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Making Vaccine

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Re: Making Vaccine

#341

Post by pell »

tim333 wrote: post #286
ascorbic wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sort of but not really. I'm an odd case as I had covid in April. I put my name with the NHS anyway in case they still want to try stuff on us survivors.

How's your health been since the infection if you don't mind the question?

Re: Making Vaccine

#342

Post by Kim_Bruning »

mattmaroon wrote: post #337
andy_ppp wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is higher, the risk of the vaccine or the risk of COVID (and not just for you, for people you meet and possibly care about)?

I would say your risk in taking a homemade vaccine is greater than your risk from Covid if you don’t take the homemade vaccine. The homemade vaccine is unlikely to work so it won’t decrease covid risk much to you or others. The expected value is low. It seems like it’s probably more likely to harm you, either directly because you’re shooting amateur-made chemicals up your nose, or indirectly because it might give you…

Why do you think it's a bad idea to make your own vaccine?

Does your opinion change if you assume the person making the vaccine has had lab training?

Re: Making Vaccine

#343

Post by Kim_Bruning »

subrat_rout wrote: post #158

I completely agree with fabian2k. It's incredibly risky to throw all random sequences peptides into the blood stream for evoking immune response. 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? That's what happens in most of autoimmune disease. In addition, most of the peptides that can be synthesized from a protein struc…

The white paper lists the set of epitopes, why they were selected, and provides references to the original papers that found them; starting on page 27.

https://radvac.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/White-Paper-SA...

Re: Making Vaccine

#344

Post by Kim_Bruning »

crazydoggers wrote: post #228
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…

They’re not sufficient without an adjuvant. Peptides by themselves usually aren’t enough to be recognized as pathogenic. If any peptide by itself could kick off an immune response, you’d be getting sick with everything you eat and smell. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4494216/

The protocol white paper uses Chitosan. They do discuss use of Alum and other adjuvants, starting on page 12.

( https://radvac.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/White-Paper-SA... )

Re: Making Vaccine

#345

Post by Kim_Bruning »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #333
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Note the long disclaimer, though, clarifying among many other things: "Possible Risks and Uncertain Benefits - Immediate allergic or other serious reaction - Unforeseen long-term effects - Instillation/administration of the vaccine in an inappropriate way or in an infected area might increase the risk of infection by enhancing viral entry into the body - Benefits are uncertain. There are extensive published histories…

As it should be, being open source science and all! Compare eg. the part in the GPL[1] where it says in all caps:

* "THERE IS NO WARRANTY [...]" and

* "IN NO EVENT WILL [...anyone...] BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ANY DAMAGES [...]".

I will grant that seeing such a disclaimer in a text on something that you need to ingest is a little more scary.

[1]https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html

Re: Making Vaccine

#346

Post by coolgeek »

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.

> When the Director of the CDC asserts an opinion, she has to optimize for two things - being right, and keeping power

Perhaps there is some context that you have elided, but as it stands, this is terribly cynical and almost certainly not true.

Being CDC Director is an entry on a resume, albeit a prestigious one. It can only come after outstanding achievement in medical and/or scientific pursuits. Assuming one does not leave in disgrace, it is followed by even more prestigious, and highly compensated appointments.

There is a strong analogy here with the obsession of finding "signaling" everywhere one looks. As if everybody is an automaton, or even a malicious actor, that behaves in a facile, self-serving manner.

Occam's Razor should be your north star here.

Re: Making Vaccine

#347

Post by zamfi »

mattmaroon wrote: post #336
henryaj wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The risk of permanent smell changes, possible neurological changes, and a chance of hospitalisation and death from COVID is unlikely to be smaller than ingesting a microscopic quantity of a peptide.

Disagree because you’re looking at it as if my options are get Covid or take homemade vaccine. I can pretty easily avoid Covid for the couple more months it’ll take before I get a real vaccine, so it’s low danger for me. I’m also younger and healthier so my risk if I get it is quite small. High enough that I’m modifying my life to avoid it, but still pretty small. And since I think the homemade Covid vaccine is unlik…

> If I’m currently faced with the choices of taking a homemade vaccine or not taking a homemade vaccine, the latter is clearly the less dangerous course of action. I think that’s the spirit of the comment to which we were all replying, and it’s the actual choice being discussed.

