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Valneva and Pfizer announce Phase 2 study for Lyme disease vaccine candidate

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Re: Valneva and Pfizer announce Phase 2 study for Lyme disease vaccine candidate

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's incorrect. They are vaccines even while working differently. The body develops immunity in reaction to the spike proteins that it produced itself after turning the mRNA instructions contained in the vaccine into proteins (namely the spike proteins that the SARS-Cov2 virus uses to enter cells). Ribosomes, tiny and amazing molecular machines, read this mRNA and produce the encoded sequence of aminoacids. With ev…

Amazing technology. What I cannot understand is how can a foreign mRNA be injected so efficiently into host's cells without all the virus-like methods to be applied? Why should host cells be ready to accept any mRNA from their environment so blindly? Wouldn't it be used by natural selection to create subviral agents which will destroy such naive host cells rather quickly?

The short answer is that it is virus-like initially, in that it bypasses the cells passive defenses to enter the cell intact, but the payload can’t reproduce itself, so it dies out almost immediately afterwards, unlike a virus.

Re: Valneva and Pfizer announce Phase 2 study for Lyme disease vaccine candidate

#152
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's super easy to treat if caught early. But that's where the good ends. Vast majority of cases present the infamous circle. But some don't. And if you got the circle in a hard-to-notice spot, it's easy to miss it (it will a month or two into infection) too. First precaution is to check your legs (and possibly torso/hands) for ticks after passing through high grass. And whole body after coming from the woods. The na…

Should we assume we are safe if we go hiking in a place where we never brushed against any plants or grass or twigs? In other words we went through woods but only stayed on wide open trails. I assume ticks don’t “fly” in the air ?

The short answer is "no." You should still do a check. And maybe spray some pemethrin on shoes/socks/trousers

The longer answer is that they're much more likely to get on you if you're walking through tall grass. They're bad this summer and I've mostly gotten them when walking through grass (on a trail I've actually been avoiding). But I have gotten 2 or 3 others.

Re: Valneva and Pfizer announce Phase 2 study for Lyme disease vaccine candidate

#153
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the beginning of the pandemic, people theorized that public health will influence future media for a generation, much like WW2 did. For decades, we got war TV shows, war movies, war comics, etc. Hogan's Heroes ran into the '70s, Sgt. Rock was published until the late '80s, and so on. And I think we're about to see the same with media based on public health efforts. One of the things that'll come out of this is tha…

> At the beginning of the pandemic, people theorized that public health will influence future media for a generation, much like WW2 did. For decades, we got war TV shows, war movies, war comics, etc. Hogan's Heroes ran into the '70s, Sgt. Rock was published until the late '80s, and so on. And I think we're about to see the same with media based on public health efforts. but we actually won that war, which precipitate…

> covid has been a pathetic, fumbling showing, one that clearly reflects institutional decay and foreshadows future decline -- the reverse of the first situation

Against a totally novel virus, we developed and widely deployed vaccines with efficacies beyond anyone’s wildest dreams using totally novel technology in the span of a year. Not sure that quite meets my definition of “pathetic.”

Re: Valneva and Pfizer announce Phase 2 study for Lyme disease vaccine candidate

#154
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's already written in the comment I replied to.

Yes, of course, but you then appeared to query the "unfounded" nature of the claims. I thought you had missed the part where they turned out to be indeed unfounded.

You should assume the strongest interpretation of the comments you reply to, it leads to better conversations and is part of the site's guidelines.

I disagree about the fact that they're unfounded having read the comment I replied to, therefore it follows I do not believe the results of the FDA's investigation are conclusive. I illustrate this with the Hep-B vaccine for which the health-autorities have not found a causal link, yet the legal system implicitly acknowledges one. There's also my personal experience with the Pfizer vaccine of which some side-effects are not being reported, putting into question any scientific conclusion that'd be reached from the incomplete data that is being gathered.

