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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

#241
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So there's no possible valid logic for not wanting an mRNA vaccine. It's all completely "delusion" stemming from propaganda? Anyone who does not have complete faith at this point is in the wrong? Am I understanding you correctly?

There are no general reasons to avoid well tested mRNA vaccines, no. Specific medical conditions (eg allergies to components of the shot), being under the recommeded/tested ages, etc., sure. I unfortunately know several anti-vaxxers, I've seen what they pass around as "reasons". It's nonsense. And it just so happens that they all get their news from similar places. It's a total coincidence I'm sure.

And I assume that you consider all the available variations as "well tested". Nice to hear that any personal concerns I have are not valid, and that you don't even need to read them to know that. Sad to see so many websites where discussions were once welcomed turned into echo chambers. Or perhaps I'm just one of those uneducated people who shouldn't even be on HN

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

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just yesterday I had to accompany my sister to the phlebologist, because of severe side-effects from Pfizer, he told us he was seeing troves of patients for similar reasons even though officially no causal-link was established. This is the issue with correlation vs causation. When you look at sufficiently large group, like tens of millions of people, some percentage of them are going to die for various reasons. Som…

I'd imagine a phlebologist is in a good position to know the difference between correlation and causation with regards to their practice and their patient population. Thanks for the links about VTE, that's interesting, I don't know if it's precisely what my sister has. Though I don't remember reading about it on any of the official websites I consulted regarding possible side-effects. I'm mostly feeling dumb about co…

>I'd imagine a phlebologist is in a good position to know the difference between correlation and causation with regards to their practice and their patient population.

Well, you would be wrong. Someone’s intuitive estimation of a section biased sample from an unknown total sample size compared to their memory from years ago is basically guessing. That is exactly why studies need to be conducted, with literally millions of people, and differences measured in a handful of people per 100,000, it is the only way to get any sort of useful data.

>the doctor having told me these side-effects are common and not being reported.

I don’t even understand what they mean. They or you can and should report it to VAERS. Its entire function is to collect data on these things so scientists can look into possible causations.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/ensuringsafety/monitoring/...

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

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 59 reports of arthritis associated with vaccination Maybe it was coincidence. I’m just saying if the vaccine gave people Lyme, here’s my hypothesis. But it makes a lot of sense that an autoimmune disease created by exposure to X could be triggered by a vaccine containing X. The definition of a vaccine is to expose a person to whatever it is the immune system recognizes — spike proteins and so on. It’s plausible. Bu…

Let's include the entire quote >By 2001, with over 1·4 million Lyme vaccine doses distributed in the United States the VAERS database included 905 reports of mild self-limited reactions and 59 reports of arthritis associated with vaccination [29]. The arthritis incidence in the patients receiving Lyme vaccine occurred at the same rate as the background in unvaccinated individuals . In addition, the data did not show…

That’s pretty much what I said

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

#244
post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then the virus variant itself would cause autoimmune disease, and we'd have a much bigger problem than deciding whether to approve a new vaccine. For fuck's sake, I'm not saying do no testing. I would assume they do basic checks, first in humanized animals, then using bioassays to try to detect all sorts of problems including antibody cross-reactivity with a wide variety of human cells. I'm also not against a prelimi…

>Then the virus variant itself would cause autoimmune disease You clearly have no idea what you are talking about or why the GP comment mentioned an autoimmune disease specifically . mRNA vaccines express specific proteins whereas the virus expresses entire viral molecules. A novel protein expression could cause an autoimmune disease because the novel proteins couls cause the immune system to attack the cells produci…

I think you misunderstood the (G)GP comment which mentioned cross-reactivity, i.e. the immune system's antibodies cross-reacted with both the spike protein and an endogenous human protein, like what can happen with Epstein–Barr virus Nuclear Antigen-1.

The immune system doesn't generate antibodies to an entire virus. It generates antibodies to specific immunogenic proteins or parts of proteins.

If the spike protein resulting from a vaccine causes an immune response that generates antibodies to the spike protein and oops, also some endogenous human protein, that's autoimmune disease.

If you get infected by a virus with the same spike protein, your body will generate antibodies to the same spike protein and also cause autoimmune disease if the antibodies are cross-reactive.

If cells expressing exogenous immunogenic proteins triggered autoimmune disease[1], even the existing wild-type (alpha variant) vaccines would cause autoimmune disease. Presumably that's not happening. The immune system may attack those cells expressing the exogenous vaccine-coded spike proteins, but normal immune systems down-regulate it well enough that it doesn't cause major problems. It would be a sign of a broken immune system if it decided to initiate a long-term attack of human cells just because they once expressed an immunogenic protein. If it did that, any virus would cause autoimmune disease.

Please tell me you work in a field related to immunology and you have a subtler point that I'm missing, and that you didn't just create an account to criticize a point you misunderstood yourself.

[1] to an unacceptable degree. Obviously, things can go wrong with the immune system and almost anything could, if you're unlucky enough, trigger an immune reaction leading to autoimmune disease eventually.

