Making Vaccine • Hacker News Board

Re: Making Vaccine

#161

Post by throwaway2245 » Sat, Feb 06, 2021, 1:01 AM UTC

shuckles wrote: post #145

flr03 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not suprised to see this post so popular on Less Wrong/the rational community. I can easily imagine the fascination they have for crazy scientists doing experimentations on them selves, cutting all the corners and operating at fair distance of ethical concerns. I'm not very convinced by the "Motivations" section of the article by the way, but that's a nice stunt nonetheless, and quite fascinating indeed.

This is unnecessarily dismissive. IIRC, Josiah Zayner home brewed a vaccine which led to a positive antibody test, which is in and of itself a pretty impressive outcome given the resources he had available to deploy.

The Bloomberg link posted above states he had a positive antibody test before administering the home brew.

Re: Making Vaccine

#162

Post by maxerickson » Sat, Feb 06, 2021, 1:02 AM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #159

maxerickson wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It lists the total population for each age group. Just the 35 to 44 age group is above 99.98% (given the death counts in younger age groups it's obviously still true if you include them in the calculation): (1-7057/41659144)*100=99.983% I expect the individual probability of surviving infection is not that high for each member of the group though. It's not clear if that meaning is intended anywhere above.

> 41659144 That's the total population of all 35 to 44 year olds in all of the USA. > 99.983% That's 0.02% of all 35 to 44 year olds have died, including those who never had COVID. IN ONE MONTH, not including the people who died two months ago, or 3 months ago.

"from 1/1/2020 to 1/30/2021"

It's for the entire period of the pandemic.

You are correct in pointing out that it isn't looking at deaths/infection.

Re: Making Vaccine

#163

Post by throwaway2245 » Sat, Feb 06, 2021, 1:03 AM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #82

Imnimo wrote: post #70

Without any evidence of efficacy, this article doesn't strike me as much different from "I went into the woods and gathered up some herbs and made myself an elixir that cures covid". I guess it's neat that you did all that stuff, but unless it actually helps, who cares? Doing it with science-y ingredients instead of herbs and ordered them online instead of harvesting them from plants doesn't magically mean it actuall…

The difference however is that this article is based on the scientific method, and the go into the woods and gather herbs is based on mythology. Now the reasonableness of experimenting on yourself, even in a scientifically "valid" way, is certainly arguable. But the elements are all there; Theory of the Immune system, Hypothesis that it can be trained in this way, experiment that trains immune system in a known with…

Does "go into the woods and gather herbs" follow the scientific method if I write my observations neatly in a blog post?

The author says they will accept that their homebrew worked if they get a positive antibody test (yet, plenty of people will get a positive antibody test without any administration of homebrew or vaccine); but will not accept that it failed if there is a negative antibody test.

As such, their hypothesis is not falsifiable and it is not science.

Re: Making Vaccine

#164

Post by marvin » Sat, Feb 06, 2021, 1:08 AM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #74

marvin wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it be immoral if they were offered a million dollars?Honest question, because it feels like the philosophy might not match up with common experience. It feels like an interesting question. People voluntarily risk worse for less pay in other fields, e.g. the military. And if it wasn't immoral, what is the dollar limit?

Money is worth different amounts to different people. Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos will never risk their life for "only" a million bucks. Find a depressed + suicidal dude somewhere else, and they may be personally willing to risk their life for just $100. Making an industry of people who are willing to harm themselves for money is... probably not the business we should be encouraging. And that's assuming everyone is "pla…

Good points. It's obvious that the potential for ethical problems in such a situation is huge.

I've thought for similar questions that a required baseline would be to at least have a society that provides a viable minimum social safety net, as well as free healthcare. When external conditions compel people to risk their health for survival, it is impossible to ensure sound ethics.

The point about ensuring that science and scientists can be trusted in the future is also an excellent point.

Re: Making Vaccine

#165

Post by Trasmatta » Sat, Feb 06, 2021, 1:10 AM UTC

loriverkutya wrote: post #156

nostromo wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For this age range, the survival rate for everyone is 99.98%. It'd be even higher if your screened aggressively for comorbidities / general health and provided everyone with top notch healthcare knowing in advance they have been exposed . I would sign up for this in a heartbeat. Not only for the cash payment -- but you'd be a local hero and you could feel good for the rest of your life about taking a small risk to sa…

So 2 person out of 10 000 dies. You would be a local hero and you would probably feel good for the rest of your life which is 2 weeks time. Also, let’s talk about long COVID. Nobody knows how long is it stay with you or if you even recover from it. You are a hero but you cannot climb the stairs anymore. And you will be forgotten in months.