Well, the actual content of the comment we’re all replying to is a mix of “it’s impossible for a non-expert to come up with an idea that’s worth experimenting with for anyone” and haughty derision about Rationalism and what the commenter perceives as the “hubris” that goes along with that.

What the original comment misses is that the people who came up with this protocol are not pitching it as anything other than an experiment for themselves and maybe others who are interested — they make no safety claims, no claims about the real vaccines, no claims that it’s a good idea, etc., and no one is arguing that taking a homemade vaccine is good or better than the real vaccines or other precautions, which seems to be the strawman you’re debating in your post.

That said, historically, a significant number of vaccines were demonstrated to work initially by the inventors trying them on themselves and then challenging themselves with live virus.

The fact that at it’s not a good idea for the average person to try a homemade vaccine (and to be clear: we are 100% in agreement here) does not imply that the original radvac authors here should not have put together their protocol.

Re: Making Vaccine

#348

Post by Kliment »

bawolff wrote: post #107
wegs wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? In many cases, the hard part isn't so much making a working vaccine, as proving it works, scaling manufacturing, etc.

Because if all it took to make a vaccine for a respiratory disease was stick some peptides up your nose, we would havev a lot more vaccines (and i dont mean just for covid.). Even if the other parts are harder (not sure if thats true. The reason proving things work is hard is because most initially promising candidates dont actually), it doesn't follow that every single vaccine candidate works.

Peptide vaccines do work - there's a very similar vaccine currently in limited use (EpiVacCorona, running phase 3 trials in Russia, with emergency use approval granted in two countries at time of writing). The inhalation based delivery mechanism is also not novel, but almost never used because you need a whole lot more spaced doses than intramuscular, and that's a massive pain logistics-wise when you are trying to run a public vaccination campaign. There is no clear reason this wouldn't work. That said, there are many reasons it can fail in practice without a GMP environment - peptide chains are fragile and contamination is a risk - with a contaminated substance inhalation is going to be a much safer mechanism than injection, but unless repeated multiple times it will be less effective. The thermal disinfection stage needs precise temp control to not destroy the peptides and in general there's a lot of handling steps that can go wrong. But that's a matter of process, not of principle - both intranasal delivery and peptide vaccines have individually been shown to work.

Re: Making Vaccine

#349

Post by bawolff »

concordDance wrote: post #289
bawolff wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those people tested their theories, did experiments. They didn't just stick something up their nose and assumed it worked with no further investigation.

> They didn't just stick something up their nose and assumed it worked with no further investigation. Good thing that's not what the article author has done, ey?

But it is. The author has made no attempt to test whether he is immune to covid as of this writing. He talks vaugely about future blood tests, but its unclear what test specificly, if a positive result would actually mean he is immune, if a Negative test would mean he is not, so its basically a test that tells us nothing, and he hasn't even done it yet.

If your experiment is not falsifiable, you are not doing science.

Re: Making Vaccine

#350

Post by airstrike »

sirsar wrote: post #201
airstrike wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Sure. How about instead of sharing wishful thinking covered in "this will work because science" OP waits until there are actual results before posting? Anyone can make a vaccine candidate. Few can make a vaccine. Even fewer can make a safe vaccine.

> How about... OP waits until there are actual results before posting? It seems to me there's value in posting the details before the results are in: - Helps prevent publication bias, by encouraging posting negative results - Elicits comments from knowledgeable people who may be able to help - Discourages doctoring the story after the results are in > Even fewer can make a safe vaccine. I don't know, the article, whi…

> - Helps prevent publication bias, by encouraging posting negative results

That's not what we're really seeing here, is it? The article is lowkey touting success when it's just an early experiment. OP is not "making vaccine" as the title states.

> - Elicits comments from knowledgeable people who may be able to help

Also not the case here.

> - Discourages doctoring the story after the results are in

Not really. One thing doesn't prevent the other from happening.

> I don't know, the article, whitepaper, and comments (...) Do you have a more substantive counterargument?

Yes, the scientific method and bona fide peer review

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