141–150 of 258 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You should do the healthy things to avoid cancer in the first place, but once you are diagnosed with a cancer with high mortality rate, it's a whole different calculation in terms of risks vs benefits compared to Covid-19.
Many cancers are caused by random chance, not factors you can do something about. sure, don't smoke and all, but odds are still high cancer gets you.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For an individual it is a formula of should_vaccinate = (risk_of_getting_covid_19 * bad_outcomes) - (bad_outcomes_from_vaccines + risk_of_getting_covid_19_after_vaccine * bad_outcomes_of_covid_19_after_vaccine) > 0 On the group level you would have to consider the damage on the group level as well from not getting vaccinated due to increase of covid-19 spread, and increased hospitalisation levels. On the global commu…
However, pretty much any real world person doing those calculations and arriving at the conclusion that they're better off not getting the vaccine is engaging in motivated rationalization rather than reasoning. Almost no one is actually living as a hermit, unlikely to ever be exposed to covid. And just about everyone who will be exposed will be safer having had the vaccine, considering all the risks and probabilities…
1. Age. Not all age groups were recommended the vaccine.
2. Last time or where you have had Covid-19 at all.
3. General pattern of activity and the amount of contacts with other people.
4. Last time you have had the vaccine.
E.g. in my country through it's technical systems didn't allow you to get a Covid-19 vaccine when you had the virus within last 6 months. While US recommended the vaccine much shorter period of time after having had Covid-19.
> Almost no one is actually living as a hermit
Also consider that in 2021, there were actually many people living as hermits, including I, as I really didn't want to get the virus. At the time I was terrified of getting it. In 2020-2021, I did live with my partner, but we worked remotely, worked out outside away from other people and we did cardio/gym, but with home made equipment or outside keeping distance to other people.
I think it was quite common in 2021.
Past mRNA cancer vaccines haven't failed to get through trials because of ineffectiveness. They failed clinical trials in the 2000s and 2010s due to their side effects being too bad. The side effects of mRNA vaccines are getting less and less severe over the years, but the proof of the pudding will come in phase III for this vaccine, as with all the other ones.
> failed clinical trials in the 2000s and 2010s We didn’t start testing neoantigen mRNA cancer vaccines until 2017 [1]. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8942458/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is an oversimplification, but: Moderna mostly took an initial infectious disease approach because extant mRNA formulations at the time provoked too much of an immune response that neutralized the effectiveness of subsequent dosing. There's a goldilocks amount of immune response you want-- too little and the immune system doesn't learn the antigens you'd like, but too much makes it miss the mark and focus too muc…
huh that sounds exactly like machine learning overfitting vs generalization
The acquired immune system basically includes a feature where it can squirrel away some of the white blood cells that fought an infection in the past at the site of the infection. This is a subset of the cells that were activated by the chemicals that were found during the infection.
But the immune system doesn't have a great way to distinguish the chemicals that actually cause illness from ancillary chemicals that may have been present during the infection as well. This is one of the root causes of allergies... you get sick with, say, rhinovirus at the same time that the pollen count is really high and your immune system defeats the rhinovirus but squirrels away both the white blood cells that were activated by the rhinovirus and the ones that were activated by the basically harmless chemicals on the surface of pollen grains. Then the next time allergy season comes around, your nasal passages and lungs fill up with pollen grains and the white blood cells close to the surface that were squirled away due to that old rhinovirus infection activate and trigger your immune system to respond to the pollen.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The cancer vaccine: Moderna and pharma giant Merck are developing an mRNA-based cancer vaccine, mRNA-4157 (V940), for people who’ve had high-risk melanomas removed.
> for people who’ve had high-risk melanomas removed This is still treatment. They aren’t administering the vaccine to healthy adults. The population is melanoma survivors with a high risk of recurrence.
It's not a generally-distributed vaccine, but there are all sorts of vaccines that aren't generally distributed and instead applied only to populations likely to encounter the illness protected against (such as the battery one is exposed to if one travels to particular parts of the world).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You mean in terms of immune system not having been exposed to enough pathogens?
No, it's a myth (albeit a popular one) that the human immune system benefits from being "toughened up" by actual pathogens . It's more about calibration by non-pathogens we co-evolved with. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1700688114
Although I would agree that 10 years later in your life is unlikely to create an issue.
> The Andaman and Nicobar Islands Protection of Aboriginal Tribes Regulation 1956[9] prohibits travel to the island, and any approach closer than 5 nautical miles (9.3 km), in order to protect the remaining tribal community from "mainland" infectious diseases against which they likely have no acquired immunity. The area is patrolled by the Indian Navy.[10]
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is an oversimplification, but: Moderna mostly took an initial infectious disease approach because extant mRNA formulations at the time provoked too much of an immune response that neutralized the effectiveness of subsequent dosing. There's a goldilocks amount of immune response you want-- too little and the immune system doesn't learn the antigens you'd like, but too much makes it miss the mark and focus too muc…
huh that sounds exactly like machine learning overfitting vs generalization
Maybe the real surprise for some is that not everything was invented in the valley.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>the risk from taking vaccine is much smaller than from covid infection Does that matter if you get covid anyway?
Yes. The vaccine trains your immune system to create antibodies used to fight off the disease. Already having those antibodies when the virus appears means that it will not last as long and the symptoms will not be as severe. Without the vaccine, your body has to create those antibodies while you are already sick, and that takes time. This gives the virus a huge head start.
We're not just talking the flu-like symptoms here, the most relevant symptoms are "risk of death decreased."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
> bar for side effects is much stricter for preventative treatments like vaccines These vaccines are for treatment. They don’t prevent cancer. They treat it. They’re vaccines because they work by arming your immune system versus doing the fighting themselves.
by definition a vaccine should NOT be a treatment, a vaccine has to be preventative, and further personally I believe only Sterilizing immunity should be considered a "vaccine"
This is very important, because a "vaccine" in the US has legal protections other medical drugs, treatments, etc do not get, which is why there is a push to include alot of these things under the definition of "vaccine" so now they get the legal shield