Well done you will deliver faster than all the other companies with the regulatory overhead.
Making Vaccine
321–330 of 378 posts
Re: Making Vaccine
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many reasons - mostly that it makes you incorrectly discount the negatives, incorrectly assert some possibility, neglect some second or third order consequences etc. Check out what I think is called the depression correctness hypothesis (at least IIRC): clinically depressed people cast more accurate judgements and evaluations. I want to use the full power of that by taking decision that have the potential to increase…
But even if you are a unique human whose utility is entirely unrelated to the sum of warm fuzzy feelings they feel, arbitrarily avoiding stuff which makes you happy is an irrational cognitive bias which will often if not even usually (since warm fuzzy feelings evolved from preference for certain types of collaboration improving survival odds) lead to worse material outcomes. The Depression Correctness Hypothesis expe…
> arbitrarily avoiding stuff which makes you happy is an irrational cognitive bias
I do not generally avoid that - only when it comes to serious decisions. For a pandemic not seen for the last 100 years, I think this precaution is warranted.
Last time I did was when I was receiving conflicting signals - LW was strongly pro crypto, HN strongly against. HN generated warm fuzzy feelings (if crypto succeed it's extreme selfishness, they can't be right because as a community we find it wrong, deflation is good and more generous to newcomers, etc). I waited a bit too long to my taste to get in. A lot of LW people just didn't. It was quite a fiasco - the calculations clearly made sense, but a lot of people didn't act on the advice they were freely given. The reason is still unclear. Personally, I think it's due to these warm fuzzy feelings - or the lack of thereof.
I vowed "never again!", and now I apply a discount factor to questions that appeal to sentiments.
> in experiments where humans were asked to estimate their level of control over the outcome, depressed people were more likely to correctly reason they didn't have [much] control
Good enough for me! In the case of covid, we have little control - if only about the vaccine formula and access. A homemade vaccine allows me more freedom.
I see that as buying an option for a deadly 2nd wave driven by a mutant selected by the evolutionary pressure of everyone being vaccinated against the same antigens.
$1k isn't much for such a deadly scenario: I estimate the odds at 1%, and the lifetime cost at 1M (average cost of a human life), which means the homemade vaccine option is interesting up to $10k.
Re: Making Vaccine
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can actually do much worse than nothing with antibody dependent enhancement. Let's say you make something that at first glance appears similar to the virus but is a little off. Maybe you chose the wrong proteins, or maybe you used an inactivated virus and the inactivation step damaged some key part of the virus. You inject the vaccine and your body learns how to make antibodies for this particle. Now the real vir…
Isn't it possible your body would have the same response if it was exposed to a variant of a virus that it already has antibodies for? Maybe the explanations are simplified but I don't quite understand how the immune system could fail to recognise permutations of proteins or any other differentiating factor between COVID-19, its variants and mRNA vaccines; nor what makes this specific example of vaccination riskier.
For a real-life example look into dengue fever. There are multiple variants that - to our immune system - look very similar, but antibodies for one do not protect against the others. This means that if you recover from one variant and are subsequently infected with a second you can have a really really bad time.
The reason the second infection is so bad is exactly as outlined above: your immune system 'recognises' the second variant and produces antibodies that it learnt when fighting off the first variant you recovered from. Unfortunately, these antibodies are useless against the second variant, and you have a bad time.
This exact same issue happens with the current vaccine for dengue, which is why it is only given to people who have already had dengue of some kind, or in populations where most people have had it before. For a situation where this did not happen see the section titled 'Phillipines controversy' in the wikipedia article.
There is currently a lot of work being done to produce vaccines that protect against all 4 variants at the same time, with some promise for the years ahead as trial results come in!
Re: Making Vaccine
#324I'm amazed at the price here. $1k for 500 doses, and the author stated in the comments that they could have saved a lot more per dose if they bought in bulk. It seems like a failure of the system that no one is trying for FDA approval or industrialization.
The EU's paying around 2 euro per dose of AstraZeneca (and about 15 euro per dose of Pfizer). That's on the low end, but no-one's really paying more than twice that. And those vaccines have the great benefit that there is actual evidence that they do something.
