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Moderna is announcing three new vaccine programs

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Re: Moderna is announcing three new vaccine programs

#91
Can someone fill me in here. I have tried my best to read, and educate myself about these mRNA vaccines. But I have yet to see any conclusive evidence or proof that having the vaccine for COVID-19 prevents you from actually getting COVID-19. And i've seen many people debating this in the comments of other HN threads. It might mean you are asymptomatic, and _less_ likely to spread your symptoms - but it still means you can theoretically harbour the virus and spread it on to others (e.g. through kissing)

So, the question is, given we already have medication which works well as treatment for those with HIV - what exactly will this vaccine do for HIV - if not stop the transmission? My understanding is HIV is primarily spread through sex and sharing of needles. A vaccination program won't stop that.

Thanks in advance. I would love to read more about this.

Re: Moderna is announcing three new vaccine programs

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We can also have dogs "put to sleep" but not people. Depending on where you live, you can have humans "put to sleep" as well. It is legal in 9 US states, Canada, parts of Australlia, and probably otherplaces as well. > You can also keep a dog on a leash. Some people keep their children on a leash as well.

I think in most of those places you have to ask the human first.

No, people just put their kids on leashes in public. It’s... well, wild but the opposite.

Re: Moderna is announcing three new vaccine programs

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any effective HIV vaccine would presumably cause false-positives to the HIV antibody tests. Recently an Australian COVID-19 vaccine candidate trial was halted due to participants developing antibodies to proteins in the vaccine that were taken from HIV genome, causing false-positive on a HIV test. [1] Such false-positives could easily be co-opted by anti-vaxxers especially in light of the the famous Soviet Union disi…

Taking into account anything conspiracy nutjobs have to say about this stuff is an exercise in futility. They will not not find another wild excuse to declare conspiracy.

That might be the case, but it was just another way of saying that causing false positives on HIV tests is a huge issue for a vaccine. It should absolutely be prevented if possible, or at the very least adresssed somehow.

Re: Moderna is announcing three new vaccine programs

#94
post #91

Can someone fill me in here. I have tried my best to read, and educate myself about these mRNA vaccines. But I have yet to see any conclusive evidence or proof that having the vaccine for COVID-19 prevents you from actually getting COVID-19. And i've seen many people debating this in the comments of other HN threads. It might mean you are asymptomatic, and _less_ likely to spread your symptoms - but it still means yo…

As I understand it, the reason we don't have that data about the COVID vaccines is that it's costly to check for it. It's much easier to measure symptomatic cases than it is to regularly test everyone in the study to confirm that they don't have an unsymptomatic case. I believe we do think the vaccines prevent COVID, but we just haven't confirmed that.

Re: Moderna is announcing three new vaccine programs

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't know about PrEP, but from what I've just read it has to be taken daily in order to be effective. A vaccine could be a safer method.

I agree it would be better in the end after it’s approved. I’m thinking about getting the ethics board to allow a trial where you have to give half of the participants a control (and the other half a possibly-ineffective vaccine), when a known-good alternative exists. The other reply has a solid point. Maybe you can find a country where it’s not possible to distribute daily PrEP, but is possible to vaccinate people a…

True. On the other hand, the effectiveness of PrEP is thought to be as low as 74% among people who inject drugs. It might still be possible to find such people for trials. We should still see a statistically significant effect even if they are taking PrEP daily.

Re: Moderna is announcing three new vaccine programs

#96
post #91

Can someone fill me in here. I have tried my best to read, and educate myself about these mRNA vaccines. But I have yet to see any conclusive evidence or proof that having the vaccine for COVID-19 prevents you from actually getting COVID-19. And i've seen many people debating this in the comments of other HN threads. It might mean you are asymptomatic, and _less_ likely to spread your symptoms - but it still means yo…

I'll try. I'm no expert but I read a lot about this and people keep asking me to explain it to them. First of all, there is no way to entirely prevent infections and transmission of something that replicates in poorly perfused (low blood flow in the area) upper airways. The immune system works by carrying stuff to infection sites via blood, and so you need enough blood at the place where the virus is before it can be attacked. That's why nobody is claiming total protection from infection and transmission. However, this is highly misleading - the number of replication cycles before immune response stops further spread is dramatically reduced in a vaccinated person, and therefore both their chances of developing disease, and their chances of passing it on, are severely diminished, and the window of transmission is shortened from days/weeks to hours. So yes, you can theoretically spread it, but once vaccinated you're about as effective at spreading it as a doorknob someone sneezed on, rather than being a walking virus manufacturing factory.