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

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just yesterday I had to accompany my sister to the phlebologist, because of severe side-effects from Pfizer, he told us he was seeing troves of patients for similar reasons even though officially no causal-link was established. This is the issue with correlation vs causation. When you look at sufficiently large group, like tens of millions of people, some percentage of them are going to die for various reasons. Som…

You compare the vaccine to birth control to dismiss the risks of the vaccine, however birth control is taken by sexually active and mature women. That is people who have a real probability risk and want to avoid getting pregnant. You don't give birth control to 10 year old girls or to boys. In the OP’s case his sister was in the low risk category (quite young). So its not obvious that a priori the vaccine outweighed…

>You compare the vaccine to birth control to dismiss the risks of the vaccine

Or I compare it as a reference to a commonly taken medication to contextualize the risk. I also included a comparison to the disease it is vaccinating against, again, to contextualize. It is also worth noting that the absolute risk amounts to about 4 additional cases of VTE per 100,000 people that are vaccinated.

>In the OP’s case his sister was in the low risk category (quite young). So its not obvious that a priori the vaccine outweighed the risks.

Between 12 and 115 children end up hospitalized with covid per 100,000 total child population, not per 100,000 that catch covid (which is 1,900 per 100,000 infected children) [1]. So the risk of catching covid, and having a case severe enough to end up hospitalized, is far higher than your chance of VTE from the vaccination. So I find it odd that you would describe those odds as “low risk” for covid. And yes, its pretty obvious the vaccine outweighs the risk.

[1] https://www.aap.org/en/pages/2019-novel-coronavirus-covid-19...

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

#246
post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no general reasons to avoid well tested mRNA vaccines, no. Specific medical conditions (eg allergies to components of the shot), being under the recommeded/tested ages, etc., sure. I unfortunately know several anti-vaxxers, I've seen what they pass around as "reasons". It's nonsense. And it just so happens that they all get their news from similar places. It's a total coincidence I'm sure.

And I assume that you consider all the available variations as "well tested". Nice to hear that any personal concerns I have are not valid, and that you don't even need to read them to know that. Sad to see so many websites where discussions were once welcomed turned into echo chambers. Or perhaps I'm just one of those uneducated people who shouldn't even be on HN

They went through the full multi-round set of testing that all vaccines go through in the US (even ignoring the overlap elsewhere), and have since been administered to hundreds of millions of people. I'd call that well tested, yes.

What would be the point of me pretending it's up for debate? I'm not stopping you from sharing whatever concerns you have, not sure how you think I even would. I'm not likely to be interested in them if I'm being honest, I've seen far too many sites and stories already. But you do you.

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

#247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd imagine a phlebologist is in a good position to know the difference between correlation and causation with regards to their practice and their patient population. Thanks for the links about VTE, that's interesting, I don't know if it's precisely what my sister has. Though I don't remember reading about it on any of the official websites I consulted regarding possible side-effects. I'm mostly feeling dumb about co…

>I'd imagine a phlebologist is in a good position to know the difference between correlation and causation with regards to their practice and their patient population. Well, you would be wrong. Someone’s intuitive estimation of a section biased sample from an unknown total sample size compared to their memory from years ago is basically guessing. That is exactly why studies need to be conducted, with literally millio…

> Well, you would be wrong.

You're overly confident for an assertion that relies on your belief that someone with decades of medical experience would be ignorant of these basic statistical pitfalls. Not that all doctors do research but I learned that stuff in my first year in the health industry and I can assure you that doctors are in general very knowledgeable about their patient base and the diseases they treat.

A symptom with a 1 in 100 000 occurrences would result in about 800 cases in my country. Arranged according to demographics, divided by the number of phlebologists in these areas, and the baseline prevalence of these symptoms you can start to make an informed guess as to what amount is "normal".

I don't know if we use VAERS at all being in Europe. I know there was some talk of our reporting system not being interested in non-severe symptoms because of the labour cost of evaluating reports. In truth I don't know exactly what they meant, drugs aren't my domain of expertise and they didn't elaborate. But assuming this doctor is trustworthy in their assessment and intent when they speak of troves of patients with these symptoms and complain of this lack of reporting, it's evidence of a dysfunction somewhere seeing as those side-effects aren't advertised on official channels.

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

#248

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.

Couple of months ago when Pfizer & Moderna were talking about developing variant specific boosters, wasn't the discourse about how the variant boosters wouldn't need full trials again?

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

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biontech invested in the early research. Pfizer invested a lot more into manufacturing and the trials. Both are needed at different times. What Pfizer invested in was a lot lower risk (don't confuse that with low risk - it wasn't except by comparison!), but they invested far more money. Quit trying to sell either short - without both investments we would be in lockdown yet.

I really looked into that quite deeply. Biontech got so much money for funding the trials that they apparently had too much and put it in reserve for 2022. The public invested billions into building production capacity. I'd be glad to see what Pfizer actually invested that wasn't backed by prepurchases.

I'm got surprised.

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

#250
post #8

Can anyone give some insight as to why a vaccine hasn't been possible using more traditional technology?

There was one but it was taken off the market. It's a bit of a sad story because it worked but because of unfounded claims that it had side effects, it lost trust of the public: "In clinical trials involving more than 10,000 people, the vaccine, called LYMErix, was found to confer protective immunity to Borrelia in 76% of adults and 100% of children with only mild or moderate and transient adverse effects. [...] Subs…

The side effects were real and occurred frequently enough to make vaccinating the entire population a net-negative. Lyme disease is still extremely rare in most areas.

What should have happened is the vaccine should've been made prescribable by doctors to patients who live in areas where Lyme disease is common. Despite its side effects, the vaccine would have been hugely beneficial to specific areas of the U.S., but IIRC there wasn't a regulatory pathway at the time for this sort of limited approval based on geography.

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