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Making Vaccine

lesswrong.com

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Re: Making Vaccine

#211

Post by [deleted] »

subrat_rout wrote: post #202
flobosg wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What happens if a sub-sequence of peptide matches with one of our own's body proteins and our immune system starts building antibody against it? The peptide sequences are listed on the whitepaper, so it’s a matter of BLASTing[1] them against the human proteome to check for possible matches. I just did it and there doesn’t seem to be any statistically significant hit. [1]: https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi

Ok great to know. But my intention here is to convey that it is dangerous to biohacking a molecule/compound that a user is going to put in his/her body. The peptides after synthesis needs to be rigorously tested(QC/QA) for the desired sequences and to make sure the absence of any undesired epiotopes mixed.

[deleted]

Re: Making Vaccine

#212

Post by xirbeosbwo1234 »

CivBase wrote: post #22

Nations have spent thousands of dollars per person on just mitigation efforts and economic stimulus. Meanwhile we have had the ability for months to vaccinate an entire household for a measly $1k? What's the catch? Is it significantly riskier than the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines? Is it easy to make a mistake while producing this and end up with something ineffective or harmful? Is it just not particularly effective?

The catch is that we have no evidence it's effective and little evidence it's safe.

It might work or it might kill you. Please don't go snorting it until we know which.

Re: Making Vaccine

#213

Post by xirbeosbwo1234 »

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…

The scientific method isn't "make up something plausible-sounding and then assume it will work". That is, at best, the first step.

Re: Making Vaccine

#215

Post by xirbeosbwo1234 »

sirsar wrote: post #147

Many of the negative comments here seem to have missed something important: > Consider this a pre-registration. I intend to share my test results here. How about, instead of totally dismissing this - in classic HN fashion - with "this can never work" or "this is magical thinking", we let the guy share his results? If it works, that will be a massively important result. If not, it won't be surprising, but _at least he…

>If it works, that will be a massively important result.

1. No, it won't be a massively important result. It might have been important a year ago, but now it will be completely and utterly useless. Testing a vaccine takes a long time. It maybe kind of working and maybe kind of being safe is irrelevant when we have already started mass vaccinations.

2. The author has no good way of testing it. He will take an off-the-shelf antibody test, but no one will know how to interpret those results.

Re: Making Vaccine

#216

Post by avs733 »

bawolff wrote: post #54
avs733 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quality control. Precision. Repeatability. Certification. Knowledge. Distribution. Efficacy. Evidence. It's like the difference between heroin and opioids

Heroin actually gets the job done and you can tell if its working. Not so with this.

Agreed. Was looking for an analogy and my brain spat out an ad not a search result

Re: Making Vaccine

#217

Post by avs733 »

jpttsn wrote: post #150
Imnimo wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would grant that it has a lot of the trapping of the scientific method, and uses a lot of the terminology. But I think we're kidding ourselves if we pretend that there's much knowledge to be gained here. It's a non-controlled trial with n=2 using ingredients of uncertain purity and a loose experimental protocol ("We’ll add the other three peptides, take another few weeks of boosters, maybe adjust frequency and/or d…

On the other hand, while the sample size is small, you can’t beat the representativeness of their sample. Self experiment, not in order to generalize conclusions to the rest of the world, but to find useful conclusions for own use.

It does not have a sample size. It was not sampled and one is not a size.

The most basic cases of statistics run on point estimate evaluations. With one datum you just have a point, not an estimate, and you cannot evaluate anything.

Re: Making Vaccine

#218

Post by avs733 »

jonas21 wrote: post #192
habryka wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author said he is going to try to do measurements to the best of what is easily possible: > So, we’ll do (up to) two more blood tests. The first will be two weeks after our third (weekly) dose; that one is the “optimistic” test, in case three doses is more-than-enough already. That one is optimistic for another reason as well: synthesis/delivery of three of the nine peptides was delayed, so our first three doses…

And yet he titled the post "Making Vaccine". Unless you make it all the way through to the end, you might assume that he actually did make a vaccine -- and judging by the comments on HN, it looks like some people are assuming this. It all seems a bit... irresponsible?

Irresponsible or less wrong?

Re: Making Vaccine

#219

Post by avs733 »

asitov wrote: post #34
avs733 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quality control. Precision. Repeatability. Certification. Knowledge. Distribution. Efficacy. Evidence. It's like the difference between heroin and opioids

Are you saying you wouldn't take the heroin version of a covid vax?

I wouldn’t take the heroin version of anything unless the alternative was highly likely and extremely bad

Would I drink murky water in the woods? Maybe? Am I about to die of thirst and have no other clean water sources?

Would I take a vaccine made in a dude’s garage and posted on less wrong? Maybe? But only if there are no other options to keep me from a disease way worse than the horrors that covid actually is.

But it’s worth recognizing that this fear and noise in the system is the same type of thing that gave us an Arizona couple dead from drinking fish tank cleaner.

Re: Making Vaccine

#220

Post by mlyle »

robocat wrote: post #139
jerf wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have suspected for much of the last year that a lot of people are running on an unexamined "Only crazy people think vaccines cause autism -> Only crazy people think vaccines are ever dangerous in any way -> All vaccines are perfectly safe" psuedo-syllogism. This is false. Put another way, the very fact that we run such massive tests on them before deploying them is itself evidence that the wrong ones can be very da…

“According to the CDC, in the United States as of January 19 there were 45 cases of anaphylaxsis with the Pfizer shot out of the several million given.” https://www.wtkr.com/news/gloucester-resident-dies-within-ho...

Yup, and this is a few times worse than we're used to with widely used vaccines.

For a rare disease, this would be pushing the rate of side effects and risk that is acceptable. But you've got a huge risk of catching COVID, and COVID is many orders of magnitude more dangerous than the vaccine. At least for now: if COVID vaccination is required in the long term, vaccines may have to get better.

An issue here is that no one could risk the vaccine failing, with the limited time we had and the massive trial. In a normal process, it's likely that smaller doses would have been selected. But here it looks like both Pfizer and Moderna "rounded up" a bit from what phase 2 trials pointed to as doses. If I were in charge, I'd have funded a non-inferiority trial in December for 1/3rd dose, which would put us in a position in February-March to massively stretch supplies and reduce side effects.

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