Now, about HIV - HIV is extremely difficult to spread from a single contact (it's got very low virulence) and can be managed very well with treatment, making transmission effectively stop from people in state-of-the-art treatment. However, said treatment is expensive and inconvenient, and has risks of its own, and you need to use it all your life, and it's not available to many people, especially risk groups. By vaccinating people at risk, or large parts of the population, HIV could be eliminated, or dramatically reduced at least, saving the people who would get infected from a life of being medication-dependent, assuming they have access to treatment. So for HIV, a vaccination program won't stop needle sharing and unprotected sex, but will stop people getting even more severe consequences from that. There's a similar vaccination program for hepatitis which has shown excellent results.

Re: Moderna is announcing three new vaccine programs

#97
post #91

Can someone fill me in here. I have tried my best to read, and educate myself about these mRNA vaccines. But I have yet to see any conclusive evidence or proof that having the vaccine for COVID-19 prevents you from actually getting COVID-19. And i've seen many people debating this in the comments of other HN threads. It might mean you are asymptomatic, and _less_ likely to spread your symptoms - but it still means yo…

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Most scientists fully expect the approved vaccines to prevent infection and transmission for some significant % of people. The only thing that hasn't been conclusively proven is what that % number is.

Not to mention there is already limited/preliminary data that the Moderna vaccine reduces asymptomatic infection (https://www.wsj.com/articles/can-you-still-spread-covid-19-a...).

Re: Moderna is announcing three new vaccine programs

#98
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It’s so pervasive and creates all kinds of weird dietary and nervous system issues. I am not an expert, but I think it would be amiss to omit the Lyme disease controversy with these statements. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4477530/ Lyme disease has a simple antibiotic treatment. The Lyme serology test has high false-positive rate. There might be many people who believe they have Lyme disease therefor…

I still think it’s worth. The amount of life lost to people with chronic Lyme is significant, even if the number of infected is low.

But as the parent explained, many of these chronic Lyme patients may be just misdiagnosed. They believe they have Lyme, but the problem is some other disease.

Re: Moderna is announcing three new vaccine programs

#99
post #96
post #91

Can someone fill me in here. I have tried my best to read, and educate myself about these mRNA vaccines. But I have yet to see any conclusive evidence or proof that having the vaccine for COVID-19 prevents you from actually getting COVID-19. And i've seen many people debating this in the comments of other HN threads. It might mean you are asymptomatic, and _less_ likely to spread your symptoms - but it still means yo…

I'll try. I'm no expert but I read a lot about this and people keep asking me to explain it to them. First of all, there is no way to entirely prevent infections and transmission of something that replicates in poorly perfused (low blood flow in the area) upper airways. The immune system works by carrying stuff to infection sites via blood, and so you need enough blood at the place where the virus is before it can be…

> So yes, you can theoretically spread it, but once vaccinated you're about as effective at spreading it as a doorknob someone sneezed on

You should most definitely point out that yours is a conjecture. A reasonable one, but still completely unsupported by clinical data - not because data refutes it, but because there is no data. All trials only examined the reduction of symptomatic infection; they didn't even try to measure whether vaccinated people were able or not to spread the virus.

I would expect your conjecture to be true, but humans are weird, viruses are weird and medicine should be based in evidence, and evidence isn't in yet.

Re: Moderna is announcing three new vaccine programs

#100
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some more detail in this article from July, they’re using mRNA to make the body produce virus like particles https://www.aidsmap.com/news/jul-2020/novel-vaccine-induces-...

Any effective HIV vaccine would presumably cause false-positives to the HIV antibody tests. Recently an Australian COVID-19 vaccine candidate trial was halted due to participants developing antibodies to proteins in the vaccine that were taken from HIV genome, causing false-positive on a HIV test. [1] Such false-positives could easily be co-opted by anti-vaxxers especially in light of the the famous Soviet Union disi…

In Spain we had a snow storm and we have now people calling it an hoax and saying that it was not snow but plastic sent by the government.

What I mean by that anecdote is that conspiracy theorist don't need anything special for creating their theories, they cannot be the ones leading the agenda. Work on explaining why and how these vaccines work / create FPs is the way to go.

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