Re: Making Vaccine
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
Um... are you reading the same post as the rest of us? He's just trying out something an actual expert has made to see if it works when he tries to do it. So far it hasn't worked, as he admits, but it certainly could. Sure, it's probably with greater cost, higher risk and less effectiveness than the mass produced vaccines I expect (and the author would likely agree). But it's certainly not the case thay a layman can…
The hubris is to expect that someone at home can manufacture something worthy of being called a vaccine if they're just smart enough to follow the science. Theoretically this might be true, but in practice it seems obvious that this will fail. I can think of so many ways in which this could be subtly invalid and I am in no way an expert. I would expect someone with commercial lab experience or vaccine production expe…
I must admit I only skimmed the white paper, and saved it to read in more detail later. Maybe I missed some part that set you off?
https://radvac.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/White-Paper-SA... (be aware: there's 3 pages of warnings and disclaimers upfront. They are very clear that this constitutes self-experimentation.)
The paper does appear to assume that the reader is indeed an expert or at least a somewhat experienced amateur. If you sign up on their researchers map, they do ask whether you have a science degree and/or lab experience:
https://radvac.org/researchers-map/
I must admit I'm stymied by your implication that an antibody test wouldn't constitute evidence that the vaccine had been effective in that instance (n=1). What makes you say that?
Re: Making Vaccine
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
Um... are you reading the same post as the rest of us? He's just trying out something an actual expert has made to see if it works when he tries to do it. So far it hasn't worked, as he admits, but it certainly could. Sure, it's probably with greater cost, higher risk and less effectiveness than the mass produced vaccines I expect (and the author would likely agree). But it's certainly not the case thay a layman can…
The main problem is probably that as a hobbyist you can only perform "N=1 experiments", and even without a control.
This appears to be an "open source science" project.
https://radvac.org/a-homepage-section/
What you can do is conduct experiments, and report back what you find. If enough people do that, then together one can get usable n.
Re: Making Vaccine
#327Re: Making Vaccine
#328Similar to the author of the post, I'm surprised that I haven't seen or heard much about bio-hacking your own vaccine. Seems like an interesting trend to follow, though I will be waiting for an FDA-approved vaccine myself. I am a little worried that https://radvac.org/vaccine/ mentions that their vaccine has "the most extreme complication in some recipients of stuffy noses." I would expect a functioning vaccine to el…
Your comment made me think of something, I'll share it as a "PSA" in case it helps someone stay safe. Neanderthal DNA has been linked to severe outcomes from COVID.[0] To me that means I'll get vaccinated (and strain specific boosters that may have to happen), full stop. But if I have a choice of more than one type of vaccine available at the same time (unlikely? But still), then I will try to keep this in mind. Othe…
Hey FYI looks like you got an auto ban, I've emailed the mods to get them to review in case it's a false positive.
This was an interesting comment. I don't think it is particularly likely that Neanderthal DNA is associated with more stuffy noses, but who knows! An interesting hypothesis for sure.
Re: Making Vaccine
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
Um... are you reading the same post as the rest of us? He's just trying out something an actual expert has made to see if it works when he tries to do it. So far it hasn't worked, as he admits, but it certainly could. Sure, it's probably with greater cost, higher risk and less effectiveness than the mass produced vaccines I expect (and the author would likely agree). But it's certainly not the case thay a layman can…
The hubris is to expect that someone at home can manufacture something worthy of being called a vaccine if they're just smart enough to follow the science. Theoretically this might be true, but in practice it seems obvious that this will fail. I can think of so many ways in which this could be subtly invalid and I am in no way an expert. I would expect someone with commercial lab experience or vaccine production expe…
He says he has lab experience. He followed the protocol set out in the paper. Sure he might have made a mistake - but it’s not magic.
If you think there’s something off about his protocol, then say what it is. But your criticism is just “this guy is reaching above his station”.
Sasha Shulgin synthesised plenty of compounds at home and tested them on himself. Did none of them work because he wasn’t working in a commercial lab?
Re: Making Vaccine
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
But even if you are a unique human whose utility is entirely unrelated to the sum of warm fuzzy feelings they feel, arbitrarily avoiding stuff which makes you happy is an irrational cognitive bias which will often if not even usually (since warm fuzzy feelings evolved from preference for certain types of collaboration improving survival odds) lead to worse material outcomes. The Depression Correctness Hypothesis expe…
> arbitrarily avoiding stuff which makes you happy is an irrational cognitive bias I do not generally avoid that - only when it comes to serious decisions. For a pandemic not seen for the last 100 years, I think this precaution is warranted. Last time I did was when I was receiving conflicting signals - LW was strongly pro crypto, HN strongly against. HN generated warm fuzzy feelings (if crypto succeed it's extreme s…
I suspect a depressed person would be less likely to overestimate their ability to correctly control the strength of a homemade vaccine ;)