Except the point is people were willing to sign up knowing that is exactly the risk they're undertaking.

The alternative that we chose was hundreds of thousands of more deaths and millions of more cases. From people who didn't sign up for it.

Re: Making Vaccine

#166

Post by namesbc » Sat, Feb 06, 2021, 1:10 AM UTC

tinus_hn wrote: post #123

namesbc wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order to use this method to test a vaccine for deployment to people over 65, you need people over 65 in your control group. This means you are choosing people to murder.

A ridiculous exaggeration; you’re asking for volunteers to take a risk. Not killing them. People can decide for themselves to take risks. You may not agree with the choices they make and that is your problem. Not theirs.

No, I am saying that volunteer challenge trials don't test what want to test so their results are useless at best, and murder at worst.

Re: Making Vaccine

#167

Post by shuckles » Sat, Feb 06, 2021, 1:11 AM UTC

throwaway2245 wrote: post #161

shuckles wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is unnecessarily dismissive. IIRC, Josiah Zayner home brewed a vaccine which led to a positive antibody test, which is in and of itself a pretty impressive outcome given the resources he had available to deploy.

The Bloomberg link posted above states he had a positive antibody test before administering the home brew.

That link seems to be quite incomplete. For example, it never mentions that there were two other people involved, at least one of whom didn’t have the same confounding issues. Here are the results: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WTuRBuy74KlaBzLrd0aTZl85...

Re: Making Vaccine

#168

Post by namesbc » Sat, Feb 06, 2021, 1:12 AM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #133

namesbc wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order to use this method to test a vaccine for deployment to people over 65, you need people over 65 in your control group. This means you are choosing people to murder.

Do separate branches then. Use challenge trials to accelerate deployment to under 30s (or whatever) and natural infection for other age brackets. I honestly haven't thought deeply about the ethics, but it's really concerning that it has become such a hard rule that preventing people from injuring themselves in a particular way (we don't prevent lots of other forms of injury) is somehow obviously superior to letting t…

The vaccine is going to be deployed to communities at risk first, you can't test vulnerable populations via volunteer challenge trials.

Re: Making Vaccine

#169

Post by Trasmatta » Sat, Feb 06, 2021, 1:14 AM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #66

nostromo wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2,000,000+ people are dead because we didn't take this path. The risk to testers under 40 would have been negligible. I'm not being flippant about other peoples' lives -- I would have signed up myself if the compensation was high enough.

> The risk to testers under 40 would have been negligible. Luke Letlow (age 41) says otherwise, since he's dead. Okay, he's above 40, but he's high-profile and easy for me to remember. Plenty of sub 40 year olds have died. Even among the survivors... plenty of young and healthy 20-30 year olds are having month-long recoveries, unable to breath at their old capacity. Purposefully damaging the control group (who by def…

Why is it immoral to allow people to take a risk that they explicitly consent to (ensuring they have full knowledge of the potential consequences), but not immoral to let hundreds of thousands or millions more people die that you could have potentially saved if you undertook the challenge trials?

A few bad cases and deaths that were consented to, versus hundreds of thousands to millions of cases and deaths from people that didn't consent. This morality scale doesn't make sense.

Re: Making Vaccine

#170

Post by wtallis » Sat, Feb 06, 2021, 1:16 AM UTC

throwaway2245 wrote: post #163

ChuckMcM wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference however is that this article is based on the scientific method, and the go into the woods and gather herbs is based on mythology. Now the reasonableness of experimenting on yourself, even in a scientifically "valid" way, is certainly arguable. But the elements are all there; Theory of the Immune system, Hypothesis that it can be trained in this way, experiment that trains immune system in a known with…

Does "go into the woods and gather herbs" follow the scientific method if I write my observations neatly in a blog post? The author says they will accept that their homebrew worked if they get a positive antibody test (yet, plenty of people will get a positive antibody test without any administration of homebrew or vaccine); but will not accept that it failed if there is a negative antibody test. As such, their hypot…

I think you misunderstand what "falsifiable" means. This hypothesis is absolutely falsifiable. He just doesn't have the resources to conclusively falsify this hypothesis, because he's working with a small sample size and doesn't have affordable access to testing for immunity in the mucus lining.