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It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine

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

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In particular, when COVID19 was first spreading but we knew about it back in February countries could've easily contact traced to flush it out and then quarantined all incoming travelers to keep it out. But most countries deemed those actions too extreme and economically damaging so instead let it come spread and do way more damage.

What you're proposing is highly experimental and probably wouldn't work. There's no single country in the world that has been able to restrain the sars2 virus despite spending millions trying to do so.

Other than Australia, China, New Zealand, and Vietnam, you mean? And China managed that after it had already spread widely domestically; the others were quick on their feet.

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

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In particular, when COVID19 was first spreading but we knew about it back in February countries could've easily contact traced to flush it out and then quarantined all incoming travelers to keep it out. But most countries deemed those actions too extreme and economically damaging so instead let it come spread and do way more damage.

What you're proposing is highly experimental and probably wouldn't work. There's no single country in the world that has been able to restrain the sars2 virus despite spending millions trying to do so.

It's just not realistic for the US to be able to match the performance of countries with advanced healthcare capabilities and resources like Vietnam.

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

#233
post #71

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.

"we'd have an easier time keeping people at home" [citation needed]

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

#234
post #31

The layman's explanation I've seen about how these mRNA vaccines work is that they get some of your cells to manufacture a protein that is characteristic of the virus, which the cells release and the immune system takes care of. Then later if you get the virus, the immune system already recognizes that protein and takes care of the virus. Question: why do we need to have our cells make the protein? Couldn't we synthe…

1. In 40 years, there have only been 20 protein drugs approved. 2. Yes the cells go back to to normal after the mRNA degrades. The mRNA does not last long, it is like data in ram vs data on a hard drive. See this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4-DMKNT7xI

Why have there only been 20 protein drugs approved?

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

#235
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

True. But the data to date indicates that it boils down to marginalized vs not. Covid has done well with nursing homes and lower socioeconomic minority communities. People absolutely care about the children. But they care about what threatens them directly as well.

The profile to date is not close enough to home for most (white) middle class Americans. But that lack of fear to some extent, at this point, is statistically justified. That is, once you get outside the sweet spot the chance of death declines.

The virus is real. The deaths are real. However, despite the media hyperbol (and complete lack of basic lack of understanding of data and data analysis) how those deaths are distributed is uneven. Very much so.

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

#236
post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're proposing is highly experimental and probably wouldn't work. There's no single country in the world that has been able to restrain the sars2 virus despite spending millions trying to do so.

Other than Australia, China, New Zealand, and Vietnam, you mean? And China managed that after it had already spread widely domestically; the others were quick on their feet.

China welded people into their homes, forced people into the hospital at gun point, and disappeared any doctor that actually wanted to warn the world about it back in December.

There was also a recent document leaked that told us what many already suspected: they lied about their numbers. This isn't much of a surprise, since they stopped giving any updates pretty quickly into the pandemic.

I have family that live in China. Government officials are fired if Covid spreads at all, which will only result in officials fudging the numbers to save their job.

Vietnam used some of the same tactics and Australia is mostly desert and an island that is easy to control when it comes to borders.

There was a rumor that Trump mentioned to a book author that he thought Covid was airborne..and people lost their shit and wanted him in jail. If he implemented the same tactics as China, he would be on trial for mass murder.

The US is punished for actually telling the truth about Covid and testing. It seems like many people would much rather hear complete lies about the numbers to make themselves feel better.

Trump warned us back in January and wanted to close the borders and the Democrats told us to hug an Asian person and go to Chinese new year celebrations.

Taiwan warned the WHO back in December and was promptly dismissed. The mainstream US media silenced anyone that went against the WHO.

Corrupt organizations like the WHO and the government of China are to blame. China caused this mess and covered it up for months.

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

#237
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another possibility: something that generates mild cold/flu symptoms but does long term damage that you won't notice right away. This would cause the "Bob had it and he's fine!" mentality to spread as it currently is. An example of this may be HIV.

Or COVID! There's been some reports about long term damage to people's lungs and such. To be frank, that's what scares me a lot more than the acute disease as someone who's still relatively young.

Have you actually researched that though? I have yet to see a study that examined people’s lungs before they got COVID as a comparison.

And it would be worth knowing the numbers before jumping on the fear wagon. Is it 1 in 10 young people or 1 in 10,000?

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

#238
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

On the other hand the lockdowns were extremely destructive on children. Loss of schools, education, parents losing jobs, domestic violence, suicides.

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

#239

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…

> In the case of a pandemic, we need to make better use of volunteers.

You’d run the risk of have a non-representative sample and wrongly estimating the effectiveness of the vaccine as well as possibly missing side effects.

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

#240

I am very concerned that moderna is such an incredibly inexperienced company when it comes to actually delivering products. Companies like Pfizer and Astra etc have lots of infrastructure for manufacturing and logistics, as they’ve been making drugs for years. Moderna hasn’t ever released a product before, and now we need them to successfully make hundreds of millions or billions of doses of it very quickly? I have e…

McKesson is handling distribution for Moderna, and one of the main goals of Operation Warp Speed was to ramp up production using companies who are good at it so the vaccine developers wouldn't necessarily have to do large scale manufacturing themselves.
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