D) on its citizens?
2) External - Can Government X impose travel restrictions on people originating from countries which chose Vaccine C and D?
My government has publicly announced making orders for Vaccine C (let's just say they're not the vaccines that the mainstream Western media has been hyping about). Should I be concerned? Maybe C is even safer than A and B? Should I be given a choice between A, B, C and D?
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55212787
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On December 10 2020 13:38 RKC wrote:Perhaps the more difficult question (from both a scientific and political aspect) is to what extent governments will shape policies on vaccine preference 1) Internal - Can Government X justify investing and mandating Vaccine A and B (instead of C and D) on its citizens? 2) External - Can Government X impose travel restrictions on people originating from countries which chose Vaccine C and D? My government has publicly announced making orders for Vaccine C (let's just say they're not the vaccines that the mainstream Western media has been hyping about). Should I be concerned? Maybe C is even safer than A and B? Should I be given a choice between A, B, C and D? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55212787
Those are good questions. I would imagine that the general population would prefer to get whichever vaccine reduces the chance of coronavirus infection to the lowest probability out of all the vaccines (assuming similar side effects across all the vaccines). If I was able to choose which vaccine I could get, and my ideal one (the most effective one) was currently unavailable, I probably wouldn't mind waiting a few weeks if another shipment of that vaccine was coming in soon, rather than immediately getting a less-ideal alternative (since I'm currently in a reasonably safe/privileged position, working from home every day and not going out). But if a country simply didn't offer the "ideal" vaccine option, or didn't let individuals choose which vaccine they wanted, I could imagine quite a bit of outrage / backlash / people traveling to other countries to try to get their preferred vaccine / possibly even a black market for different vaccines.
I just hope that the vaccines are functionally similar enough, with close-enough efficacy rates and close-enough side effect rates/severities, that this doesn't end up being an issue 
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On December 10 2020 13:38 RKC wrote:Perhaps the more difficult question (from both a scientific and political aspect) is to what extent governments will shape policies on vaccine preference 1) Internal - Can Government X justify investing and mandating Vaccine A and B (instead of C and D) on its citizens? 2) External - Can Government X impose travel restrictions on people originating from countries which chose Vaccine C and D? My government has publicly announced making orders for Vaccine C (let's just say they're not the vaccines that the mainstream Western media has been hyping about). Should I be concerned? Maybe C is even safer than A and B? Should I be given a choice between A, B, C and D? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55212787
1) In terms of mandating, what Government X can or can't do depends on the country's laws and constitution, so it's hard to speak in broad terms. In Brazil, for example, both individual rights and collective health are constitutional rights, so a vaccine mandate would violate the first but would be justified by the latter. If a law or executive order was passed turning the vaccine mandatory, it might go to the supreme court to sort which is the correct interpretation (they have indicated that they would rule in favor of it being mandatory, irc). Overall, vaccine mandatoryness isn't an issue because most vaccines are administered to children, and the brazillian government has a simpler tool to ensure parents vaccinate: if they don't, they can, in an extreme scenario, be charged with negligence and the child taken (after, of course, a long process involving social workers).
In terms of justifying, there are numerous considerations, such as efficacy, logistics, avalability and price.
2) In terms of travel restrictions, governments can more or less do whatever they want, though the flimsier the excuse, the more pushback the government will receive from other coutries. There are probably specific international treaties about equal rules in international travel (idk, tbh), but even if there are, these won't stop governments from doing what they want, it will only strenghthen said pushback.
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EPT
