It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine • Hacker News Board

Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine

#151

Post by djsumdog » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 7:21 PM UTC

jfarlow wrote: post #123

djsumdog wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just proteins. The cells infected with the mRNA present those proteins on the outside of the cell to be recognized by other cells which start a chain process. Skip to around 12:30 in here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35Idb_lCU4o He goes through the entire biochem process. Even the cells infected with the mRNA will need to be removed by the immune system using cytotoxic T-cells, so they need to get the ch…

>Even the cells infected with the mRNA will need to be removed by the immune system using cytotoxic T-cells I don't think that this is accurate.

I'm going off what he says in the video.

Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine

#152

Post by atonse » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 7:21 PM UTC

zbrozek wrote: post #105

tehjoker wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not since January, but maybe after the phase 1 trials and the dosing schedule was figured out. To be honest, if it doesn't come out that they were using it off the books, either they're suckers or we are.

Would it even be a problem if they did? Like presumably people are generally free to do things to themselves. If they self-administered and they were allowed to consume the resource (e.g., it wasn't theft) who was harmed?

My guess is that while the people probably wouldn't be in trouble, the company might get in trouble with regulators for allowing it to happen.

But that's a complete, uneducated (but I think, logical) guess.

Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine

#153

Post by atonse » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 7:23 PM UTC

jdminhbg wrote: post #147

causality0 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For every person who dies of COVID, nineteen people are hospitalized. Eighteen of those will have permanent heart damage. Ten will have permanent lung damage. Three will have strokes. Two will have neurological damage leading to permanent muscular disability. Two will have neurological damage leading to cognitive impairment. Don't be afraid of covid killing you. Be afraid of it turning you into a mentally disabled cr…

I often wonder how many people actually believe things like this, versus are willing to say them loudly in the hopes that they'll make others take the virus more seriously. Because none of this is remotely evidence-based.

Yeah I'm highly skeptical of those numbers but "Long Covid" is an actual thing we still don't fully understand.

So GP's statement is partially true.

Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine

#154

Post by freeflight » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 7:25 PM UTC

zamfi wrote: post #100

jancsika wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So $25 million on a decentralized system to spread the idea not to wear a mask or social distance during a pandemic, and another $25 million on a vaccine.

You’re being downvoted presumably for snark, which as a lover of snark I can’t support. However, your point is also mislaid: there were plenty of anti-maskers at the time of the 1918 Influenza pandemic. Ignoring or selectively using facts to support the narrative you wish were true did not start with the internet!

There even was a whole "Anti-Mask League" in SF [0], with others demanding jail time for "mask slackers" [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Mask_League_of_San_Franci...

[1] https://www.history.com/news/1918-pandemic-public-health-cam...

Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine

#155

Post by unchocked » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 7:26 PM UTC

WalterGR wrote: post #122

unchocked wrote: post #40

Yes. We need accelerated testing. In the case of a pandemic, we need to make better use of volunteers. I believe that as the history of this one is reckoned with, one of the more interesting moral failures to be acknowledged will be the failure to utilize challenge testing protocols with willing volunteers (give them the vaccine and then deliberately expose them to the virus. It is a calculated risk.) Earlier phases…

We need accelerated testing. In the case of a pandemic, we need to make better use of volunteers. How would you attract volunteers for these less-safe clinical trials? Pay them money?

You'd ask. I recall seeing multiple human interest stories about people who were eager to volunteer for challenge trials. I believe challenge trials are how the original vaccines were tested in the earlier 20th century prior to contemporary developments in medical ethics.

And you'll get volunteers. It's a rational decision for effective altruism. Say you face a 1% chance of death but a 50% chance of substantially contributing to saving a million lives. If that's technically possible, highly informed people should have the opportunity to make that choice.

I believe some of the earliest challenge testers were the developers of the drug themselves.

Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine

#156

Post by hcknwscommenter » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 7:27 PM UTC

jdminhbg wrote: post #147

causality0 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For every person who dies of COVID, nineteen people are hospitalized. Eighteen of those will have permanent heart damage. Ten will have permanent lung damage. Three will have strokes. Two will have neurological damage leading to permanent muscular disability. Two will have neurological damage leading to cognitive impairment. Don't be afraid of covid killing you. Be afraid of it turning you into a mentally disabled cr…

I often wonder how many people actually believe things like this, versus are willing to say them loudly in the hopes that they'll make others take the virus more seriously. Because none of this is remotely evidence-based.

You seem so confident, but cite nothing (just like the comment you are referring to). However, I do note that all the symptoms noted in the comment above are actual symptoms found in survivors of severe COVID. I'm not sure about the proportions though, but is it a stretch to believe that patients who are hospitalized (by definition, severely impacted by COVID) very often have long-term damage?

Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine

#157

Post by hcknwscommenter » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 7:30 PM UTC

lostlogin wrote: post #136

xienze wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Flu $90b per year versus the covid cost of $16t. I mean that miiiight have something to do with the fact that we basically ignore the flu despite tens of thousands of deaths every year. Whereas with Covid we collectively decided to shut down the entire world.

Yes, and why were the shutdowns done? If you compare what happens with uncontrolled covid spread to a those of a flu season, they aren’t really all that similar. Even with the lockdowns, the deaths have been considerably more than tens of thousands.

Wrong. First, you have no uncontrolled covid spread to compare to. You are actually comparing tightly locked down COVID spread to a normal flu season. And COVID is still killing a lot more people. The closest example for an "uncontrolled covid spread" would be Bergamo in Jan-Mar 2020. Is that what you want repeated world-wide? The death rate there was astronomical.

Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine

#158

Post by stainforth » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 7:31 PM UTC

melling wrote: post #2

The technology was years in the making. DARPA was also involved. “In October 2013, DARPA awarded Moderna up to approximately $25 million to research and develop potential mRNA medicines as a part of DARPA’s Autonomous Diagnostics to Enable Prevention and Therapeutics, or ADEPT, program”

We should always remind ourselves that government is the best investor of first resort.

Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine

#159

Post by NoodleIncident » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 7:31 PM UTC

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #135

jwilk wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it obvious?

What this class of vaccine does is make a bunch of foreign proteins for your immune system to attack in your arm without actually infecting you with the disease. So you get inflammation and soreness at the injection site, and this is not from the physics of having an injection. The placebo arm injects with a saline solution, so there's no immune response, and you miss those symptoms.

It might have been the trial for a different vaccine; I think it was the one someone on this site was participating in? But in that trial, the control was another proven vaccine for something most people don't commonly get vaccinated for.

Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine

#160

Post by jtwaleson » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 7:32 PM UTC

mrits wrote: post #71

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #47

I’m glad to see this and we need to concentrate on speeding this process up. This isn’t the last pandemic and all things considered this one was a pretty benign one to have to fight. The next one might not just kill mainly the old and weak and might need much more than a mask (that we still can’t get people to wear!) to prevent its spread. Hopefully before then, we can work to get everyone more on the same page and h…

To get worse than COVID you'd need a virus that takes a long time to develop symptoms and then has a high death rate. In that scenario there would be a lot more public fear and we'd have an easier time keeping people at home. So I'm still of the opinion it's harder to have a worse situation than COVID.

If the death rates in children vs. elderly were reversed with COVID, all hell would have broken loose. There is nothing people are more protective over than their kids. Behavior would have been completely different.