Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

them.us

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 490 posts

Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#71

Post by BitwiseFool »

epgui wrote: post #59
ausudhz wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention the long term effects of COVID are known and way worst that what a vaccine can give you. Vaccine are building an immune response, they're not drugs that try to cope the symptoms (eg. Panadol) and they are the safest drugs out there. Is so interesting how people eat Panadol and many other drugs like candies (without reading the KNOWN side effects - which are also nasty), while they focus so much on thin…

Exactly this. I would rather take the "most unsafe" vaccine of the last 30 years than take an Advil. (I am a biochemist)

Fascinating, can you tell me more about your aversion to Advil? I haven never encountered anyone warning about it until now and would like to know more.

Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#72

Post by dbsights »

gameswithgo wrote: post #9
rubyist5eva wrote: post #6

> We could be getting even closer to stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS. Not if it's anything like the Covid-19 vaccines that don't stop someone from contracting or spreading it.

The covid-19 vaccines were very effective at preventing disease and spread until the omicron mutation, which perhaps wouldn't have happened if not for vaccine hesitancy. (but that is an inevitable human nature thing, so you have to accept it and deal with) Fortunately the vaccines were still very effective at preventing death and hospitalization with omicron, I wonder how many lives were saved overall, so far? It is…

Come on, this isn't true. Even with delta the waning efficacy had become obvious in those countries that vaccinated early, with all time high infections in jurisdictions that were virtually completely vaccinated (e.g. Israel, Waterford). One study estimated 211 days until protection vs infection was statistically indistinguishable from someone who was not vaccinated (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3949410).

And how can you possibly speculate that a vaccine evasive mutation is the fault of the unvaccinated? While we can only guess, the evolutionary pressure is obvious: a vast number of hosts available to the first variant that can defeat the narrow immunity against the spike protein. We created a monoculture, with all the attendant risks.

Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#73

Post by glial »

f6v wrote: post #56
spamizbad wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One reason is that mRNA vaccines can be developed much faster than traditional vaccines. So the idea is you have a better chance of "outrunning" a strain.

I think slowly will come the realization that mRNA vaccines aren’t as fast to develop as people thought. Sputnik/AstraZeneca vaccines were released almost at the same time as Moderna/Pfizer. Yes, the latter were first commercial mRNA vaccines, but the technology is nevertheless rather mature. I watched a lecture by the people credited with creating mRNA vaccines and it turns out people have been working on the techno…

> Rather, there would be delta- and omicron-specific vaccine.

I think there are -- they just haven't made it through the trials and approval processes yet. These are press releases from Pfizer for whatever it's worth:

Omicron: https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta...

Mentions delta: https://cdn.pfizer.com/pfizercom/2021-07/Delta_Variant_Study...

Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#74

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

adamrezich wrote: post #18
echelon wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

70% prevention is better than 0%, and something tells me that it will see a much higher rate of adoption than the Covid vaccine.

what makes you think so? how could the market for this be greater than the market for the covid vaccine? the number of people susceptible to covid is much greater than the number of people susceptible to HIV.

I think the general public’s perception of the consequences of infection are different depending on the disease.

I think most people see it as “covid = bad cold; HIV = death”.

Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#75

Post by f6v »

ineedasername wrote: post #48

How are human trials on high-risk low-incidence diseases like this conducted?

I guess the same as in diseases like tuberculosis. I’ve just read an article where they studied immune responses in recent TB infections. The authors recruited subjects from South Africa. I think it’s not that hard to get them to join the trials since payout can be quite significant where such disease are widespread, especially compared to Europe or North America. And some areas have just outrageous HIV prevalence. Just sample a hundred people and you get a decent sample size.

Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#76

Post by selectodude »

f6v wrote: post #56
spamizbad wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One reason is that mRNA vaccines can be developed much faster than traditional vaccines. So the idea is you have a better chance of "outrunning" a strain.

I think slowly will come the realization that mRNA vaccines aren’t as fast to develop as people thought. Sputnik/AstraZeneca vaccines were released almost at the same time as Moderna/Pfizer. Yes, the latter were first commercial mRNA vaccines, but the technology is nevertheless rather mature. I watched a lecture by the people credited with creating mRNA vaccines and it turns out people have been working on the techno…

The omicron and delta vaccines have existed for awhile now. The FDA requires efficacy testing for each individual booster. If the omicron specific booster isn’t better “enough” than a booster of the already approved vaccine, it’s going to be suck in approval hell.

Regulatory bodies need to adjust to the new speed of mRNA vaccine production if we want that sort of release schedule.

Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#78

Post by vkou »

f6v wrote: post #56
spamizbad wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One reason is that mRNA vaccines can be developed much faster than traditional vaccines. So the idea is you have a better chance of "outrunning" a strain.

I think slowly will come the realization that mRNA vaccines aren’t as fast to develop as people thought. Sputnik/AstraZeneca vaccines were released almost at the same time as Moderna/Pfizer. Yes, the latter were first commercial mRNA vaccines, but the technology is nevertheless rather mature. I watched a lecture by the people credited with creating mRNA vaccines and it turns out people have been working on the techno…

> If mRNA vaccine was as magical as it was marketed, we wouldn’t be getting 3-4(and soon 5?) doses of the same vaccine with the emergence of new variants. Rather, there would be delta- and omicron-specific vaccine.

Is this a problem with mRNA, a problem with the approval-for-vaccine-variants process, a problem with funding, or a problem with the politicians who thought COVID would magically go away by August 2021 (Never mind that most of the world was nowhere close to being vaccinated, and the millions of sick people throughout it were happily producing variants)?

I am ignorant on most of these subjects, but I would be surprised if the mRNA part of that was the problem!

Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#79

Post by [deleted] »

tacLog wrote: post #53
unnouinceput wrote: post #26

Quoted post unavailable.

It's important to remember that any community can spread it. Needle sharing among intravenous drug users comes to mind. However, you can't deny that HIV has struck a generational blow upon the LGBTQ+ community. If this works it will be the end to an era of fear. Many will remember those that where lost and wish this only happened sooner. A new reason to celebrate is underselling the impact this will have.

[deleted]

Re: Moderna’s HIV vaccine has officially begun human trials

#80

Post by im3w1l »

f6v wrote: post #56
spamizbad wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One reason is that mRNA vaccines can be developed much faster than traditional vaccines. So the idea is you have a better chance of "outrunning" a strain.

I think slowly will come the realization that mRNA vaccines aren’t as fast to develop as people thought. Sputnik/AstraZeneca vaccines were released almost at the same time as Moderna/Pfizer. Yes, the latter were first commercial mRNA vaccines, but the technology is nevertheless rather mature. I watched a lecture by the people credited with creating mRNA vaccines and it turns out people have been working on the techno…

The slow part is the safety testing right? If we had a robust enough theory of vaccines safety we could reduce that. How are the yearly flu shots tested anyway? Now, I would not take such a HIV shot. But for high risk groups, think promiscious homosexuals, it may eventually be worth it.
Post reply on HN