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Making Vaccine

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Re: Making Vaccine

#261

Post by tim333 »

kneel wrote: post #9

Curious whether short peptides are sufficient to generate a formidable immune response. Looking at the paper cited, it's not trivial to detect T-cell immunity so I'm not sure a general antibody test would be able to pick up an immune response. It's probably better than doing nothing, but it's not clear whether it's even in the same ballpark as a Pfizer vaccine. edit: I'm not sure about t-cell vs b-cell responses in i…

I rather doubt snorting some peptides as described will do much. There are some attempts to make actual nasal covid vaccines and I think they use chimpanzee adenovirus vectors. Ie you get a virus that gives chips colds and add some covid bits on. See the Indian one for example https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-unders...

I think they also were talking of trying the AstraZenca one nasally which is also a modified chimp virus.

Re: Making Vaccine

#262

Post by rwallace »

chillee wrote: post #242
hardwaregeek wrote: post #231

This is an impressive amount of hubris. Does the author assume that all the certifications and testing stages were for show? I don't hold the highest view of LessWrong and the whole rationalist shtick. This post exemplifies why. Underneath this post is the assumption that the author is so much smarter than everybody else because they are Rational with a capital R and can therefore harness the power of science to make…

From https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/webmd-and-the-tragedy-... > When [an outsider] asserts an opinion, he has only one thing he's optimizing for - being right. > When the Director of the CDC asserts an opinion, she has to optimize for two things - being right, and keeping power. If she doesn't optimize for the second, she gets replaced as CDC Director by someone who does.

The second statement is unfortunately true.

But be careful of taking the first one at face value. The outsider might be optimizing for being right. He might also be optimizing for looking good in his social circle, confirming some self-image in his own mind, establishing himself as a prudent person who holds sensible beliefs, or establishing himself as a daring person who holds antiestablishment beliefs. The process that brought him to your attention, might also have selected him for noteworthiness by all sorts of criteria, only one of which is being right; that counts as an optimization process in and of itself.

Which doesn't mean the outsider isn't right. Maybe he is. But be careful of just assuming it.

Re: Making Vaccine

#263

Post by flobosg »

folli wrote: post #257

Besides the obvious safety concerns, I also have some serious doubts about the efficacy. It's quite well known that the glycosylation of the spike protein ("decorating" sugar structures) contributes significantly to immunerecognition (see e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-71748-7 ). By chemically synthesizing naked (non-glycosylated) protein fragments, you likely end up with the wrong antigen.

That’s a good point. In this case the spike-derived peptides have no known N-linked glycosylation sites[1] and the paper you mentioned showed that at least some of those epitopes are accessible even when taking glycans into consideration.

[1]: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6501/330

Re: Making Vaccine

#264

Post by hardwaregeek »

rwallace wrote: post #262
chillee wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/webmd-and-the-tragedy-... > When [an outsider] asserts an opinion, he has only one thing he's optimizing for - being right. > When the Director of the CDC asserts an opinion, she has to optimize for two things - being right, and keeping power. If she doesn't optimize for the second, she gets replaced as CDC Director by someone who does.

The second statement is unfortunately true. But be careful of taking the first one at face value. The outsider might be optimizing for being right. He might also be optimizing for looking good in his social circle, confirming some self-image in his own mind, establishing himself as a prudent person who holds sensible beliefs, or establishing himself as a daring person who holds antiestablishment beliefs. The process…

Exactly. The Rational movement is well optimized for signaling their intelligence. Everything from the fanfiction to the explicit partitioning of people into rational and non-rational groups is meant to signal how smart they are. Sometimes that means they encourage genuinely smart practices. Autodidactism is great. Learning math and computer science is great. But the game is fundamentally to appear smart, often via contrarian views. That doesn't always align with safe medical practices.

Re: Making Vaccine

#265

Post by andai »

wimagguc wrote: post #256

If the goal is immunity to Covid-19, isn't it simpler to just: catch it? To be on the safe side, they could have lowered the risks of a bad outcome by things like (1) catching a smaller viral load (2) actually prepare for it and catch it at a convenient time etc. (Someone who's actually interested would research this longer.) Surely it's safer than the home cooked vaccine, and surely the favorable option on a risk vs…

This is my perspective. (No luck yet!) From what I am hearing it doesn't matter though, I will need to get vaccinated anyway to be allowed to travel etc.