Re: Valneva and Pfizer announce Phase 2 study for Lyme disease vaccine candidate

#155

I assume that mRNA will vaccinate for a lot of diseases, which means that a lot of new viruses will emerge through this evolutionary pressure. It's possible that we are also starting the same race as with antibiotics. Which is still better than people dying from these tiny evil viruses

Are there really a lot of viruses lying in wait for current viruses to get out of the way before they can start spreading? I find that hard to believe

Re: Valneva and Pfizer announce Phase 2 study for Lyme disease vaccine candidate

#156
post #147

I assume that mRNA will vaccinate for a lot of diseases, which means that a lot of new viruses will emerge through this evolutionary pressure. It's possible that we are also starting the same race as with antibiotics. Which is still better than people dying from these tiny evil viruses

That's not really how it works, First, vaccines prevent infection in the first place so the virus never has a chance to replicate and mutate, unlike antibiotics which are given after infection and there are a massive number of bacteria and only the most resistant survive. Second, there isn't anything about vaccine acquired immunity thats different from infection acquired immunity, so any evolutionary pressure would a…

> First, vaccines prevent infection in the first place so the virus never has a chance to replicate and mutate

Ideally, yes, but in practice people still tend to develop a viral load, their immune system kicks in faster, and the result is a very brief infection.

>Second, there isn't anything about vaccine acquired immunity thats different from infection acquired immunity

This is not true with the mRNA vaccines.

Re: Valneva and Pfizer announce Phase 2 study for Lyme disease vaccine candidate

#157
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but they will likely only take weeks in the future, not months. We need just one Jesse Gelsinger to shut the whole thing down.

J.G. is a famous case and his death definitely delayed development for a decade or more, but it should be noted that when he died, the technology was extremely untested in humans. We now have a few hundred million people who got mRNA vaccine and had no trouble. I don't think that even after a death, mRNA would be completely toast. It has already proven its merit.

mRNA?

J.G.'s death involved an experimental modified adenovirus (the same family of viruses used as the vector for several non-mRNA COVID vaccines: Johnson & Johnson/Janssen, Astrazenica/Oxford, and Sputnik V).

Re: Valneva and Pfizer announce Phase 2 study for Lyme disease vaccine candidate

#158

I actually had Lyme disease when i was younger. Curiously enough, i didn't get the somewhat common rash after the tick bite, but instead it was discovered later, as a part of blood testing. I was submitted to that after my relatives had concerns about how lethargic i was being, as well as because i was experiencing joint pain, which the blood test later seemed to confirm. If i recall correctly, i was given antibiotic…

In a side note I usually read that those rashes are only present in 30% of cases or so. Probably good advice to get checked out if you suspect an infection. Multiple times, if necessary, as the testing also doesn't appear to have a high degree of accuracy.

Re: Valneva and Pfizer announce Phase 2 study for Lyme disease vaccine candidate

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone know why they haven't released a Delta varient vaccine? Is seems that it would just involved we changing the mRNA sequence in a computer at the factor, but I'm really just guessing. Also maybe it is considered a whole new vaccineand needs to go through approval again.

Because it means rerunning the trials again. These requirements will have to be loosened for anti-Covid vaccines. They are tailored to other diseases, but SARS-CoV-2 mutates too fast. The flu vaccine has an exception, too, otherwise it wouldn't be possible to prepare the correct vaccine (against the expected dominant strain) on time.

I think the best solution here would be challenge trials. With it without them we are relying on people getting sick. With challenge trials we just reduce how many people outside the trial get sick as well because we can massively cut down on time. I'd be more than happy to take the new vaccine and get exposed to Delta. It's a easy way to make a huge contribution to society.

Re: Valneva and Pfizer announce Phase 2 study for Lyme disease vaccine candidate

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the beginning of the pandemic, people theorized that public health will influence future media for a generation, much like WW2 did. For decades, we got war TV shows, war movies, war comics, etc. Hogan's Heroes ran into the '70s, Sgt. Rock was published until the late '80s, and so on. And I think we're about to see the same with media based on public health efforts. but we actually won that war, which precipitate…

> covid has been a pathetic, fumbling showing, one that clearly reflects institutional decay and foreshadows future decline -- the reverse of the first situation Against a totally novel virus, we developed and widely deployed vaccines with efficacies beyond anyone’s wildest dreams using totally novel technology in the span of a year. Not sure that quite meets my definition of “pathetic.”

Not a totally novel virus. The reason why vaccines were developed within days of isolating the virus is because SARS-COV-2 is not that different from SARS-COV-1 and all the vaccine research efforts carried over.

What was pathetic was the federal coordination - hesitation on travel restrictions, CDC response, recommendations against PPE… Lessons that could have been learned even from the 1918 pandemic were painfully ignored.

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