Re: Making Vaccine

#266

Post by ianlevesque »

wimagguc wrote: post #256

If the goal is immunity to Covid-19, isn't it simpler to just: catch it? To be on the safe side, they could have lowered the risks of a bad outcome by things like (1) catching a smaller viral load (2) actually prepare for it and catch it at a convenient time etc. (Someone who's actually interested would research this longer.) Surely it's safer than the home cooked vaccine, and surely the favorable option on a risk vs…

Enjoy your round two with a variant though.

Re: Making Vaccine

#267

Post by andy_ppp »

nlitened wrote: post #258
andy_ppp wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a complete straw man, we’ve no idea of the complex layers and motivations of person one and two. The outsider could be a troll and the Director of the CDC probably got there on merit, looking after their power might not be an issue at all; people could just respect and like her as a talented leader. You just don’t know, but simplifying things like this does make “proving” yourself right a lot easier.

> looking after their power might not be an issue at all; people could just respect and like her as a talented leader This does sound good, though I have seen zero examples of this fairy tale coming true in the real life around me.

Okay so Elon Musk, Collison brothers, even people like Bezos (while immoral on the tax stuff) are all extremely effective. The management at the pension fund I work at are very good at their jobs too... there’s plenty of examples of one is willing to look.

Re: Making Vaccine

#268

Post by 1996 »

ascorbic wrote: post #246
hardwaregeek wrote: post #231

This is an impressive amount of hubris. Does the author assume that all the certifications and testing stages were for show? I don't hold the highest view of LessWrong and the whole rationalist shtick. This post exemplifies why. Underneath this post is the assumption that the author is so much smarter than everybody else because they are Rational with a capital R and can therefore harness the power of science to make…

The truly rational (and ethical) way to get a vaccine early would have been to volunteer in an early-stage trial. You'd even get paid! The risk would be lower, and the likely efficacy would be higher, because even an unproven candidate is more likely to work than something you cooked up in your kitchen. In some early stages there isn't even the risk that you would be in the placebo arm. And of course there's the extr…

> And of course there's the extra benefit that you would be helping the wider community, though I'm not sure how important that is to true Rationalists.

Actually, that's a net negative for me: whatever benefits the community may create some warm happy feelings (kumbaya!) that may reduce the correctness of my decision.

Re: Making Vaccine

#269

Post by ascorbic »

1996 wrote: post #268
ascorbic wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The truly rational (and ethical) way to get a vaccine early would have been to volunteer in an early-stage trial. You'd even get paid! The risk would be lower, and the likely efficacy would be higher, because even an unproven candidate is more likely to work than something you cooked up in your kitchen. In some early stages there isn't even the risk that you would be in the placebo arm. And of course there's the extr…

> And of course there's the extra benefit that you would be helping the wider community, though I'm not sure how important that is to true Rationalists. Actually, that's a net negative for me: whatever benefits the community may create some warm happy feelings (kumbaya!) that may reduce the correctness of my decision.

Why would feeling happy reduce the correctness of the decision? Isn't happiness the only utility that matters?

Re: Making Vaccine

#270

Post by ascorbic »

tim333 wrote: post #255
ascorbic wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The truly rational (and ethical) way to get a vaccine early would have been to volunteer in an early-stage trial. You'd even get paid! The risk would be lower, and the likely efficacy would be higher, because even an unproven candidate is more likely to work than something you cooked up in your kitchen. In some early stages there isn't even the risk that you would be in the placebo arm. And of course there's the extr…

I don't think it was that easy to get in. There are usually only a few thousand in early stage trials and millions who would be up for it.

Have you tried? There were still single-arm, paid stage 2 trials recruiting in the UK in December (I can't remember which vaccine). I would've signed-up, but I'm already on the (placebo-controlled, unpaid) J&J stage 3 trial so can't take part in another. A stage 2/3 trial is still more likely to be effective than the homebrew approach, even after accounting for the 50% chance you've been given a placebo. As for how I got onto the stage 3 trial: I signed up here in the summer, and they contacted me in November: https://www.nhs.uk/sign-up-to-be-contacted-for-research
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